Transcript What Does Public Service Mean in the Multi

Scenarios for the Future of
Public Broadcasting
What Does Public Service Mean in the
Multi-Choice Digital Age?
Channeling Public Interest Media:
Reporting on the Public Broadcast System
Strategic investment scenarios
 Sustaining investments
 Sustain the legacy business
 Best practices improvements
 Collaborations to lower costs and gain
scale
Strategic investment scenarios
 Repositioning investments
 Often disruptive innovations (à la
Clayton Christensen)
 Reposition in new directions consistent
with original mission
Über trends in electronic media
 Digitization
 Personalization
 Democratization
Über trends: digitization
 Content meets mathematics
 Noiseless generations for production &
distribution
 Metadata – data about data
 Find, manipulate and distribute content
with great granularity and flexibility
 Repurpose content
 Extend the life and value of media assets
 Search
Über trends: personalization
 Content meets self-organization
 Tagging (‘folksonomies’)
 XML syndication (RSS, Atom)
 Attention (metadata that tracks to what
people are paying attention)
Example: Tagging at flickr
Tags / norway
Sample
photos from
the RSS feed
of the tag
‘norway’ from
flickr.com
Example: RSS
 Really Simple Syndication (better: Really
Simple Subscriptions)
 It’s very easy to implement.
 It aggregates in one place what’s new in
web content to which you subscribe.
 Combined with personalization, it will
provide a powerful distribution platform for
pubcasters (or, a powerful competitor).
 Open a Bloglines.com account and try it.
Über Trends: democratization
 Content freed from gatekeepers
 Inexpensive but powerful production
tools
 Low barriers to effective distribution
 Search and referral substitutes for
marketing
Example: Podcasting
 Works with any portable media players,
PCs, Macs, and most news aggregators.
 Means adding an enclosure to an RSS 2.0
item (can be a link to any file: MP3, WMV,
etc.).
 Specialized aggregators can automatically
sync your files with the player.
 Implications for how we do journalism and
production.
The “long tail” meme
 From Wired Editor in Chief Chris
Anderson
 “The future of entertainment is in the
millions of niche markets at the
shallow end of the bitstream.”
 Real time is hits oriented. For nonreal time long-tail distribution,
success can come with much smaller
numbers.
The “long tail” meme
 Amazon, iTunes, Netflix, et al. have
much larger inventories than corresponding brick-and-mortar stores.
 The average record store has 40,000
tracks, but Rhapsody has 735,000.
 “The average Barnes & Noble carries
130,000 titles...[, but] more than half of
Amazon’s book sales come from outside
its top 130,000 titles.
The “long tail” meme
Broadcasters must adapt to
 A multi-platform future
 A multi-choice future
A multi-platform future
 We’re evolving from distribution over
one platform to distribution over
multiple platforms:
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Over-the-air transmitters
Internet and broadband
Cable and satellite
Physical media
Mobile and portable devices
From Dave MacCarn, WGBH
A multi-choice future
 The number of “channels” through which
users will be able to access our content will
continue to grow.
 Increasingly, users want control over when
and where they use our content.
 Increasingly, users want choice and
personalization.
 Successful public broadcasters are
morphing into digital libraries.
From Dave MacCarn, WGBH
The new media divide
 People are taking control over their
media usage.
 “My time” (non-real time) is the fastest
growing segment of media usage.
 “I want what I want, when I want it, the
way I want it.”
 So it’s less and less audio vs. video or
print vs. electronic, it’s ...
 Real-time vs. “my time.”
Who does “my time” serve?
 People who have already left linear
programming for other reasons:
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Career
Chores
Community
Family
 People who can’t get enough of what
they like on your stations.
CPB TV primetime study
 PTV viewing was small in two
segments compatible with PTV:
 “Innovative & Inclined”
 “Distracted & Unavailable”
 Together, they are 26% of viewers:
 Limited free time
 Frequent users of technology
 Medium-to-high users of public radio
CPB TV primetime study
Real-time economics
 For real-time broadcasting,
distribution costs scale perfectly ($
for 1 = $ for 1,000,000), but time for
content is dear.
 Rewards AQH listening/viewing.
 Programmers are tacticians.
 Programming strategy is finding hits and
competing with other hit-programmers.
“My time” economics
 For “my time” distribution, costs scale
incrementally with use, but time for content
is limited only by storage.
 Requires a business model to cover incremental
costs.
 Rewards cumulative access over time.
 Programmers are curators.
 Make the “tail” lo-o-o-ong.
 Programming strategy is to make content
personalized and accessible.
Public Service Publisher
 A “my time,” “long tail” repositioning
initiative
 Public broadcasting stations and
independent producers
 Partnering with Open Media Network
for content distribution component
 To include citizen-supplied media
 Broadcasters can serve as enablers
for community public service content
Public Service Publisher
 Multi-platform content delivery from a
common user interface
 Internet
 Free
 Subscription
 Pay per use
 Cable VOD
 DTV broadcast data caching
 Physical media (DVD, CD)
 Station-supplied
 Amazon, Netflix, et al.
Public Service Publisher
 Users can access via portal or station
affiliated pages
 B2B services
 Station program guides
 Fair use recording
New revenue sources
 Member benefits (more content,
convenient times)
 New audience revenue (relationship
building, underwriting)
 User compensation for access to
niche, premium or hard-to-find
programming
New revenue sources
 Assets in permanent distribution build
record of community value, important
for tax-based, foundation and
philanthropic funding
 B2B revenues (rights to distribute,
marketing content for derivative
works)
 Distribution services (datacasting,
load balancing, “my time” traffic)
“Pull” urgencies
 Opportunities:
 “My time” use growing rapidly.
 PBCore, broadband, off-the-shelf core
technologies are in place.
 Long-tail businesses are succeeding.
 Pubcasters and partners have great and
deep content assets.
 There is substantial interest in use of
“my time” electronic media by other
public service organizations.
“Push” urgencies
 Threats:
 Competition for pubcasters is coming
from the for-profit sector.
 It’s no longer a one-platform world. If
we cling to one platform, we risk our
mission.
 XML-based syndication to portable
devices is growing and presents a real
“bypass” to linear programmers.
 Barriers to entry are low. If we don’t do
it, someone else will.
Contact information
Dennis L. Haarsager, Associate VP & GM
Educational Telecommunications & Technology
PO Box 642530
Washington State University
Pullman, WA 99164-22530
Contact info: www.haarsager.org/contact
Weblog: www.technology360.com
Resources: www.technology360.org