| Genre: | Talk show |
| Presenter: | Susan Swain |
| Country: | United States |
| Channel: | C-SPAN |
| Last Aired: | present |
| Related: | Booknotes |
Q&A is an American television series on the C-SPAN network. Each Q&A episode is a one-hour formal face-to-face interview with a notable person, originally hosted by C-SPAN founder Brian Lamb and currently hosted by co-CEO Susan Swain.[1] Typical guests on the show include journalists, politicians, authors, doctors and other public figures. C-SPAN’s criteria for guests is that they have a personal story and can teach the viewer something.[1]
Q&A airs on Sunday nights[2] at 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. Eastern Time,[3] and the C-SPAN website features videos and transcripts of all past interviews.[2]
Q&A premiered on Sunday, December 12, 2004. It replaced the program Booknotes, which Brian Lamb had hosted for 15 years previously. Whereas Booknotes featured interviews only with published authors,[1] [4] the concept for Q&A as developed by Lamb was to interview noteworthy individuals from diverse backgrounds and learn about their achievements.[1]
The program's interviews are normally recorded in the studio space previously used for Booknotes, however other locations have been used. The first episode of Q&A was taped in the Knowledge Is Power Program Academy’s music hall,[1] and an interview with President George W. Bush was recorded in the White House Map Room.[5]
The first four guests to appear on Q&A were co-founder of the Knowledge Is Power Program Dave Levin,[1] Fox News president Roger Ailes, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute president Shirley Ann Jackson.[6] Guests since then have included former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee,[7] former CIA Director Michael V. Hayden,[8] President Bush in a shorter, 23-minute interview,[5] and Orlando Magic director of player development and founder of Democracy Matters, Adonal Foyle.[9] The American Historical Association has identified interviews with historians David M. Kennedy, Michael Korda, Andrew Ferguson and David McCullough, as well as Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales as "particularly interesting".[2]