C-SPAN is keeping track of the Electoral College votes in the states Monday (Dec. 14). 

A number of states are streaming the proceedings and C-SPAN says it is featuring eight or nine such public votes on its website as well as on the cable network.

A C-SPAN spokesperson said it was looking to provide some insight into the process and made its decision on which state votes to stream/air based on a balanced cross-section of votes of interest as well as its resources, including the number of servers to host the streams.

At press time, Indiana's vote was just wrapping up from the House Chamber in Indianapolis and Delaware was next up in the C-SPAN rotation. That will be followed by coverage of votes in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Texas.

The votes are happening throughout the day, with some streamed and others not.

Other news networks, including CNN, have also been covering the states when the electors are in action.

C-SPAN will also cover President-elect Joe Biden's 8 p.m. speech, at the conclusion of the Electoral College vote, to talk about the results, which are expected to be 306 votes for Biden to 232 for President Trump.

According to C-SPAN, it had already planned an 8 p.m. special program recapping the day's voting with highlights, a host and guest calls, which will now lead off with the Biden speech.

President Trump continues to dispute the election, saying it was "rigged" and "stolen," though not offering evidence to convince any one of multiple courts in which his campaign has filed challenges.

President Donald Trump's twitter attack on C-SPAN's Steve Scully as a "never Trumper" took on new life after a tweet from Scully's Twitter account appeared to seek guidance from Trump's former advisor Steve Scaramucci on whether he should respond to the President's tweet.

C-SPAN said the tweet seeking Scaramucci's advice was not from Scully, but instead the result of a hacked account.

Scully was to moderate the second presidential debate Oct. 15, but Trump pulled out after the Commission on Presidential Debates decided it should be a virtual debate due to the President's COVID-19. Democratic candidate Joe Biden has since said he would participate in an ABC town hall Oct. 15, moderated by George Stephanopoulos.

"Steve Scully, the second Debate Moderator, is a Never Trumper, just like the son of the great Mike Wallace. Fix!!!," the President tweeted. 

That was a reference to Chris Wallace, who moderated the first debate. Trump suggested he was debating both Wallace and Biden after the moderator asked him some tough questions and tried to keep him from talking over the former Vice President.

Trump's tweet came after a tweet from Scully's account Thursday night -- which C-SPAN has since claimed was not from Scully -- that appeared to be a direct tweet to Scaramucci asking him whether Scully should respond to the Trump attack.

"Last night a tweet from Steve Scully, C-SPAN's political editor, appeared on his timeline communicating with Anthony Scaramucci. Steve Scully did not originate the tweet and believes his account has been hacked. The Commission on Presidential Debates has stated publicly that the tweet was not sent by Scully himself and is investigating with the help of authorities."

While the C-SPAN tweet drew many replies, mostly skeptical of the hack claim, Washington Post political columnist Karen Tumulty tweeted praise for Scully's fairness as a journalist.

The Commission on Presidential Debates has decided the second of three presidential debates is going to be virtual after President Trump tested positive for COVID-19 and was briefly hospitalized, but in response the President told Fox Business he would not participate.

The debate was to have been Oct. 15 at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami, Fla., a state with the third-most COVID-19 cases in the country, and was to be moderated by CNN's Steve Scully.

"I'm not going to do a virtual debate," he told Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo. "I'm not going to waste my time on a virtual debate; that's not what debating is all about. You sit behind a computer and do a debate; it's ridiculous," he  He also said CNN's Scully was a "never Trumper." The President also said the commission and the media were trying to protect Biden.

Trump told Bartiromo he was feeling better and would even like to do a rally.

Media analyst Craig Moffett says that while the expectation, as recently as a year ago, was that the virtual MVPDs--YouTube TV, Hulu Live--were what was driving the migration from traditional linear TV, today that cord-cutting thesis was probably wrong and that the real driver has turned out to be defecting from live TV altogether.  

"The rate of decline has dramatically accelerated for traditional TV, he told C-SPAN in an interview for its Communicators series. He said the new normal for the rate of decline for traditional systems is probably 5% a year, which he called an "extraordinarily rapid decline for something that has been around as long as traditional pay TV distribution. 

He said he thought what they were seeing was the "bifurcation" between entertainment and sports, with sports rights, since sports have to be live and have fixed costs that will require the rights fees to climb as subs decline. 

He said that makes the system increasingly punitive for consumers who don't watch sports but are paying for them anyway, a point Discovery CEO David Zaslav was making at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia Conference in New York earlier this week. 

Moffett said entertainment-only consumers will start saying they don't need live TV anymore and rely on subscription video on demand like Netflix or Disney + or HBO Max. 

He says the financial numbers are just starting to reflect that. He says that will give them staying power that traditional players like Direct TV Now don't have. He says while traditional players are forced to raise prices and see their growth slow, while edge players like Google, Amazon and Apple are "playing something of a different game" and afford to subsidize the business much longer. 

That could leave traditional players watching their competitive position "fall away" As the Google's of the world lose money on the content but make money on the ads in their shows, but also on the data they collect about what people are watching.  

Moffett said the current bundle is fraying but that part of the reason that virtual MVPDs are struggling is because they wind up with bloated bundles just like the traditional MVPDs because as with traditional, content companies are telling the new players they "can't get the [must-have] good without taking the bad." 

Moffett ultimately sees a world of skinny bundles of sports and news, with entertainment on demand.  

Asked to handicap the T-Mobile-Sprint merger's chances in the suit filed by state AG's, Moffett said he thought the states had a better chance at blocking the deal than some were giving it. Still under 50%, but a decent chance. 

He pointed out that the Justice Department initially rejected the spin-off of Boost Mobile as a deal-maker, but a couple months later essentially did so with a few things added for "optics."

Moffett's interview airs on C-SPAN Saturday, Sept. 21, at 6:30 p.m. ET and re-airs Monday, Sept. 23 on C-SPAN2 on the 8's--8 a.m. and 8 p.m. ET.

CSPAN is the suit of public service networks funded by the cable industry.

C-SPAN is launching a beta test of its migration of live online feeds of its TV channels -- C-SPANs 1, 2 and 3 -- to an authentication model starting today (July 28), employing the TV Everywhere model of the multichannel video programming distributors that support the public-affairs programmer.

C-SPAN added a note on its Web site that "Online access to these three TV channels will soon require registration. Learn more." Authentication, or verification, won't be required right away, but will be an option so folks can start getting used to the idea and be signed-up and ready for the switch.

The "soon" is sometime in late summer. The "more" is that "online, live access to C-SPAN's three television channels will be available only to verified customers of C-SPAN's cable and satellite TV affiliates," says Susan Swain, C-SPAN co-CEO in a video explaining the change. (http://www.c-span.org/about/TVeverywhere/).

C-SPAN will continue to provide on the Web site live coverage, free, ad-free, and in the clear of House and Senate floor proceedings, committee meetings, White House press conferences, the courts, elections, and coverage of agency proceedings -- FCC meetings, for example -- and other government activities.

In addition, C-SPAN-produced programing on those TV channels will also be available to all Web users on demand in the C-SPAN video library of over 200,000 hours of content and growing. Essentially all the programming will still be available free online to everyone, just not aggregated in the form of the live, linear TV channels.

What is beginning Monday is that those who want to stream the live feeds of the TV channels will be asked to enter their cable or satellite provider credentials to access that stream. For the transition period, until later in the summer, the channels will still be available even without that sign-in, but authenticated users will get it at a better bit rate as C-SPAN transitions those channels.

"We wanted to increase the bit rate for the TV channels so that those authenticated viewers could have a more TV-like experience," said co-CEO Rob Kennedy, while continuing to stream the channels in parallel at the current bit rate during the transition, which will allow those users time to transition, he added.

And why authenticate? Swain points out that while C-SPAN covers the government, it is not government-sponsored. It is a private nonprofit whose ability to deliver that content depends on license fees from its cable and satellite affiliate partners.

"Reserving online access to our three television channels to cable and satellite customers reflects the dynamic changes you can see going on in video distribution today," she says, and important to preserving the business model for the future.

"Requiring verification for the live feeds of our three cable channels reserves these channels for customers who are supporting them through their monthly cable or satellite bills," says the Web site in an FAQ. "Over time, this policy will enhance what we can provide the general public overall, and helps preserve the important public service mission which guides all C-SPAN operations."