ima2006

Andrew Blau on the future of independent media

Experienced "blogus interruptus" yesterday with an interesting afternoon visit to Microsoft under an NDA.  I can only report that a good time was had by all.

Andrew Blau of Global Business Network is now speaking at the 2006 Public Broadcasting New Media Conference on the future of independent media.  His outline posits a "new ecology" for independent media:

1.  Pervasive - media will be part of every kind of experience
2.  Noisy - more media, everywhere, all the time means more competition for everyone, everywhere, all the time
3.  Inverted - the essential dynamic of how audiences connect with work will be inverted from broadcast to "broadcatch"
4.  Fragmented -audiences are fragmenting and organizing in new configurations
5.  Financially reorganized - how independent work is funded will change

Back in December 2004, I linked to a great paper of the same name that he wrote.  Well worth the investment in time.  Link:  Technology360.com.  --Dennis Haarsager

Distant Relatives

The pre-conference session, which went well overall, illustrated something that I should have expected but didn't.  Public Radio and TV are, at best, distant relatives within the public broadcasting family. 

Here's the best image: last night at dinner, I looked around the room and with 50 station and network executives, arranged at large round tables, all of the tables were "segregated."  At every table, the TV-identified folks stayed together and the radio people stayed with their colleagues.

It was a small thing, but, to me, symptomatic of how difficult it will be to bring these two groups together for any concerted online strategy.

Much of the reason is social: TV (or radio) execs spend years cultivating realtionships with other TV execs.  They work together on issues of common concern.  They form friendships at conferences, on various organization boards.  They know one another and share a common experience.

Most of us simply find comfort in the presence of people we know and feel ill at ease with "strangers."

All of this, I think, gives additional weight to the view that radio and TV should probably evolve their online strategies separately and meet up somewhere further down the line.   

Is that the right approach?  I see a few issues that weigh against it: First, aggregation of resources will be a factor in developing a more powerful online presence.  TV and radio each have substantial online investments.  Their combined online investment (something like $20 million per year) would provide a very strong foundation for an effective effort that could become self-sustaining.  Second, we have a lot of joint licensees, and many of those JLs are real players, including WGBH, KQED, OPB, KPBS, and others.  To the best of my knowledge, they don't want separate radio/TV web strategies--if they can find a combined presence that makes sense.

Will those issues count for more than what we might call a difference of culture?  Don't know.

I'm sure that this will come up, nore in private conversations than in public debate, here in Seattle.

Talk to you soon, MF

Online transparency

At a pre-conference new media seminar for CEOs, Ken Sands, online editor for the Spokane, WA Spokesman-Review (I'm a subscriber) is giving an overview of their award-winning online news effort.  Interestingly, they added depth and transparency to their coverage of the recent allegations of sexual misconduct by then Spokane mayor Jim West by, where possible, adding notes and transcripts that weren't published in print to their stories online -- what we broadcasters would call B-roll.  Also interestingly, their 200,000 unique monthly online users are about double their print circulation.  --Dennis Haarsager (cross-posted at technology360.com)

BBC News Interactive

I'm at a pre-conference seminar for CEOs on new media where Nic Newman, head of editorial development and technology for BBC News Interactive is speaking.  ¶  Based on some research they've done of the news audience, they found that news audiences want [1] greater choices of platforms and providers, [2] greater power to shape personal consumption around own lifestyle/behavior, [3] greater opportunity for involvement, and [4] greater ability to compare/contrast providers -- less loyalty.  ¶  He also reports that the BBC Interactive Media Player (now in beta release to a limited group of testers) is experiencing 5 downloads per week from the average user from some 390 hours of programming.  Not in beta is their podcasting effort where some 500,000 downloads occur per week.  --Dennis Haarsager (cross-posted at technology360.com)

Societal shifts impacting media strategies

This post is from a Tuesday pre-conference new media seminar for CEOs put on by Andrew Nachison and Dale Peskin of the Media Center of the American Press Institute.  One take-home from their presentation was a list of three "propositions," general shifts that are taking place in society (below).  --Dennis Haarsager (cross-posted at technology360.com)

• The digital everything -- all news and information is or will be represented digitally and everything will be impacted by that. 
• Know-trust networks --  new kinds of networks are replacing the traditional trusted intermediaries (e.g., craigslist). 
• The individual -- shift from institutional power to individual power.

This post is from a Tuesday pre-conference new media seminar for CEOs put on by Andrew Nachison and Dale Peskin of the Media Center of the American Press Institute.  One take-home from their presentation was a list of three "propositions," general shifts that are taking place in society (below).  --Dennis Haarsager (cross-posted at technology360.com)

• The digital everything -- all news and information is or will be represented digitally and everything will be impacted by that. 
• Know-trust networks --  new kinds of networks are replacing the traditional trusted intermediaries (e.g., craigslist). 
• The individual -- shift from institutional power to individual power.

Nick (from BBC) really connects

Where ever I go looking for people to discuss the web, everyone--everyone--admires the BBC.  Often the admiration is mixed with a high level of jealousy, becuase the BBC really does have a lot of money to spend for online develpment.  Still, what they have done is remarkable, and Nick Newman's presentation to the CEO Session today reinforced that reputation.  (We will try to get his slides for distribution.)

The problem with BBC presentations, and we'll have several throughout the week, is how do you apply their lessons and their models to our scale and our decentralized structure?  Even if you just talk about content, it's hard to imagine how we apply BBC lessons and the BBC approach.  Can public broadcasting accept the suggestion that news/public affairs is an essential element of our online service?  Could we ever say, as Nick did, that waiting on a story had just become intolerable and their editorial staff had to rethink their process?

Next up is something very different: Ken Sands from the Spokane newspaper.

A first step forward

This conference comes at a critical time in the evolution of what we now call public media. 

The explosion of podcasting.  The advent of video iPods.  The talk, even more than the action, has forced everyone to admit: the future is now. 

In that environment, public radio and TV comes to Seattle to find or define a path forward.