We will try to address some of the concerns, though too many worthwhile questions have been raised to tackle all of them in one post. In this post, we will try to expand our vision for local "offices" as opposed to stations and explain why this change should occur.
David writes:
While I know that many see the network of local stations as a problem, I've always seen it as a net positive. That so-called inefficiency is also a breeding ground for innovation, with the best ideas getting passed around.
RevolutionPBS agrees with this philosophy, but we break with the current PBS model in our vision for local presence. We believe in a model we will call The Lonely Island.
Last night we watched Saturday Night Live's retrospective on the decade of 2000-10. In the show, cast member Andy Samberg recounted the production of the short film "Lazy Sunday." For those unfamiliar, "Lazy Sunday" is a rap video about a day in the life of two guys who go see The Chronicles of Narnia. The project was created by Andy and two writer friends (Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone). Though they were all employed by NBC, the three of them had been making short films on their own since high school, calling their "production unit" The Lonely Island. "Lazy Sunday" was the first film idea they submitted to Lorne Michaels.
Based on an audio track created on a Macbook, Lorne greenlighted the project. The Lonely Island team shot the footage around Brooklyn and in the theater of improv group The Upright Citizens Brigade. The shoot took five hours. When "Lazy Sunday" aired that weekend it was a huge success, and the film became an overnight YouTube smash.
What can PBS learn from this example? We believe smaller production offices, or "Lonely Islands," can be leaner than, but just as successful as, local stations. They can use less expensive technology (Macbook audio). They can partner to achieve efficiency (use the Upright Citizens Brigade theater). They can innovate (no mainstream television outlet was taking YouTube-style video seriously before "Lazy Sunday").
The Lonely Island group has gone on to make numerous popular films for SNL. Certainly, with their success, SNL is throwing more money their way for production costs (could this be an increase in CPB support in the PBS model?). The group has explored other ways to engage its audience with a CD of its songs called Incredibad (local PBS production units could still pursue grants for educational outreach based on their own and PBS programs). But even with all their success, NBC wouldn't consider building The Lonely Island team their own studios, master control, and soundstage.
We believe PBS can have the innovation without the inefficiency of the member station model. With advances in technology it will only become easier and less expensive to produce and deliver content. Cloud computing, the National Broadband Plan and easier web distribution, exploding receiving devices for content...the only way through these changes is to be smaller and more agile.
In another part of his comment David mentions boots on the ground. This should always be a vital part of public media. A public media unit must be embedded in its community. It must be fluent in its history and culture. We believe local production units can establish the same presence in a community without the station infrastructure. We argue smaller units can be even more responsive to their community's needs without the worry of studio, transmitter, and master control overhead.
Viewing the situation from 30,000 feet, PBS real estate is shrinking, as is the footprint of many established media organizations (networks and newspapers being two of the most obvious examples), as media choice expands exponentially and distribution changes. To deny the fragmentation and shifting patterns of its audience would be as perilous for PBS as for any other media provider. RevPBS isn't breaking any new ground here. Anyone familiar with Media Theory knows this.
We believe PBS must put resources toward its brand, not its real estate. While brand may not be a favorite focus of a service organization, it is a vital focus for a media organization. What sets PBS apart is its storytelling, its reporting, quality educational programs, its level of trust among viewers...in short, its content.
A brief aside about PBS and brand. If you go to The Lonely Island website, you recognize the group's connection to SNL and to a lesser degree NBC. Go to the Sesame Workshop website and look for references to PBS or Sprout. They aren't exactly front and center. This is a problem. Could Sesame Street realize there will come a day when they will no longer need PBS to deliver their content? Any of you who scoff are in for a rude awakening.
Our proposed change might take some careful steps to educate viewers. It would be nice for them to understand how the new model would work. It would be nice for communities to have a better understanding of the engagement these offices will provide. But let's be honest, is this critical? RevPBS knows enough about member stations to know that many viewers don't understand the role their local station plays in distributing content, programming the schedule, teaching literacy, providing health care outreach. After hours of pledge pitches and mailbags full of direct mail efforts, member stations would like to think they have communicated these things, but the truth is too few people understand PBS's full value, a value that wouldn't be diminished with a new model.
This is not a call for all member stations to fold tomorrow, but shifting as many resources as possible to engaging communities and producing stellar content should be the goal of everyone in the system. We can argue about when the time will come, but there can be little doubt that the on demand world will make local transmissions and local programming decisions redundant and irrelevant. People will be using devices that receive the content they want, when they want it. The infrastructure will be obsolete, but the content will be more vital than ever.
Thanks for the follow-up. I'm still not sure how seriously to take someone who boldly lays out a new public television model yet hides behind an alias. I have a suspicion as to who you may be, but recognize that I'm most likely wrong. As people say, on the Internet no one knows that you're really a disgruntled PTV programmer.
ReplyDeleteI have to say that I'm not quite convinced that on-demand means the end of local broadcast. I know that I run the risk of being naive, but I continue to believe that there's a future, albeit a diminished one, for over-the-air transmission. The Internet has already become an effectively infinite source of entertainment. (There's no such thing as infinity + 1.) Yet despite all of these distractions, the commercial TV networks have been having a pretty good year, with increased audiences for event programming and a batch of successful new series.
Your notion of a local production unit is intriguing, though I'm not sure that it would serve all of the functions of a fully-staffed station. You mentioned outreach grants; would such a unit include outreach personnel?
How does your one-service-fits-all model deal with programming of local or regional interest? Our statewide debates aren't going to air on a national PBS cable/satellite service. What will be the venue for the independent producer who has a show that might have a strong appeal to the Corn Belt, but not to the coasts? (Or is this where broadband comes in?) What of the public safety role of a local broadcaster?
You're absolutely right that the message about stations' local initiatives doesn't get through. If we face such an uphill climb in communicating with viewers about educational outreach, how will we get them to understand this new model?
Perhaps a local production unit could maintain the deeper relationships that stations have with community entities, but what of the broader audience? Those of us who appear on the air put faces on the organization; people know that we live and work among them. If that local connection was lost, would viewers be as likely to cough up their forty bucks? Or do we not bother to court individual donors in this brave new world?
It seems our key point of disagreement is what new technology will mean for content distribution. If we are wrong, please tell us. We believe that technology will render local broadcast irrelevant and soon. Not local content, mind you, but local broadcast. We have no crystal ball as to how exactly it will happen, but we see the change coming from a mixture of increased broadband coverage, shifting consumer patterns, and better reception devices. And we wonder is it reasonable - is PBS being a good steward of taxpayer, corporate, and foundation dollars - for local entities to spend large sums of money pushing out programming when much less can be spent making content available for users to access?
ReplyDeleteWe'd be interested to know your thoughts on the National Broadband Plan. Should that bring service to most of the 93 million Americans without currently without broadband, would that change your outlook on distribution?
Now I'm getting confused. In your initial post you posited that PBS should become a national cable/satellite channel that would be simulcast by commercial broadcasters for the benefit of low-income households. Yet there's no mention of that above; now it's all about broadband. I'm not seeing a consistent plan here.
ReplyDeleteEven if every single American had access to broadband as well as the financial and technical wherewithal to take advantage of it (and that's a pretty colossal "if"), that still doesn't answer the points I raised earlier. How does a national service handle local/regional content? How does it let someone know that a tornado is about to blow them off the map? How effective is it at raising dollars from individual donors? Ball's in your court.
I don't pretend to know what the future holds. I just strongly suspect that we're all being sold a bill of goods when it comes to the promise of broadband.
Broadcast might be outmoded (though it sure as hell wasn't a year ago when the government was driving us all into the wonderful world of digital), but it's already universal. Plus, it's dirt simple. No operating system. No need to download or install anything. It doesn't buffer; it doesn't slow down if too many people are watching it. Turn it on, change the channel, you're good to go.
My (possibly mistaken) belief is that, just as television didn't do away with radio, broadband won't do away with broadcast. Doesn't mean that we won't have to adapt, or that there won't be plenty of casualties. The PTV system is overbuilt, and we'll likely lose some stations in the not too distant future.
"I just strongly suspect that we're all being sold a bill of goods when it comes to the promise of broadband."
ReplyDeleteDavid -- That's what broadcasters, with a vested interest in the present system, typically say. I can tell you I live 100% without cable, satellite or OTA television. Yet I still see plenty of video, via DVD, Hulu, YouTube, etc. (If I had a NetFlix account I'd be watching even more stuff.) When I talk to my younger colleagues at work, they don't watch "TV" either, but they see all the shows they want. The only stuff that they watch real-time is stuff that's both LIVE and compelling to them personally (usually sports and contest shows). Scheduled TV? It makes no sense to them.
Broadband is the uber-medium. It carries all media. It's not yet free or universal, but if we approach it like the rural electrification work of the last century, we can get to ubiquity. From a global economic competitiveness standpoint, we'd best get on it, by the way.
Let's also note that electricity is far more universal than broadcast television. There's plenty of places you can visit in this country without OTA TV service, but even deeply rural areas have electricity.
John wrote: "From a global economic competitiveness standpoint, we'd best get on it, by the way."
ReplyDeleteIt will resemble the expansion of electricity. We agree.
We'd love to see a vision for broadband incorporated into the vision for a smart grid.
"That's what broadcasters, with a vested interest in the present system, typically say."
ReplyDeleteOh, touché.
What I was getting at there was that a lot of promises are being made about broadband, just as a lot of promises were made about DTV. Remember when we spent more than 15 years and countless millions of dollars making a very complicated switchover to a digital standard, only to discover less than a year later that not only would we be "asked" to give up some or all of our spectrum, but that the chairman of the FCC had been plotting our demise for the entire time? Pardon me if I don't quite believe the same folks when they tell me that broadband will soon be universally available and affordable, and as easy to use as a television set.
It'd be foolish not to acknowledge the impact of YouTube and Hulu. Yet, Hulu feasts on the carcass of the broadcast model. The expensive shows upon which it depends for its success wouldn't exist without the mass audiences initially delivered by broadcast and cable. These days, the entry level for creating video is alarmingly low...but I don't care how many monkeys are out there with Flip cameras, not one of them is going to produce "Lost." Or "Nova," for that matter.
Again, what I'm not hearing here is how broadband (which, I'm told, will make my smile whiter and my erection last a satisfyingly long time) will serve the local/regional distribution and emergency service functions of broadcast.
I've said what I needed to say. Someone else can carry on the conversation. Good luck with the revolution.
David-
ReplyDeleteWe take no joy in the frustration you are obviously feeling, and we hope you will continue to engage with the blog. While we disagree on how PBS should look in the future, we appreciate your passion.
It's true the FCC hasn't exactly navigated the waters of oncoming technology effectively. We have a hard time faulting them for misreading the currents of technology (if we may continue the metaphor). The changes have been too quick to be dealt with by a governmental 15-20 year plan. This is part of the reason we believe it can be ineffective for government entities to be technological innovators. And this belief is central to our idea that the member unit system of PBS must be smaller and more agile.
We strongly disagree with your "monkeys with Flip cameras" invective. Large infrastructure doesn't create good filmmakers and storytellers. A content driven model with as little overhead as possible seems more likely to us to achieve creative excellence. You're right, this won't create "Lost" (not that PBS should be trying to do so), but we believe it would foster creative innovation among the filmmakers already in the system and bring more producers, writers, photographers to the process.
We don't understand an interest in, say, 3-D TV among PBS folks, at least not right now. Let Skywalker Ranch and James Cameron produce the cutting-edge, monstrously expensive spectacles. In our own humble opinion, with Avatar and Episodes I-III of the Star Wars franchise as our examples, storytelling becomes secondary when so much emphasis is placed on the technological wizardry.
We believe PBS needs to invest in new talent who will serve their communities, and they need to be the new faces of the system, not just for the sake of content but for the sake of fundraising and brand as well. NPR seems to know this well. They have a stable of talent who produce excellent content and promote public radio (Terry Gross, Garrison Keillor, Kurt Andersen, Ira Glass, Tom and Ray and on and on and on). The most prominent faces on PBS are 40 year old puppets. (This is not a shot at Sesame Street. We love them. It is a comment on PBS's need to create new talent of Sesame Street's caliber.)
We understand your point that broadcast is simple and entrenched. So was buying a CD at your local record store or renting a VHS tape from Blockbuster 15 years ago. As we said in a previous comment, we believe it's a shame PBS didn't shift models before spending millions of dollars to upgrade to digital, but sunk costs can't be the reason to deny future trends or delay changes that will create more value. Ways people consume media are changing and will continue. The need for strong PBS content that educates, entertains and serves community needs will not.