I'm basing it on when I flip the channels by. It seems that they are always showing reruns of x42 speaking somewhere, the dems caucuses and groups speeches, etc. I literally NEVER see Ari Fleischer and his press briefings, rarely President Bush and his speeches. It has been shown that C-Span covered x42's speeches, all of them in various cities. Now, they can't be bothered with President Bush unless he is in Washington, DC. Their excuse is that they don't have the capabilities to go on the road, but that was proven false by all the coverage of x42 when he was in power while prez.
OTOH, C-Span does show the Senate and Congress sessions in their entirety. The SOTU was shown on C-Span without irritating commentary. I think that cable companies are obligated to carry C-Span, so no matter what package you receive, you will get C-Span. And I do like Book TV, which is C-Span2 on the weekends. Lots of interviews with non-fiction authors.
So some of my complaints may just be perception, but I don't think so. I finally wrote to C-Span to complain, they were showing Daschle's press conferences 3 and 4 times a day (while he was the illegal majority leader), and would never run the press conferences more than once, and would cut away a lot.
C-Span is definitely not a reason to get any sort of cable or dish package I have concluded from your comments. Seems there's really not much reason to get it.
At dinnertime we discussed it and the only one who really wants to go for it is my oldest daughter who says she's the only one in her class who doesn't get cable. But she's also about the best read kid in her class, I'm sure.
Another reason just came to me. Bill O'Reilly comes on at 10 PM here on the radio station we listen to most of the day. I CAN NOT STAND BILL O'REILLY! When he comes on, the radio gets turned off or switched to another station. If we had Fox News, there would be at least one hour I would never want to watch it.