Where now for pubradio's push to engage new listeners?

[Karen Everhart]

As pubradio research/marketer John Sutton pointed out on his blog this weekend, CPB and other funders invested millions in NPR's Day to Day and APM's Weekend America, just two of the public radio shows that have been canceled this year. Neither was able to attract big enough audiences (and the underwriting revenues that come with them) to cover their production costs.

Now CPB is laying the ground work for a brand new public radio format targeting English-speaking Latinos in Los Angeles, and the Station Resource Group is finalizing its recommendations from a year-long project examining the best options to "Grow the Audience."

Meanwhile, pubradio traditionalists in Chicago have blamed Vocalo, an experimental radio/web hybrid service launched by Chicago Public Radio, for diverting needed resources from the city's flagship NPR News service.

The economic downturn is pushing public radio to retreat from shows that were once seen as key to its expansion.

Does public radio have the resources, wherewithal and know-how to attract and engage minorities and younger listeners while still serving its prized core audience? What will it take to succeed, given the lengthening list of recent failures?

Who will provide the leadership?

[Rob Paterson]

The alternative is death.

Now many stations are tiny and are already fully stretched - this is why I believe that there has to be a network project where the resources needed to help the small can be leveraged from the system and also from your many devoted supporters like me.

The resources are there - if the cause is a great one - that is why I ask that those who lead the larger parts of the system take up this role

[Randy Kinkel]

I don't think the alternative is death.

[Rob Paterson]

Many parts of society are going to die in the next 2 years.

How do you see the economy in 2009 - 2010?

What are the funding sources and how will they be affected?

What is your plan to get through this?

Does it involve trying harder or trying some thing that fits the new economic reality?

Why should Pub Radio and TV not be exposed to the same pressures as Newspapers, Commercial Media as well - after all many of your sources of funds are the same - Autos and Finance. Many of your members will be made unemployed - 10 million more homes will be subject to a shift in ARM loan costs. California and New York will be the biggest and the first of many states to hit the wall in 2009. CA will run out of cash in Feb 09. 40% of NYK's taxes come form Wall Street.

The world of credit default swaps etc is 20 times greater than the real economy - all of that hangs over the financial system - the financial crisis is only beginning I am afraid.

The dollar itself will come under great pressure too with the deficits and the bailouts and the reaction of China.

The Chinese economy will halt and the Government will have to cope with domestic unrest - I think they will have to sell US Treasuries - who knows what will happen to the Dollar but it wont be good.

Randy - our world is so hyper connected now. 20 years of living beyond our means is catching up - much of what we know and have taken for granted will die.

That is my point - if Pub Media stand for hope and for people being able to get some control locally - then we have a chance of not only surviving but thriving. If we continue as we are - we too will be victims.

By the way - I really appreciate you pushing me to be more explicit - I am finding our debate very grounding and you are right to push me like this. Thank you.

[Fred Milton Olsen]

The alternative is death in more ways than one, here.

As public radio comes more and more under the grip of corporations and the shadow government, "the decision-making demographic group" (that oidaR cilbuP claims as its own) can be suckered into illegal wars, supporting torture, domestic spying, muzzling the 1st Amendment, and going along with what are essentially multi-trillion-dollar thefts of taxpayer money.

When public radio can be made over into a bizarro-world parody of itself to be used to pull the wool over our eyes-- that has deadly consequences-- in the millions of people.

The shadow government puts money into media-- not just Rush Limbaugh. The real media prize is "the decision-making demographic group", and to get that prize, you have to control public radio. Now it's not public anymore... it's what I call oidaR cilbuP.

[John Sutton]

Rob -- You say the resources are there. COuld you please share with us how much the St. Louis community has invested in the KETC project? How much new money from foundations, business, and local government has come in? I know its not the only factor to consider, but I think its time to start putting numbers to the ideas.

[Rob Paterson]

John

Good question - we have not gone out yet to ask but we will will - what we needed first of all was to have the metrics showing that we had moved the needle - we do have these now. We had to show that this works.

Here is a link to the mortgage results

Here is what happened after the beta test with The War:
No miracle, no Mrs Kroc, no magic technology, no new hires but something remarkable a new relationship with St Louis. The hard metrics look like this

* A 43% increase year over year in prime time viewership in September. The average increase in September for the system was 11% based on the bump of The War

* This has held and KETC remains the #1 Public TV station in audience in Jan 08

* This gain has been achieved not by merely promoting The War but in engaging the community. Engaging them mainly on line and in person. KETC asked for and played back the War of St Louis. There were 47 million impressions of 2821 messages. 200 local stories online - 10 featurettes on air and other supporting material both on air and online.

* Of the 47 million impressions, 5.6 million were people aged 12-34 - Engagement like this has broken the youth barrier

The soft measures:

* A vet came into the station and asked to see Jack. He had come to give the station his medals as a token of his gratitude for being given the opportunity to tell his story before he died.

* KETC met with a doctor who is heading up the research effort to explore a very rare set of brain diseases. The hope was that KETC could give his work and his patients a larger voice - not just a promo but a voice. Amy Shaw found herself struggling to tell him what this meant, suddenly he broke into a smile - "You mean like you did for the war?"

* Many children of vets have told us that their fathers had never been able to speak a word about their war experience. But once KETC gave them a chance, a dam broke. Telling their story has shaken them to the core and changed their relationship to their families. In the twilight of their lives, they have been able to enlighten those they love the most with a glimpse of that part of their lives that they had had to keep hidden.

* There is a shift in the nature of the relationship. Channel 9 still broadcasts great TV but it now also gives voice to its people and so connects St Louis to itself and to the station. This voice is still small but it is growing fast as we will see later. The separation is closing. The goal of integration with the community is in sight.

* With integration with the community it serves, the economics change.

[Rob Paterson]

Here are the full details of the results so far in St Louis - John you are correct in wondering where the money is. This is of course the central question.

You doubt that this may work - so do many people - most cannot trust what they cannot prove. So we have gone to great lengths to establish that a station can make a difference by acting as a convener.

The attached PPT was developed by Dr Dhavan Shah of The University of Wisconsin who acted as our measurement guru.

[John Sutton]

Rob - Where did I say I doubted that a station can make a difference as a convener? I didn't say that. All I asked was for you to share with us the financial investments in KETC made by the local community because of the mortgage programming. That's very different than saying a station can't succeed as a convener. In fact, stations have been acting a converners for decades, KETC's results are impressive but its not the first time a station has moved the needle on an important community issue. So, I will ask again, please share with us the financial results.

[Rob Paterson]

As I said before we wanted to able to show that we can be effective first. 2009 is when we have to make this work financially as well. We have the viewership and we have the social movement and the social engagement. That is the first step.

Like many new things - we began with an idea - that relying on our programming and the old mantra of asking for financial support based on our being only a provider of good programming would not be enough.

We felt that a transactional relationship would not be strong enough - especially when good programming is now available from so many other sources at times not set by our schedule.

We felt that we were also exposed by the demographics of our viewers - 60 plus and we felt exposed by the ubiquity of the web and all that the web now means.

The "econolypse" is a new and powerful factor.

So what is before us is before all stations - TV and radio - what is a better way of being financially secure? Our hope is that we can find this support by strengthening our relationship with all parts of the community.

The structural failure of the economy is not just another worthy cause. It is becoming the central issue of our time.

Please let me ask you John - for I have been as open as I can be - what do you suggest is the best track for us all to go down?

[John Sutton]

Rob -- I think the first step is to avoid the sensationalism. Phrases such as "the alternative is death" don't add to the conversation and don't help build the Trusted Space you so strongly believe in. Radio and public radio have been declared dead many times over only to evolve into different services. That will happen again. Budgets change. Missions change.
Inistituations adapt. But its radio, not war or starvation. No one dies.

[Rob Paterson]

You are right - it is my nature maybe. My extreme language is rooted in my sense that there is no time. The tight coupling of our world is accelerating the problems that also reinforce each other

What I think is different John is that times are not normal. Maybe for the last 150 years or so the underlying ideas that made up our world have remained valid. We could allow for gradual change.

But right now this framework is shattered - maybe a bit like the middle ages at the end of feudalism and the central authority of the church? I think that we are at a bifurcation. The centralized top down machine model will indeed "die" in 2009. That by next Christmas - there may be 12-15% unemployment in the US. That the dollar may be in free fall and all the efforts at bailing out will be in ruins - the people's plight will be worse. That we will have lost confidence in the traditional authorities such as government at all levels. That many states will be in dire straits.

I am more than impatient because I fear that 2009 will be the year when the entire system will fall over. Radio is only a part of this - as are also newspapers. My hope is not only that pub radio and TV survive but that it can play a big part in filling in the gap that the traditional authorities will leave.

I feel that our only chance is a great decentralization of society and of all organizational models. Where each region starts the hard work of taking back power over the key areas of how life has to be lived. This implies local food systems, local energy systems and local financial systems where most of the control resides locally. This of course is the exact opposite of how life is lived today. Ironically it was always the dream of the founders of America.

So how to do this? Who can be the catalyst for such a shift? It will not be the leaders of the current system. Over time such a devolved system will likely appear. But can we accelerate this process?

Paradoxically Pub Radio and TV is a very devolved decentralized system. It might be the only platform able to take on this role. It is latently doing this but its full potential has not yet been harnessed.

So this is my context for the larger view is that Public Radio and TV can both "save" itself and also help mitigate much of what will happen if they change gears up from only content- very important still and always - to taking on the role of social and local convener.

My impatience and intemperate language comes from this perspective.

In 2009 many many institutions will die. I want Pub Radio and TV to live and to be able to help as they do.

[Karen Everhart]

I'm chiming in here to contribute some background to the discussion. Thanks to everyone for taking this up so vigorously.

The concept of local stations repositioning themselves as media centers that are more open and responsive to community needs has already been put into action in a handful of markets besides St. Louis, largely as efforts to forge digital service strategies for public TV stations.

Larry Grossman, a former president of PBS and NBC News, was a leading advocate for public TV to forge a “grand alliance” with other cultural institutions and create more robust, community-oriented content in the digital era. As a board member for Connecticut Public Television in the 1990s, he helped spearhead a foundation-backed project called “Mapping the Assets,” that resulted in content partnerships with other Connecticut nonprofits and institutions. The trade-offs involved in such relationships came under scrutiny a few years ago, when questions about the editorial integrity of CPTV productions surfaced in the Hartford Courant.

Twin Cities Public Television got a jump start with this new service model when it launched the Minnesota Channel on its second analog station, but to free up money to launch the service, TPT canceled its nightly news program. In 2005 WGBH created the Forum as a web-based collection of videotaped public lectures.

You'll see from the links above that we haven't reported on any of these services for a long time, and I can't tell you how they're doing in this environment. I recall that when Dennis Haarsager spoke at the NPR member's meeting in March, he talked about the Minnesota Channel as a service model for pubradio stations.

One would think that the decline of newspapers and other local media would provide an opening for pubcasters to move more aggressively in this direction, as KETC has done, but John is right to question where the money's gonna come from.

Rob keeps telling us that pubcasters have no time to lose in recasting their services to be more responsive to community needs--and pleading for someone at the network-level to take some leadership. It’s worth noting that in all of these cases, the leadership came from within the local station.