years old. back in may of 1984. this is "nbc nightly news." here is john palmer. >> they're having a family feud on capitol hill over television, and who will be on it. house sessions have been carried on a special cable tv channel lately. and house speaker tip o'neill, trying to control this particular airwave. >> that special cable tv channel john palmer, the anchor you saw, special cable tv channel he was talking about was c-span. delivered gavel-to-gavel coverage of every session and public affairs programming to fill out the rest of hours. in the niche world of cabled, c-span has been such a hit there are three of them. three different c-span channels if you can believe that. in 1984, c-span was five years old. cable television itself wasn't much older.