Public Broadcasting needs a new name
I saw a sign outside one of the meeting rooms at the Integrated Media Association’s conference on public broadcasting in Seattle last week. It read: “Public Broadcasting: Radio, Television, Internet.” We need to step away from that sign for a minute and ask “what’s wrong with this picture?”
What’s wrong is that the internet isn’t a form of broadcasting, and putting it in the same line with “other” broadcast models is suicidal in a Media 2.0 world. If public broadcasters are to be successful downstream, they’re going to have to see themselves as more than “just” broadcasters, and that takes a new way of thinking.
If not, they will become pure content companies, whose material will be used by others in the development of their own business models. This is a point a lot of local commercial media companies miss as well. Content may be “king,” but the number of players looking for content (web, mobile, on-demand, etc.) ought to make us stop and think that perhaps there’s something for us beyond just making content. Given the exploding creation of “content” from many sources, I’m not convinced we can make enough money (or raise enough money) to keep our own business models going unless we explore these new possibilities.
Public broadcasters believe their brand separates them from the masses and will protect them over the long haul. This is a fallacious belief, for broadcasting brands don’t necessarily transfer to the web, unless all you want to do is “broadcast.” That means you’re just a content company. I touched on the public broadcasting brand last year after another conference:
The Achilles’ Heel of Public Broadcasting is actually its core competency — trustworthy, quality programming. Those lofty attributes served it well in a Modernist, top-down world, especially when viewer choices were limited. PBS had the history, arts, documentary and education niches all to itself. Not so anymore, and the cry “but we offer such quality” falls on the deaf ears of a public that views such a claim with the same skepticism it does any other media claim these days. Quality is such a subjective term, especially in today’s marketplace. The inference I gathered from the people with whom I spoke was that quality to PBS — among other things — includes the filtering that only an educated elite can provide. I’m not trying to be unkind, but this is the impression one gets when the word is tossed around like an official mandate, a justification for all kinds of difficulties in a world of disruptive technologies and innovations.
The only way to properly view radio, television and the internet on the same line of an organizational chart is if there’s an entity above them calling the shots. This is why I recommend broadcasters start viewing themselves as multimedia companies, and even changing their names to help spread the message both internally and externally. The internet is NOT broadcasting, and the more we understand that, the quicker we’ll get on with business models that’ll meet our needs in a Media 2.0 world.
February 27th, 2006 at 4:08 pm
Fantastic, why don’t we encourage them to use advertisements as well. Hell, that’s the entreprenerial way. I’ve yet to see content in the blogosphere that comes close to what I hear on NPR daily. The suggestion that they become a "media" company (or PBS) is laughable. Raise it again when you’ve got Podcasts as good as Jim Lehrer News Hour. Thus far 90% of what I see is self-serving tripe. Am I looking in the wrong places? How can I tell?!! The only way the web rates these things is by general consensus. Sorry, I’m not interested in 10 million morons decide what I should read.
February 27th, 2006 at 5:23 pm
You’re going to have to enlighten me further, C., because I’ve no idea whatsoever how your rant relates to what I wrote.
February 27th, 2006 at 5:41 pm
As I’ve gotten more into RSS feeds and podcasts and fake TiVO (via bittorrent) and iPod playlists and recommended reading from Amazon, I am more and more in control of the media I consume and the time and place in which I consume it. I’ve gotten pickier and less patient. It has changed the way that I consume.
But I actually listen to more NPR and watch more PBS than ever before. I think that public broadcasters have the least to worry about. Quality does matter to some people, and I think that as long as those people are willing to support public broadcasting, it isn’t in any real danger.
February 27th, 2006 at 9:39 pm
"But I actually listen to more NPR and watch more PBS than ever before. I think that public broadcasters have the least to worry about. Quality does matter to some people, and I think that as long as those people are willing to support public broadcasting, it isn’t in any real danger."
Well, actually, it is. The long-term problem is that NPR’s relatively high quality (assuming it is high quality — something I don’t agree with but beside the point) is just that … relative. As the article notes, NPR and other public broadcasters have pretty much had certain areas to themselves. But in the last couple decades first with cable and then with the Internet, it no longer has those markets to themselves.
Moreover, many of its emerging competitors have higher quality because they focus more narrowly on one of those niche markets or another. Time was when I wanted decent science television programming, I’d have to turn to PBS. Now, I watch far more high quality science television programming than ever before, and almost none of it is from PBS.
Now, I increasingly get some segments of my science-based video watching from the Internet through podcasts and similar vehicles.
If you look at another essay here, you’ll get an idea of the bigger problem for PBS and other broadcasters (and I thought the paper below was spot on):
http://donatacom.com/papers/pomo49.htm