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Byline: Tom Nolan Thomas (Tom) Nolan (27th July 1921 – 17th August 1992) is a former Irish Fianna Fáil politician.

Tom Nolan was born in Cappawater, Myshall, County Carlow in 1921.
 Special to the Daily News

``All Books, All Weekend, Every Weekend'': That's the wonderfully self-explanatory slogan of Book TV, the brand-new ``network within a network,'' debuting this weekend on C-SPAN2, the cable industry-funded public-service channel that on weekdays covers the U.S. Senate.

Book TV on C-SPAN2 - a 48-hour feast of features on books, authors, bookstores, libraries and the publishing industry - springs from the 10 hours of ``About Books'' weekend programming C-SPAN2 launched in 1996, much as ``About Books'' was an outgrowth of parent network C-SPAN's popular Sunday night Sunday Night, later named Michelob Presents Night Music, was an NBC late-night television show which aired for two seasons between 1988 and 1990 as a showcase for jazz and eclectic musical artists.  ``Booknotes'' author interview series. Without a doubt, C-SPAN2's Book TV represents the most ambitious commitment to the printed word in the history of television - commercial, public or cable.

Each weekend biblio-binge will have regularly scheduled segments on new books of history (5 p.m. Saturdays, repeated at 8 p.m.) and biography (9 a.m. Sundays, repeated at 3 and 9 p.m.) and interviews with publishing executives (6 a.m. and 11 p.m. Saturdays). There will also be weekly reports on children's nonfiction books (noon Saturdays, 7 a.m. Sundays) and encore showings of past ``Booknotes'' episodes (5 a.m. and 4 p.m. Saturdays), and Internet browsers can find detailed scheduling information, as well as an abundance of other interesting book-related matter, at Book TV's www.booktv.org Web site.

Look for the yellow bus

Live programming will be a frequent part of Book TV's mix, with C-SPAN's big yellow school buses (newly repainted with Book TV markings), making stops at such events as Manhattan's New York New York, state, United States
New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of
 Is Book Country street fair in September and the Southern Festival of the Book in Nashville in October.

A highlight of Book TV's debut weekend will be a five-hour live tour of the Library of Congress, which promises glimpses into rarely seen corners of ``the largest repository of printed material in the world.'' This visit, which will include viewer calls, will start at 10 a.m. Sunday and be repeated at 4 p.m.

Book TV will, for the most part, feature nonfiction works and writers. ``This is a nonfiction network,'' says C-SPAN chairman and CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board.  Brian Lamb Brian Patrick Lamb (born October 9, 1941) helped found the C-SPAN television network in the United States in 1979, and has been its chief executive officer since its founding. , ``dealing with public policy and politics and all that. We're not going to ignore fiction, but we're going to be careful not to get too far away from what our mission is. Some people don't even think Book TV is our mission. But what we've tried to convince people of is that books and magazines and newspapers are very much a part of the whole apparatus in this country to discuss public policy. So it's gotta be connected in some way or another, and we're probably stretching it about as far as we can.''

The first chapter

The CSPAN CSPAN Cable Satellite Public Affairs Network  networks' expanding involvement with literature began simply enough in 1988, with Lamb interviewing author Neil Sheehan Cornelius Mahoney "Neil" Sheehan (born October 27, 1936 in Holyoke, Massachusetts) is an American journalist.

As a reporter for The New York Times in 1971, Sheehan obtained the classified Pentagon Papers from Daniel Ellsberg.
 about his book, ``A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann John Paul Vann (July 2, 1924 – June 9, 1972) was a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army, later retired, who became well-known for his role in the Vietnam War. Early life
Vann was born in Norfolk, Virginia, and grew up in near-poverty.
 and America in Vietnam.'' That well-received broadcast led to the weekly ``Booknotes'' series, which will soon celebrate its 10th anniversary. Last year, Times Books (a division of Random House) published ``Booknotes: America's Finest Authors on Reading, Writing and the Power of Ideas,'' a Lamb-edited volume of interviews culled from the flagship show.

The good response to that book confirmed the networks' chairman in his belief there was a viable television audience for biblio-programming. ``It went through seven printings,'' Lamb says. ``We sold approximately 35,000 hardback copies. The paperback is out in its second printing, and there are over 25,000 copies in the stores. That's been a financial success for Random House and Times Books.'' (All of Lamb and C-SPAN's profits from the book go to the networks' educational foundation.) A second ``Booknotes'' collection will be published in March 1999. ``We've gotten a lot of attention around the country,'' Lamb says. ``It's hyped the interest in books; the more we did, the more people seemed interested.''

Risky business?

Still, people supposedly knowledgeable about TV and its viewers are quick to glibly glib  
adj. glib·ber, glib·best
1.
a. Performed with a natural, offhand ease: glib conversation.

b.
 state that the public doesn't want serious, in-depth programming. Brian Lamb's experience runs counter to that received wisdom. ``I went to 37 cities on the `Booknotes' book tour,'' he recalls, ``and we would get anywhere from 125 to 500 people in a bookstore on a given night to talk about `Booknotes.' If I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn't have believed it.''

That sort of demonstrable de·mon·stra·ble  
adj.
1. Capable of being demonstrated or proved: demonstrable truths.

2. Obvious or apparent: demonstrable lies.
 support helped Lamb and company decide to go all weekend with book coverage on C-SPAN2. ``If you listened to those that are only looking for Looking for

In the context of general equities, this describing a buy interest in which a dealer is asked to offer stock, often involving a capital commitment. Antithesis of in touch with.
 numbers - and the kind of numbers that television's used to,'' Lamb admits, ``we would never try this. But, we have the fortunate opportunity of not being tied to numbers, so we're the logical place. And if it doesn't work here, I doubt if it will work anywhere.''

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: Authors David Halberstam This article is about the author and journalist. For the radio sports announcer and executive, see David J. Halberstam.

David Halberstam (April 10 1934 – April 23 2007) was an American Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author known for his early work on the
, left, Peggy Noonan and Shelby Foote Shelby Dade Foote, Jr. (November 17 1916 – June 27 2005) was an American novelist and a noted historian of the American Civil War. With geographic and cultural roots in the Mississippi Delta alluvium, Foote's life and writing paralleled the radical shift from the agrarian  discuss their writing styles during a Book TV segment in the Great Hall of the Library of Congress. Book TV runs weekends on C-SPAN2.
COPYRIGHT 1998 Daily News
No portion of this article can be reproduced without the express written permission from the copyright holder.
Copyright 1998, Gale Group. All rights reserved. Gale Group is a Thomson Corporation Company.

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Title Annotation:VIEWPOINT
Publication:Daily News (Los Angeles, CA)
Date:Sep 13, 1998
Words:845
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