Tag: public tv

Parting (cannon) shot at WNET

Wow. Just wow.

When WNET’s Sam Toperoff retires, he really retires. Something tells me CEO Shapiro is pissed.

A brief excerpt of Toperoff’s full goodbye letter:

On my commutes to work on the E and F lines and occasionally on the Number 7 train, I’d ask people if they watched PBS. Almost no one does. They said there was very little on the air that spoke to their lives. The New York public is not merely the “Upper” East and West sides. It is these “Others” too, millions of them. And during those rare times we do program for this other New York , we do it embarrassingly, in stilted, patronizing “other” fashion. In spite of my left-wing bona fides and my high falutin’ Doctoral degree, I see our general programming for the wider public as elitist and offensive in the extreme. … But of course, when stations run on very rich people’s and Corporate money, how could it be otherwise? And when the corporation is directed by those very clever and very ambitious fellows whose careers will float them to good places no matter what, what else could we reasonably expect?

Gawker has the complete letter — well worth a read. Beautifully written, despite the dark content.

Two comments from me:

  • I’d bet you real money that if you did a survey of employees at public radio and television stations across the country and got honest and accurate answers, you would find very little public television viewing. At one station I knew well, some employees who worked fervently every day to support public TV didn’t even own a TV themselves. Others just didn’t watch much TV of any kind, and if they did, public TV was a minor component of their viewing. I don’t fully understand why this is, but that’s been my experience to date. (If your experience is different, let me know!)
  • I haven’t had tons of exposure to Boards, but those with which I have had contact have been filled almost exclusively with what I call “Rich White Folk” — generally the political and financial power base of the community. This is a deliberate thing, mind you. It’s intended to increase the fundraising capacity of the organization, both by bringing in well-to-do donors and their friends, and by bringing in corporate dollars those people influence or control. Sadly, it also means “public” views and needs are not well-represented; the ages of the Board members often match or exceed public TV viewing demographics, creating major programming and public service blind spots.

I often wonder what happens next, especially with public TV. Toperoff’s letter portends a difficult future. Two questions:

  1. Does Toperoff’s experience sound familiar or alien to you?
  2. If leadership is lacking, how do we fix this situation?

When a PBS journalist attacks

NOTE: Updates added at the bottom of the post.

Late last week the host of a major PBS program took aim, in a pseudo-blog-post, at NYU journalism professor and innovator Jay Rosen because Rosen said he didn’t like that hosts’s program — a weekly talking-heads affair based out of Washington, DC.

I won’t link to the host or their complaint here because they didn’t bother to link to Rosen’s original piece in the Washington Post or his blog or his fascinating Twitter feed. And that host was deliberately ignorant of Rosen’s work, failing to do a shred of research. They didn’t even watch a video of Rosen appearing on PBS a little over a year ago.

But I will link to that insightful Jay Rosen appearance on PBS — with the now-retired Bill Moyers — in which he specifically critiqued the problem of Washington insider journalism, including the many insiders that appear on the outraged host’s program every week (I would have embedded the video here, but the video isn’t embeddable without stealing it). I encourage you to watch, despite the length, because Rosen shares a highly nuanced view of Washington journalists, politicians and their mutual interest in preserving status quo power.

In the reaction to Rosen’s appeal to put this particular insider show out to pasture, the host’s post (yeah, I know this is tedious, but I’m making a point) never referred to Rosen by name, never linked to anything he’s done, including the source article that ticked off the host in the first place, never addressed Rosen’s concerns and in fact reinforced his long-standing critique of beltway insider gamesmanship.

Only calling Rosen “the NYU professor” and failing to link to the source piece is an intentional slap in the face from an elder in what Rosen calls the “Church of the Savvy.” Dismissing his argument simply reinforces his point: that this program, the host and its guests are beltway insiders talking shop rather than helping the public hold politicians to account in meaningful, public-service ways. The host’s total mischaracterization of Rosen’s arguments also proves the prediction that beltway insiders reflexively dismiss outsiders, thus retaining their positions.

I defend anybody’s right to comment on the news of the day – whether it is Chris Matthews or Bill O’Reilly or Larry King or Jon Stewart. I even defend the NYU professor, however misguided he might be.

<sarcasm>How generous of you. Thank God you’re standing up for Jay Rosen’s free speech rights! And you know, you’re right… Bill O’Reilly and Jay Rosen are cut from the same cloth, aren’t they?</sarcasm>

In effect, the host played directly into Rosen’s analysis. But worse, the show’s audience has been denied a serious discussion about the mission of such programs. There may be valid reasons for having an insider show, perhaps as part of a larger programming strategy, but the claim that the show “saves marriages” (I’m not making that up — that’s in the reaction post) is utterly unserious and demonstrates the intense contempt this insider has for meaningful media criticism from a serious and even credentialed source.

What to do?

Look, I’m not on the “cancel this show” bandwagon. It makes viewers happy, which helps bring in the bucks. And for a talking head show, it’s a considerable step above what you get on cable channels. But the demonization of Rosen is breathtakingly ignorant and/or deliberately dismissive at a level unbecoming of a PBS-sanctioned “journalism” host.

I don’t think an apology is in order. I think the next show should have Rosen on as a guest. If you’re not a guardian of the Church of the Savvy, you’ve got nothing to fear. Bill Moyers didn’t shy away from this issue, why should you? And hey — this could be the equivalent of Jon Stewart appearing on CNN’s Crossfire.

Be More: Resourceful

[1] Here’s a brief example (video) of how “savviness” cuts off legitimate debate in the professional press:

http://www.youtube.com/v/ms548AkFP5s&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0

[2] And here’s a little more on what savviness is, directly from Jay Rosen.

[3] Meanwhile, if you like talking head shows examining national politics, forget the snoozy Friday evening PBS fare and go for something more entertaining and at least a little further outside the beltway. I highly recommend Slate’s Political Gabfest (also entertaining on Facebook), which has only 1 beltway insider (who also has appeared on the aggrieved host’s show). If you must stick to public media sources, go for Left, Right and Center, which has insiders, but at least it’s from California.

[4] And about linking… Why didn’t the host link to Rosen’s original piece at the Washington Post? Because the host was obeying old-media rules, in addition to being dismissive. Rosen explains the rules in this discussion of outbound linking:

http://www.youtube.com/v/RIMB9Kx18hw&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0

[5] And if you’ve never seen it, here’s the Jon Stewart appearance on Crossfire that pretty much ended the show. It exposed this extreme Church-of-the-Savvy example for what it was:

http://www.youtube.com/v/aFQFB5YpDZE&hl=en_US&fs=1&rel=0

UPDATE 1: There’s another great Jay Rosen piece, in which he refers to the unnamed PBS program: Audience Atomization Overcome: Why the Internet Weakens the Authority of the Press. And in this piece, he goes on to explain some concepts about how the mainstream press — especially the insiders — defines what ate and aren’t legitimate news and discussion points for consideration in public life.

UPDATE 2: One of my favorite firebrands, Michael Rosenblum, took our subject to task in a seething post that posits our dear host as a member of a doomed noble class.

Shales on 'Need to Know': Blech!

A couple days ago TV critic Tom Shales participated in an online chat with Washington Post readers in which he bantered about the Betty White appearance on Saturday Night Live last week and other topics. In the mix he took a few questions about the new PBS program Need to Know (produced by WNET), including this one:

…what does Need to Know need to fix?

Tom Shales: A whole new mindset. It’s just HORRIBLE. First the ridiculous idea that you’re very au courant if you somehow incorporate the internet in your show — oh please — and then that “incorporation of the internet” turns out to be not much more than EVERY SINGLE OTHER SHOW ON TELEVISION DOES, which means set up a stupid web site that hardly ever changes and paste some leftover junk on it. …

And if you think this comment is nasty, check out the full review Shales published in the Post this week, including this little gem:

PBS promises that this dreadful “Need to Know” show, which supplements vacuous televised drivel with fancily designed Web-page graphics, “empowers audiences to ‘tune in’ any time and any where.”

Meaning that you are free to supplement inadequate broadcast material with unsatisfying Internet material whenever you inexplicably get the urge.

Shales offers a decidedly harsh assessment. But I watched the first episode and had a similar — though less violent — reaction: it’s dreck.

But I’ll do what Shales didn’t: I’ll answer the question of “what do they need to change?”

Don’t Fake Me Out with the Web

The show was hyped as a web/TV hybrid, but it isn’t that at all. If the audience is getting an “open kimono” view of the production process, I can’t see it. Viewer participation in the editorial process is also nonexistent. NPR’s failed Bryant Park Project had more participation than this — and that was 3 years ago.

Sadly, to fix the show they’ll have to scrap it and start over. If the web is supposed to be a core part of the service, start there, not in the studio. Build a news service on the web, draw in the audience, feed smaller elements over to the NewsHour for exposure and find your editorial voice and rhythm. Don’t produce a TV show until this is working well. Otherwise you’re lying about the role the web plays in the production.

Do New TV

The most cringe-inducing parts of the show were when they copied commercial news conventions, whether with graphics or camera angles or the two-way interview shots of the nodding correspondent. If I didn’t know better, I’d have thought this was a Dateline parody at times.

Good God people, TV news is a plague upon the earth! DO NOT COPY THAT MODEL. If it looks and smells like commercial TV news, you’ve failed.

Get New Hosts

I know Alison Stewart has done some journalism along the way (even winning a Peabody), but I’m sorry… MTV News on the resume? That should be a disqualifier for serious news work in public media. I just can’t take her seriously, whether she asks “dorky” questions about GPS or not. But mostly she needs to go because she was hired as a mini-celebrity.

And Jon Meacham? He’s a passable stuffed shirt straight man when Jon Stewart is verbally goosing him on the Daily Show, but on this show he seemed incredibly stiff and “serious.” The false gravitas was annoying on a level almost equal to James Earl Jones saying, “This is CNN.” Sometimes I thought he was looking into the camera as if to say, “Get me out of here — I have a magazine to buy!”

Get hosts that are virtual unknowns, just like the NewsHour did with their online and rundown host Hari Sreenivasan. Focus on the content, not the face. Start with the web to produce news. Start with real journalists to create the face of the program for TV. I know: corporate funders want big names attached to their dollars. But who are you serving here?

And We Pay for This?

Last but not least, if you haven’t read it already, videojournalist gadfly Michael Rosenblum addressed this new program back in March when he got wind of the project. He got several facts wrong, most notably the program length (1 hour instead of 30 minutes) and the fact that staff weren’t hired to work on the show until March or April of this year, but his rant is well worth it for entertainment alone:

The rent on Need to Know’s Lincoln Center studio is $1 million a year. The show’s annual budget is more than $10 million, according to sources.

Are you kidding me?

Are you all on drugs over there at WNET/13?

One Million Dollars a year… for rent? (and to yourselves!)

One Million Dollars a year for a studio from which you are going to produce one half-hour once a week!

And another (gulp!!!) Nine Million Dollars for some lousy website!

Are you all insane?

I don’t wanna make too big a point of this, but we over here produce 3 half-hour local news shows a day (for cable), and we do it 5 days a week for 52 weeks a year, and our TOTAL costs are a tiny fraction of your budget for one half hour once a week.

WNET’s CEO Neal Shapiro then replied on the blog and refuted several errors. But he didn’t rebut the core of Rosenblum’s idea: that $10 million a year for this kind of show is an insane amount of money. Shapiro points out it’s cheaper than network alternatives, but in a later reply Rosenblum makes this proposal:

Suppose we hired 25 of the very best journalists we could find in the country. Suppose we salaried them at $100,000 a year. I think they would like that. Now, we have spent $2.5 million. If we’re going to produce 52 hours a year, and each of them has to make 8 pieces a year (I think this is reasonable, no?). So, we have 200 pieces over our 52 hours or 4 pieces per hour. With me so far?

Lets give them video cameras and laptops and some travel budget. And they can work in a transparent way – on the web, so with wikis and citizen journalists and such, there can be lots of ‘curating’ and contributions to their stories. We can assemble this anywhere really. And we can do it live. Let’s rent a radio studio from NPR and simulcast the show or rent a studio from WNYC in NY. that’s the easy part. Or we can pre-tape the whole thing from my living room. I will rent it out for a lot less than a million a year. Is this do-able? Oh, I think so.

Would we get a great product? Oh, I think so. Let’s put the money in the journalism and not in the carpeting on the walls (which was my favorite feature at the old Hudson Hotel WNET). You don’t need offices any more. Or carpeting. Or receptionists. Or chyron people. Or camera crews. Put the money into the journalism and I will gladly open my checkbook and give all the support I can.

Next Wave TV News

We all know that local public TV stations across the country have basically no news capacity. Their relevance and impact is dwindling. But take on the Rosenblum approach and you’ll get something that looks and functions in new ways. And all for a bargain price compared to traditional TV.

The key for TV news success, to me, is to destroy most of the commercial TV conventions. Make sure the news product looks, feels, sounds and functions differently than commercial TV. Make sure everything starts on the web and lives there 95% of the time. Only go to the big screen as a wrap-up of the week or with stuff that just doesn’t function well on the web.

Imagine a team of 10 VJs hitting the streets to make video for the web and for broadcast each day. Imagine the results: new kinds and styles of stories. Topics covered that would never make it in traditional broadcast. No more ambulance, police and fire chasing. No more vacuous news anchors. Local stories told well and gathered at a rate and with a quality that’s unprecedented.

Need to Know could have led this revolution. It’s incredibly disappointing they didn’t.

Headed to CPB. Headed for community?

I’m headed to the CPB today for an all-day meeting tomorrow (Thu, Apr 15) at the mother ship, hosted and arranged by Rob Bole (aka @rbole).

Up for discussion amongst a small group of public media tech types? Collaboration and community, or at least that’s what I’m expecting.

Many of you can probably list conference after conference and presentation after presentation, especially in the digital media space, where we all swear to stay in touch and share project ideas and methods, but it just never seems to happen. And I’m as guilty as the rest!

Lots of smaller projects have popped up over the years, including the #pubmedia chats happening each Monday evening with the help of some public media Twitter luminaries. 😉

What each of the projects have lacked is either staying power or depth of collaboration, mostly driven by a lack of time to pursue collaborative work instead of individual (station-focused) digital production.

With the help of Allen Gunn, I’m betting on a great meeting and some sustainable work to benefit our communities and colleagues across the public radio, TV and web universe. Hopefully there will be more to report by the weekend.

A PBS revolution in the making?

A new blog and Twitter feed has appeared. And no, I’m not writing it.

Called Revolution PBS and @RevolutionPBS on Twitter, the writing so far calls for a radical reorganization of the broadcast assets of PBS at both the network and station levels, building a national program feed and elimination of much, if not all, of the local station effort to duplicate what could be a nationally-replicated service.

So far, the ideas are interesting, albeit threatening to the old model (deliberately, of course). The writer talks about the millions of dollars he or she suggests could be saved via this centralization effort.

What’s interesting to me is the writer shows a better understanding of the member station model than most “civilians” I’ve met over the years. Perhaps its someone that’s done their homework, or perhaps it’s an “insider” looking to anonymously get some ideas a little traction.

I’d love to know who’s writing it, but so far, no admissions of “guilt.” 😉

My recommendation to PBS and pubmedia thinkers: Engage.

Don’t brush off these ideas or the writer(s) as kooks or fringe elements. Take the ideas at face value (at least for now) and engage in exploratory discussions around some of the suggestions. Be open to thinking differently but also press factual points home so our new discussion partners are forced to wrestle with some of the messy realities we see in the “system” today.

I’m of the mind that the funding and operation models we’re pursuing — or we’ve fallen into — are untenable long-term, especially in the mid-market and small-market stations (the majority, by number). Change of some kind is inevitable, so openly bouncing some of these ideas around could help us find a better future.

For now, here’s the comment I offered to their first major post, Efficiency Idea 1:

What you may not know is that PBS has provided a fully-integrated program stream to stations via satellite for some time. Using that feed (called Schedule X, last I checked), a local station can do a direct pass-through of that signal right onto the local transmitter. However, for regulatory reasons, stations must insert local branding and broadcast details in their signals, and many want to sell local adverti… err… underwriting which must also be inserted into the program stream.

Similarly, PBS also supplies satellite TV providers with a non-local “station” for those areas of the country covered by satellite but *not* covered by a local broadcast signal. People in those areas can opt for the national feed or the nearest local feed.

I worked at a station that, for cost reasons, opted for the pre-programmed feed from PBS. We had tremendous fears that fundraising would suffer dramatically, as we essentially gave up a great deal of local control over our schedule and what programs were included in our stream. However, we found donations were stable for 2+ years under this model. We still had to do local “traffic” to localize the signal and insert some locally-produced shows, and our systems weren’t nearly as automated as they needed to be, but it worked.

The current local station model — as opposed to something more like C-SPAN — is a holdover from a past era, in which local stations actually produced a lot more local content using local talent and resources. As the cost of running these nonprofits has risen over the years (technology costs, aging workforce, healthcare costs, etc.) and as government support has fallen (especially at the state level), local capacity has dried up. Many stations (there are more than 300 nationwide) raise enough money to maintain a barely-local presence in the hopes that someone will save the day at some point in the future.

So far, no knight in shining armor on the horizon, but there are plenty of new threats to public television, the biggest being the disruptive effects of the Internet upon distribution and consumption patterns and ratios.

There are many of us in the public media world that look at this situation and believe there must be a better / smarter way, and the notion of centralized national programming has strong appeal for the efficiency gains alone.

But efficiency can’t be our primary goal. If all we do is make the public TV system more efficient with its cash, we’ll only postpone the truly troublesome problem, which is one of purpose or of mission. Why are we here? What can we do to serve our communities? Is broadcasting enough? If it’s not enough, what should we be retooling to do to make a 21st century difference?

If the call for efficiency in the old distribution model is combined with a call for new services tuned to the needs of our communities today, I’d say you’ve got a revolution worth joining.

Farewell Alaska. Hello St. Louis!

Announcement Time!

As of this week I accepted an exciting new position with public service media company KETC in St. Louis, Missouri. Starting in early March, I’ll be their new Director of Digital Engagement.

Historically KETC has been, and to this day is, a public television station in a TV market of roughly 3 million, broadcasting national PBS programming as well as locally-generated shows, some of which are distributed nationally on occasion. Amongst public TV stations, KETC is one of the oldest on record. Seriously — check out their amazing timeline going back to 1954, a full 13 years before the Public Broadcasting Act. Now that is history.

Yet for all that rich history, KETC is becoming something very new today: a public service media company, not simply a broadcaster. Over the past few years they’ve embarked on a remarkable transformation, developing closer relationships with their community and using media to solve problems.

It started with outreach around The War, in which KETC set the national standard for gathering local veteran stories and integrating it with the Ken Burns documentary.

This new way of working and thinking culminated with the local, then national, Facing the Mortgage Crisis, in which the station literally networked nonprofits, government agencies, banks and homeowners in a united effort to slow or even stop the wave of foreclosures hitting the area following the financial meltdown. The project included social media, broadcast, old-fashioned networking, live events and lots of online work. The accomplishment in St. Louis were so impressive the CPB expanded the program to selected stations nationwide.

Now a new project is beginning; one focused on issues around the topic of immigration. They’re even remodeling part of the building to house the new local nonprofit news service — the St. Louis Beacon — and the cross-functional multiplatform digital media team… all together in the same space. And I’ll be there to help.

I can’t tell you how exciting this is. I’ve watched KETC from afar, oftentimes through consultant Rob Paterson‘s postings. This is an opportunity for me to put up or shut up on digital engagement and public service media. And I will do my best, for the good of St. Louis (a town I knew as a child, as it turns out), and hopefully for a broader public broadcasting community looking to understand how to move into what CPB’s Rob Bole calls “public purpose media.”

Sadly, this means I will be leaving Alaska very soon indeed, having lived on the Last Frontier for the past 9 years. The departure is made all the harder because I must leave behind a vibrant social media community I helped create over the past year. That community has gone on to raise money for a friend in need, form a local Ignite chapter and, from what I’m told, a wedding may be in the works. 🙂

So farewell Alaska. I will miss your Chugach mountain skyline and the warm embrace of entertaining and thoughtful friends all too soon.

And hello St. Louis! Let’s make something meaningful together.

Mobile DTV? You have got to be effing kidding me

PBS, NETA, APTS and CPB leaders are out of their freaking minds if they think Mobile DTV will take off. All momentum is in the opposite direction. All of it. But go ahead — read the giddy predictions:

Public TV leaders at NETA predicted Mobile DTV will be used for simulcasts of live TV as well as weather alerts, datacasts of traffic maps and sports scores, radio with pictures and interactive brainstorms yet to come, CPB is backing a PBS experiment with a 24-hour children’s TV service.

Though commercial broadcasters are mum about their business plans, said CPB Senior Vice President Mark Erstling,  they agree that kidvid is Mobile DTV’s “killer app.”

There’s even hope that Mobile DTV will seduce 18-to-24-year-old “millenials” to watch news and public affairs TV, said Lonna Thompson, general counsel of the Association of Public Television Stations, speaking at the NETA Conference. A survey indicated their level of interest would double, she said, because they’d no longer be “tethered” to a set in the living room.

Mobile DTV may be able to do a tolerable imitation of cable: Planners say broadcasters in D.C. will air at least 20 different Mobile channels during the tryout this spring.

It can also do a limited imitation of video-on-demand by “clipcasting”—constantly downloading, in advance, an array of popular videos to be stored in users’ receivers—though it won’t let users choose among every video on the Web.

Where it may shine is fulfilling past visions of interactive TV that cable has failed to realize. If the mobile receiver is a cell phone, it can provide a return path for ordering pizzas, voting on American Idol or whatever users want to click

“There will be great businesses built in Mobile DTV,” predicted Andy Russell, senior v.p, PBS Ventures, at the NETA Conference. “We think the possibilities are enormous with this new platform.”

via current.org

QUESTIONS

  1. So the whole “alternative uses” angle on DTV never came true. What makes it likely to happen with Mobile DTV? And who’s going to pay for all that software development? TV stations can’t even make regular content in most markets now, but we’re going to hire traffic and weather and sports programmers for our little Mobile DTV channels?
  2. You seriously think that just by creating yet another distribution channel — one that competes with existing popular channels — millenials will suddenly get interested in news and public affairs programs? You’ve got to be f***ing kidding. “Oooh! ‘Washington Week’ on my mobile phone? Check it out Kayleigh!”
  3. So Mobile DTV’s big idea is to copy cable? Excellent business plan. You do realize most of the cable companies are monopolies with extensive infrastructure, right? They don’t make money by lining up channels alone.
  4. “Clipcasting?” It’s called YouTube! Perhaps you’ve heard of it? I have it on my phone right now! Besides — who’s going to curate that? More people we can’t afford to hire?
  5. Dear God you’re going to the “interactive TV” angle again? Jesus, that died 20 years ago and rightly so. TV is a largely passive medium. Interactivity is a web practice. Have you all learned nothing since the advent of the Internet? Ordering pizzas? Voting for “American Idol?” Really? This is the glorious future ahead if only we develop Mobile DTV?
  6. Great businesses will be built with Mobile DTV, huh? You mean like HD Radio has burned up the dials and made Clear Channel billions? Oh, right — they’re in the toilet along with the rest of the commercial radio world. But TV will kick ass with a new platform that requires new hardware, barely duplicates existing and growing functionality on other platforms, and has little to no value proposition for users, right? Sure. Sign me up.

There was a time, many years ago, when a kid — like myself — enjoyed smuggling a little 2.5 inch Casio TV into my high school study hall and getting fuzzy TV images of “The Price is Right” or daytime soaps or whatever was on. But aside from that experience I’ve never wanted mobile TV. Mobile video, yes (and I have that), but not TV.

Keep in mind that TV, including some of public TV, has turned into a broadcast wasteland, especially during the day when people are mobile. I’m going to tune in for “Judge Judy” for 1.5 minutes while I’m on line at the bank? Not likely.

The only shot Mobile DTV has is kids programming, and only from PBS. But is it a “killer app?” Well… if you define “killer” as the only remotely viable app for Mobile TV, done at cost in a noncommercial model, then sure. And Lord help us all pay for all the infrastructure this year and forevermore.

To understand why Mobile DTV won’t make it, just look at what kids are already doing today: they’re texting and using social networks and calling one another. They’re doing social things, not kicking back and watching TV. At most, they might refer friends to see a web video clip, but that will be something forbidden, not a great vocabulary lesson from “Word Girl.”

As 3G and 4G wireless networks (and WiFi) become truly ubiquitous, and our devices are always on the ‘net, TV will become increasingly quaint. The only likely users for Mobile DTV will be the very Boomers that won’t buy the Mobile DTV devices anyway.

And let’s not forget all the bold promises of DTV that remain unfulfilled, which we’re hearing yet again from our august leaders: datacasting, weather, sports scores, news, ad nauseum. The fact that “radio with pictures” was noted in the article tells you how desperate these folks are to get attention. And hey — where’s my MP4-encoded DTV broadcasts? When’s that gonna be done?

Finally, don’t get me started on the low technical quality of the proposed Mobile DTV channels. I have a 2-year-old Flip cam that shoots better video than could be displayed on Mobile DTV. How does this make sense? Disruptive technologies can indeed come along with a lower technical quality, but who intentionally builds a Ferrari and then dents it up, puts a speed governor on it and smashes the windshield to get different customers interested?

Today — the “day of the Tablet” — I encourage all the public broadcasters out there with an eye toward Mobile DTV to look at the real future: mobile apps, mobile web, mobile multifunction devices field-upgraded on demand with new software from the cloud. The web absorbs and carries all media, synchronously and asynchronously. Reverting to broadcast just doesn’t make sense in most cases, and where it does make sense, we already have technologies and deployed assets that work fine; they even work better than fine if you consider HDTV.

Mobile data is much more valuable to our society and economy than propping up a shrinking business model. Let’s stop fighting the losing DTV battle and start fighting for a public service media future that meets the needs of our community and meets people where they are and where they’re going, not where they’ve been.

Media Evolution

Seth Godin on the evolution of every medium, when applied to the television industry:

TV used to be driven by the guys who knew how to run cameras and transmitters. Then it got handed off to the Ernie Kovacs/Rod Serling types. Then the financial operators like ITT and Gulf + Western milked it. And finally it’s just a job.

Yep. TV has become predictable.

Though I wasn’t part of the early days of public broadcasting, every account I’ve heard or read suggests it was a time of remarkable innovation and experimentation. There wasn’t a lot of money, but there was a lot of passion tied to a powerful mission. These days public TV doesn’t do commercial-style media well.  But it also doesn’t do mission-based media well.

There are outstanding examples of great media creation within the pubcasting world, but as a whole we’ve blanded the place up and disconnected it from our communities. Time to rethink the mission and re-energize the work. And it might just have to start with the engineers.

The letter I didn't send

The vast majority of public television viewers are kind, intelligent, supportive and understanding people. Generous, too. Lovely folks that I’m delighted to work with every day.

But there are also …pardon me… assholes.

Below I’ve included a viewer comment I got this week (with identity obscured), and the reply I never sent, but wish I did. I actually had the message in draft, but never clicked the Send button.

A little background: We are in our spring pledge drive right now, and that always upsets some people because much of the programming most PBS stations run during pledge is way, way outside the norm. It’s widely assumed that the people “giving” during pledge drives are actually “shopping” for stuff (books, DVDs, etc.) and don’t really care terribly much about the core public TV mission. I think it depends on the program and the viewer, but in general it does seem like regular viewers lose their beloved programs as they are broadly displaced by those giving — or buying — around the specialty programs.

Anyway, on to the letter…

VIEWER FEEDBACK
Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 10:18 PM

As usual, throw the mission statement out the window and run reruns of Yoga and Guru’s and fake Irish Can Can dancing, over and over, and over and over. Some os us, a slim minority agreed, are interested in seeing the Treasury Secretary, not some twisting body parts for over paid middle class white folks. You know there is a Depression going on, but what do you care, too caught up with being local t.v. stars. GET A CLUE… either give us the news or give up the Charter to maybe an outfit in the Valley. Because you people are through the looking glass infatuated with your own stink. NEWS … not fake gurus !! I mean, the Babtist Temple idiot guy makes more sense then those dumb asses you peddle.

Oh, one other thing… this person has written nasty e-mails to us at least twice a year for several years now. He never fails to send the most bombastic and horrifying rants, and he always threatens to start his own station.  He sends in his hate both about our TV and our FM stations, depending upon which one “offended” him most recently.

I wish I’d sent him this reply (but didn’t)…

Ah, Mr. Xxxxx… Your hate-filled comments about pledge drive programs, our staff and volunteers and viewers that don’t keep in line with your expectations have arrived in our e-mail once again. I would think after several years you’d get tired of leaving this bag of flaming dog poop on our doorstep.

Yet, ironically, what your regular rants suggest is that you’re watching our station. Watching quite a bit. More than most people.

But you’re not paying as close attention as you could.

Because while in the past we’ve pre-empted virtually all Charlie Rose episodes during pledge drives, this time we made adjustments. THIS time, we’re running nearly all the Charlie Rose episodes during pledge (4 out of 5 each week). Sure, they may slip from 10pm to 10:30 or 11pm, but they’re on the air. We made extra work for ourselves — without adding staff — just to keep Rose fans hooked up with their favorite show.

Some viewers have noticed and appreciated the effort and even became supporting members because they recognize both the value of the program in their lives and the fact that we paid attention and changed things to respect their interests.

But not you. After all, why break with tradition?

I highly recommend you start your own public TV station. That way, you can have a front-row seat for what could very well be the death of an entire industry as the proliferation of TV channels and the Internet explosion thins the air so much that you can’t breathe. Meanwhile, thousands of your colleagues across the country collectively scratch their heads, trying to figure out just how to fund the business while still serving the public interest (more than any other TV service out there).

Go ahead — hire the lawyers and bicker with the FCC over licensing. Build a tower, buy a transmitter, hire a staff. Find a building, build a studio, buy cameras and then pay PBS hundreds of thousands of dollars a year for the privilege of airing their programs, leaving you no capacity to serve the local audience in a locally-relevant way.

Then you, too, can have the pleasure of reading some of the nastiest viewer comments you’ve read in your life — in the middle of the night when you’re trying to catch up, just once, with the mountains of work on your plate, left there because you can’t afford to hire staff to run the business efficiently.

In a situation like this, a little Irish dancing, a little yoga, and yes, even Yanni sounds pretty damn good.

As far as we can tell, this particular “fan” of public television has never given a dime.

What do you think — should I have clicked Send?

The Curse of the PBS Tchotchkes

Okay, I know I owe everyone a better explanation for the changes at the public media company in Anchorage, where I’ve taken on a new role. I’ll get to that. But first I have to let off some steam.

Now that I’m in charge of radio, television and the web — as a singular unit we call “streams” — I’m the recipient of public TV promotional materials. And let me tell you, this is the worst part of the job.

I’m being buried alive in tchotchkes. OMG the tchotckes! In two weeks I’ve been inundated with the stuff.

Now I know why our PBS dues go up so dramatically every year. The networks, the producers, the distributors — they’re all mailing and shipping out endless streams of expensive trinkets and doodads in the hopes that I’ll love their program and run it day and night and promote it and call it George.

As Jon Stewart said during his infamous appearance on CNN’s now-dead “Crossfire” — Please. Stop. You’re hurting America.

Okay, maybe not hurting America, but you’re filling my office with stuff I don’t need.  We don’t select programs because you send me a chocolate bar or children’s bookends.  I’m not going to be a new-found fan of your show because you printed a four-color professional multi-tabbed binder or sent me “fun” stickers or magnets.  Put another way: Your ability to slap a logo on a plastic Chinese toy or hire a print shop does not impress me — it depresses me.

Please, TV producers and distributors: Put your money into making a better product. Edit tighter. Get better visuals in the program. Hire good photographers and videographers and sound engineers. Build a better web site. Collaborate with your public TV brethren and create a wonderful online-only marketplace for programs and additional information.

Most importantly: please lower my cost for buying your show.

Please do not send me a box of glossy postcards pushing the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. No more Good Grips spatulas or basting gear for that cooking show. Save the four-color promo stuff for lobbying Congress — not me. Keep the DVDs and put your show clips and previews online.  I’m already on your team, so please don’t waste $25 shipping me your latest professionally-developed marketing pouch with tiered inserts on velvety cardstock ($25 x 300 stations = $7,500).

Why is it that a network of stations, all committed to noncommercial public service, spends this much money on advertising to me?