mtoadvine@breezenewspapers.com

It looked like a major news event was about to take place when C-Span’s 100-foot long news bus pulled up to Lehigh Senior High School last week.

But it was an educational and promotional trip and some 200 students got a chance to go inside the bus and see all the electronics and TV screens, where many national news makers have been interviewed and televised across the nation.

For Anna-Sheree Victor, a 10th grader at Lehigh Senior High School, it was a chance of a lifetime.

“I love watching C-Span when I’m home. Our family keeps up with what’s going on nationally and during the campaigns we always looked at C-Span 1 or C-Span-2,” Victor said. She’s the daughter of Winsome and Russell Victor of Lehigh.

That’s the kind of words Jeremy Art and Steve Devoney want to hear. Both live near the Washington, D.C. area and both are taking the bus to different schools and organizations in Florida this month to talk about and to show the inside studios of the C-Span bus.

The bus is being sponsored by Comcast, the area’s local cable television company, and these events, in partnership with Comcast, are part of the bus’s inaugural “Road to the White House” tour, named after C-Span’s renowned political program that marks its 20th year on the air in 2008. Highlighting C-Span’s stops is the presentation of the 2008 StudentCam documentary competition.

Small groups of social studies and history students toured the bus at a time to hear Art explain the work of C-Span.

“How many of you have ever heard of C-Span?” he asked. Several hands went up.

“We’re here today to show you our C-Span bus which is actually a TV production facility and to tell you a little bit about C-Span, what we do and who pays for our service,” Art said.

He showed them the camera in the“studio” bus and the many monitors and the places where many national news makers have sat while being interviewed. Then for the fun of it, on a large TV screen, he flashed the photos in mini seconds of the many who have been interviewed by C-Span over the years and then asked the students if they could name four. One student raised her hand and shouted out four names in rapid succession.

Art noted that C-Span has no advertising and the only sponsors are the American public through the Congress of the U.S.

“Every time your parents pay their cable bill, five cents goes to support C-Span,” he said.

He explained that C-Span began with a daily coverage from gavel to gavel of the House of Representatives. Then later, C-Span 2 was added to cover the U.S. Senate the same way.

The bus was used during the recent campaign as it traveled from state to state for many of the primary elections, he said. The bus can link up to the studios of C-Span in Washington; however, if the bus was on a new mission, there would also be a satellite truck with it.

Lehigh Senior High School student Anna-Sheree Victor, who said earlier her family is a frequent watcher of C-Span, said she always wants to know what is going on.

“We like it because when they show a speech made by someone, they show the whole speech,” she said.

On the major TV networks, often the stations break away in the middle of speeches for commercials.

“We don’t have any commercials … the people pay for us for what we do,” said Art.

Victor takes several AP courses preparing her for college. She believes she wants to get into the medical profession, but is not sure yet what she wants to do for sure.

Accompanying art on the current educational tour of the bus is Steve Devoney, a media specialist. He said he believed they would be traveling to schools in the Orlando area this week. They visited several schools in Lee County last week.

Greg Bergamasco, an assistant principal at Lehigh Senior High School, said he thought he tour of the bus was worthwhile for many of the school’s students.

The bus, according to the two men who brought it here, is the same size as a Greyhound bus, but filled with electronics and TV gear, rather than passenger seats. Art said the bus and its equipment was worth more than a million dollars.

C-Span’s national student documentary competition, StudentCam, is now in its fifth year and invites all middle school students (grades 6-8) and high school students (grades 9-12) to produce a five to eight- minute documentary focusing on the topic: “A message to the new president: What is the most urgent issue for the new president to address after taking office, and why?”

This year’s competition has a new feature that allows contestants to upload their video directly to www.studentcam.org. The deadline for entries is 5 p.m (ET), Inauguration Day, Tuesday, January 20, 2009. Winners will be announced on March 10, 2009. A total of $50,000 will be awarded in prizes, which includes 75 student awards and 11 teacher awards. Complete details are available at the competition’s web site, mentioned above.

Comcast of Southwest Florida serves more than 350,000 households in Collier, Lee, Glades, Hendry and Charlotte counties. Employing more nearly 800 people, Comcast’s main office is located in Ft. Myers on Daniels Parkway.