Longtime C-SPAN host Steve Scully leaving the network after three decades

Longtime C-SPAN host Steve Scully, who has been one of the faces of the network for more than three decades, is leaving next month.

“For 30 years, C-SPAN has given me a front row seat to history, allowing me to explain politics and public policy to our loyal audience,” Scully said in a statement.

A C-SPAN spokesperson said a replacement has not yet been named. Axios was first to report Scully’s departure.

Scully, a Pennsylvania native who got his start as an anchor on WSEE-TV in Erie in the early 1980s, has long hosted C-SPAN’s morning show Washington Journal. He was also elected to the Pennsylvania Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 2019.

Scully has led the network’s presidential election coverage since 1992 and has interviewed every president since Gerald Ford, including Donald Trump, who sat down to speak with the network back in 2019.

During the 2020 election, Scully was selected to moderate the second presidential debate but was temporarily suspended by C-SPAN after lying about getting hacked on Twitter. The second debate was ultimately canceled after Trump would not agree on a virtual format after contracting COVID-19.

After being labeled a “never Trumper” by Trump during the 2020 election, Scully wrote on Twitter: “@Scaramucci should I respond to Trump.” Scully initially said his account was hacked but later admitted he wrote the tweet, saying he had been frustrated by attacks directed at him and his family from right-wing media figures after it was announced he would moderate a presidential debate.

“These were both errors in judgment for which I am totally responsible for,” Scully said at the time. “I apologize.”

“We view October’s events as a singular episode in an otherwise successful 30-year C-SPAN career,” C-SPAN said in a statement to The Inquirer at the time.

Scully said he was leaving C-SPAN to join the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank that aims to combine ideas from Democrats and Republicans.

“If ever there was a time where all sides need to reach across the aisle, it is now,” Scully said.