Seize the Day

I wrote the following in response to the request from the Station Resource Group (SRG) below. It synthesizes several years of thinking and discussion about these topics with other members of the Public Service Publisher group, especially Dennis Haarsager. All these issues and more are sure to be discussed at the upcoming IMA Conference in Boston Feb. 20-24.

Comments are welcome and encouraged.

Thanks :: SH

On Feb 12, 2007, at 12:44 PM, Terry Clifford wrote:

Later this week, about fourteen executives from public radio programming
and distribution organizations and major content-producing stations will
gather to discuss the feasibility of a shared digital distribution
infrastructure. 

The concept has been around for some time, and the subject has been a
hot topic for about a year or so.

We would appreciate getting your most recent thinking on this.  Nothing
long - the equivalent of a few paragraphs.  It doesn't need to be a
comprehensive piece - just the most recent bullet points that come to
the forefront for you.  Especially given the long-term efforts all of
you have made to contribute to this subject.

We're also just asking for comments that reflect your own personal
thinking. 

Thanks in advance.

Terry Clifford
Station Resource Group
6935 Laurel Avenue #202
Takoma Park, MD 20912
301.270.2617
301.270.2618 (fax)

Colleagues:

Thank you for inviting my comments on this issue. I'm very gratified to see serious meetings like this one happening at last. It means we are past the denial stage and ready to plan for change.

A shared infrastructure for digital distribution of public radio programming is a necessary technical component of what needs to be done, but fails to frame the problem broadly enough. Distribution is the easy part. Business and policy issues are more difficult, and more critical to success.

What we need is a comprehensive online service platform that joins together producers (independent, station and network-based), stations, national program distributors, a new class of public service web affiliates, and the public -- for the mutual benefit of all participants.

What I'm suggesting is not some nebulous "vision" but a rational, practical, co-operative method of expanding and modernizing the historic mission of public service broadcasting, while fully embracing the new possibilities offered by online delivery.

If the effort you are meeting to plan falls short of this — or worse, is designed only to advance the interests of the current system stakeholders — I believe it will fail, not only to protect the current franchises, but to gain critical mass.

Public broadcasting can no longer trade on spectrum scarcity and its former monopoly on public service programming in the abundance economy of the web: it must create a world class, competitive service offering based on its mission, values and content.

From a business perspective, there is a one-time opportunity to substantially increase the pathetic 9% level of voluntary listener support now considered normal via an integrated national + local subscription offering, along with a much expanded range of free programming. To be successful, it must offer an overwhelming user value proposition.

To achieve this, the core business relationships between the existing stakeholders must evolve and change. The relative percentages of total system income from tax, grant, underwriter, and listener funding must also change.

Developing a powerful new online subscription incentive will strengthen the system at its core relationship: between publc service media providers and the public. It will provide the only realistic source of new income, at levels that are potentially revolutionary. Only 2 million new subscribers could provide over $200 Million yearly — the equivalent of a Kroc gift every year.

It will also enhance the value of investment in the system by institutional funders. With government funding a political crap shoot, we should not depend on it. Enhanced membership incentives allow us to insulate ourselves against losing it completely.

DESIGN A SERVICE

It all comes down to creating practical services.

To paraphrase a computer industry maxim ("Real men ship.") : 
"Real service providers create services."

The place to start is by specifying the levels and types of new services to be offered to the public and to affiliates — services that go far beyond the embarrassing, chaotic mess of balkanized web sites, partial and incompatible services we see today.

In its place should be an integrated platform with an enterprise class infrastructure that supports:

1.    COMPREHENSIVE DIGITAL DELIVERY (streams and downloads) of an expanded array of programming and archival content through station web sites and large national portal sites, including NPR.org, Yahoo, Google, AOL, MSN, et al, a new class of non-commercial public service web affiliates, and eventually, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like Comcast who offer content bundling incentives to their customers.

2.    NATIONAL MEMBERSHIP for end users, promoted and sold by stations as well as the national portals. The national membership gives listeners access to an expanded content offering, archives and special services. Income would be shared by participants via an equitable system of revenue splits, commissions, royalties and fees, to incentivise all participants. The challenge of harmonizing local and national memberships must be met on both technical and policy levels.

3.    TIERED SERVICE OFFERINGS: including free on-air and online, selective paid access, and subscription/national membership.

4.    USER ACCOUNTS: the system must scale to support tens of millions of active users as well as tens of thousands of suppliers, affiliates, underwriters and copyright owners, and support comprehensive personal profiles and preferences. The days of a 91% anonymous audience are over: a public radio membership should signify common values and willing engagement with a trusted service of incontestable value.

5.    EASY CUSTOMIZATION to allow stations of all sizes to expand their traditional editorial and local service roles without having to achieve full web development competencies. The same system would allow web-only affiliates to create custom service offerings:  essentially, a much expanded syndication system for public service audio content.

6.    INTEGRATED NATIONAL UNDERWRITING opportunities across the entire system, with a central sales office and links to online advertising networks like Google where appropriate. Many of the smaller advertisers that Google enables are a natural fit on a public service platform. National underwriting income would be shared.

7.    UNIFIED PROMOTION AND MARKETING: an integrated service platform is a vehicle that can lift all boats, but to do this the system must agree on common elements of branding, language and service offerings for the benefit of all supply-side participants.

The unique value propositions underlying this offering are the public service mission, programming quality standards, and the goodwill and support the system has earned in the last 60 years. If we do not effectively leverage these values, Yahoo, Google, Real Networks, Apple, Microsoft and others will create far broader digital distribution services on their own terms, and public service producers seeking national and international audiences — including NPR — ultimately will have no choice but to join them.

In the wise words of Mike Homer of Open Media Network: "there is no reason why public broadcasting should give up a significant portion of its income from users to any other service provider." Amazingly, Mike has already financed the development of a significant portion of the necessary technical infrastructure to deliver these services with OMN, and has offered it to the system for free. If we don't take him up on the offer, OMN will become another competitor.

WHAT IF WE DON'T?

If we don't agree to work together to seize this opportunity with meaningful cooperative action, some of the broad consequences are already predictable:

• a slow decline in system revenues as new competitors arrive that will force consolidation of the weaker stations into regional networks at the expense of true local service

• loss of hundreds of millions in potential new income per year at the expense of system independence from political and corporate influence

• relegation to 'content vendor' status in the digital media ecology of the near future.

This is the turning point. We seize the day...or we suffer the consequences.

:: Stephen Hill

Comments

[John Proffitt]

I'm skeptical that the traditional players understand what you're proposing here -- it's a big idea, and one that jettisons decades of learned behaviors in favor of new ones not yet practiced by many in the field.

But let's be generous for a moment and say that the players understand the tectonic media/relationship shift in progress, and they agree with your proposal/idea/concept pretty much start to finish.

In your estimation, what are the odds that, by 2017, we will see a version of this model emerge, with the traditional public broadcasting players (NPR, PBS, APM, PRI, APT, etc.) joining in?

Would a new generation of managers have to come to rise to the top before this could happen?

I'm genuinely interested in your answer here, given your history with and knowledge of the public broadcasting world.

[Stephen Hill]

John,

If most of the executives that set policy at "the traditional players" didn't understand what I'm proposing, I wouldn't be at all surprised. In that regard they would be the same as executives at virtually every mainstream media company in music, film and publishing who, despite ten years of talk and mountains of evidence that increase daily — still don't "get" the dimensions of the disruption that the Internet is administering to their 20th century business models.

To answer your question: setting the timeline out ten years to 2017 makes no sense. We're on Internet Time now: what used to happen in ten years takes 18-24 months. If you doubt this, consider where Internet media was in 1997 vs. now: audio streaming barely working, video unwatchable, pre-Napster and MP3.com, pre-Google, pre-blogging, pre-YouTube and MySpace etc. — you can infer the scope of what is likely to happen in ten years time. And the rate of change is still accelerating.

I will say flatly that if the system does not act together with a meaningful public announcement and at least a beta launch of a new integrated service by the end of 2008, the window of opportunity will effectively close for Public Radio to achieve the benefits I'm describing.

That's about two years, which is why I say that the turning point is now.

If the system cannot muster the wisdom and the will to reform itself, life will go on in the sense that stations will continue to operate while spinning down, but the Internet digital media juggernaut will pass it by along with the vast majority of the young, educated audience.

The business opportunity I've described above to build a national subscription base to support the mission of the system will be lost forever.

More than it already is, it will be every producer and organization for themselves, with a core of shared program brands in common, but not exclusive to this network. That's the "content vendor status in the digital media ecology" I mentioned above.

We don't have time to wait for a new generation of managers; the value of a "radio" franchise is eroding daily under the weight of new Internet delivered multi-media services, and public radio is on the road to becoming a ghetto populated largely by aging boomers, just as public television (children's programming excepted) is now.

I did allude to some evidence that attitudes toward change are starting to open up, in the form high level collaborative projects like DDC group, and high-level meetings between significant players like the one SRG organized last week (for which I wrote this post) and the two day "CEO" meeting Mark Fuerst has organized just prior to this year's IMA Conference.

I agree, it's a long jump from consideration of change to actually doing it. But clearly, if we don't disrupt ourselves, others will.

:: SH

[John Proffitt]

Just one last note on the timeline/speed issue you bring up in your response...

I picked the 10-year window pretty much arbitrarily, not because I think it will take 10 years to effect considerable change or create this new public media marketplace. Being more of an Internet/IT practitioner myself, I completely understand your stance on the need for speed.

However, there's one wrinkle to these calcuations that makes the clock run a bit slower than Internet time, at least in my estimation. Basically, I think the content generated in the public radio world is not easily replicated and is not really available from other sources in siginificant quantity or quality.

Today, I don't know where I could turn for the news/talk programming put out by the likes of NPR/PRI/APM and the major producing stations and some local stations. Music programming is under far more threat because it's relatively cheap/easy/fast to put together a music service online. But original news content with real weight and public trust is hard to create. Therefore, I think the countdown clock runs a little slower than it does for Yahoo! or Google or Microsoft. Wouldn't it take someone 10 years to build -- from scratch -- a public media news service to rival the likes of NPR?

That said, I'm still on board with your contention that the clock is running and running fast, and I think a late 2008 launch would be far superior to a late 2012 launch!

[Stephen Hill]

I can't disagree with any of that, as long as it is understood that the kind of content you mention — serious news and public affairs talk programming — was effectively ceded to NPR and the public radio business because it did not meet the cost/benefit calculations of commercial radio.

However, that is not necessarily true online, especially when you get beyond the Beltway and national political reporting. Already the blogosphere has become a force for breaking news and investigative content, and the same can happen for audio content once enough reliable individual voices, sites, and services are established. Remember that the distribution that took public radio 25 years to create is already there, in a far superior mechanism with search, links, archives and direct delivery anywhere.

I would point to independent efforts like Amy Goodman's "Democracy Now" as early examples that will not be constrained or limited by the fact that they happen to be carried by a number of public stations.

I would also point to PRX and the various Podcast directories (including iTunes) already in existence which provide a superior means of finding, promoting and disseminating serious audio productions than the public broadcast system itself provides.

Finally I would point out that hard news and public affairs is about the only category that meets the "hard to duplicate" test, and many other worthwhile genres of produced audio programming have been effectively purged from the public radio airwaves over the last 20 years, including poetry, drama, speeches, audio art, documentaries with non-news subject matter, and now, increasingly, music programming.

It could be a very long list, and when you combine it with various types of niche audio content like professional conferences and meetings, academic and educational content and the like, there is enough "public service audio" content available RIGHT NOW to create a very compelling new aggregation that would be worth a subscription for those who valued it. And this says nothing about the individual creativity that has been unleashed by cheap audio tools and open publishing online via podcasting and the like. Who knows what will emerge from that?

My point is that if we don't expand the definition of our content (as Dennis Haarsager has argued very convincingly) and pull it into our orbit — others will, and we will lose the opportunity to strengthen our mission and our business.

People like Doug Kay of Conversations Network are already doing this, but it can be developed far beyond this. I argue that such an offering will be strongest when combined with existing "blue chip" program brands, rather than allowed to atomize or be aggregated by other entities, like (for example) OMN.

:: SH