Technology360

A moving experience

A week ago tonight I was in a Spokane, Washington hotel awaiting a morning one-way flight to Washington, DC.  It had been exhausting and emotional week-plus organizing the move of my household goods and that day marked the last one I would spend in the house on a northern Idaho mountain ridge where I'd lived with my family for the past 21 years.  My two youngest children are now grown and gone and my wife and her parents, who'd lived there with us, are deceased, so I was planning to sell the place even before this new job came up rather quickly at the end of February.  What I'd thought might be a two or three month process turned into a two or three week process -- absolutely insane.

But my last day there also had some magic moments.  When the atmosphere is absolutely pristine, I can see to the southeast some mountains on the other side of Elk City, Idaho, about 110-120 miles away.  I've seen them only 3-4 times in the 21 years I lived there, but there they were at breakfast.  And while bald eagles gather in great numbers, usually in January, on Lake Coeur d'Alene some 75 miles to the north-northeast, their appearance around my property is only slightly more common than the distant mountain view.  Yet after lunch, there was one mature one circling my property.  Wow!

Returning to the theme of this blog with a "department of personal experiences" report:

My March commuting to Washington is now over and I'm awaiting my car and household goods in a small 14th-floor apartment in the city.  My new broadcast reception is so far all-digital.  I sent an HDTV monitor and Samsung DTV decoder (5th-gen chip) on by UPS and purchased a Sangean HD Radio component tuner which I'm currently using with the HDTV monitor's RGB input.  I have floor to ceiling door to the balcony and have tried the DTV tuner with two antennas -- a small Phillips model in a weather-proof wing-like enclosure that's meant to be mounted on an outside pole, and a Terk UHF log periodic with a built-in set of standard rabbit ears.  The FM antenna is a standard twin-lead folded dipole laying on the floor in a sort of drooping T configuration.  I don't know where the transmitters are located, but my antennas are looking toward the east.

The HD Radio performs quite well on the FM band.  I can pick up several HDR stations, including WAMU and WETA-FM, the local NPR stations.  The Phillips TV antenna worked well back in Idaho, but here it enables only a handful of channels to be accessed via scanning.  The Terk does much better with the rabbit ears extended, though I've not found any configuration that permits me to pick up the Washington PBS stations, WETA and WHUT.  I can, however, get a Maryland Public Television station as well as the "MHz" public station from Virginia (which is broadcasting five SD channels, all of which look pretty good).

The HD Radio experience is pretty seamless, thank goodness, but the repeated scan/adjust antenna/rescan/adjust antenna/rescan thing on the TV side is a real pain and I doubt many consumers will go through it.  Who invented this turkey?!?  Oh, it does look nice when it locks in on a channel. 

Updated 7 April 2008:
Stephen Hill writes privately (highly paraphrased here), Get cable!.  Yes, I'm going to do that as soon as my large screen shows up, and my unstated point is that so will most other over-the-air viewers.  To traditional broadcasters -- and especially to public television stations -- these viewers will then become economically much less important (see many earlier posts on this topic).  --Dennis

The importance of leadership with vision

Consultant Paul Jacobs writes:

... We're often asked why, in the face of declining overall listening to radio, Public Radio continues to thrive?  It's simple - everything about Public Radio programming is long-term.  And they cherish their audience relationships.  They're patient, they nurture their programs, they research their listeners' needs.  ¶  Their conventions and meetings are more frequent, better attended, and more considerate of the values and qualities that contribute to product development, brand building, and audience relationships.  While admittedly they don't suffer under the pressures of Wall Street or profit goals, they are in fact businesses that need to pay bills (with a lot less government support than people think).  The bottom line is that Public Radio succeeds because they think long-term.  ¶  And while Public RadioPublic Radio's core values doesn't have "celebrity" program directors you've heard of, most have been in their local communities for a long time and understand how to connect with the locals.  Additionally, are brilliant, concise, and imbedded in the minds of every person responsible for the creation of programming.  They are the guiding force behind their emotional attachment with their listeners. ...

Link:  JacoBLOG.  --Dennis

The IMA impasse

John Proffitt (the one in Anchorage, not Houston) returned from the Public Media 2008 conference in February and wrote:

... In my (current) view, IMA appears to be at an impasse. We seem to have reached a point where integrated media advocacy has given out, where recommendations and demonstrations fail to move our organizations to meaningful action. ¶  To date, IMA has been effective at putting the online services question on the table within public broadcasting and has done so eloquently and repeatedly. But for all the work completed, no significant sea change has yet arrived. Meanwhile, the house of public TV is on fire, we’re losing audience to a fracturing media world across the board and new players (like Wikipedia and others) have stolen “our” web traffic and possibly our raison d’etre. ...

Link:  Gravity Medium. 

For readers outside of U.S. pubcasting, the IMA is the Integrated Media Association, the organization which encourages work in emerging public media.  I was on its board until resigning last fall to chair NPR's board.  But I think John makes a good point.  I've been a self-appointed nag about new media for nearly a decade and can't really point to much success.  That may just be my own ineffectiveness, but John implies something more widespread it involved.

John's post initiated a very articulate conversation that you shouldn't miss in the comments with consultant Rob Paterson and independent radio producer Stephen Hill, like John, both deep thinkers about this.  Stephen has collected his comments in his blog.  See Calling the game (link: Spatial Relations) and Pack light and bring your values with you (link: Spatial Relations).  In the second, Stephen notes:

... The problem is that mass usage paradigms do not translate into viable business models for niche services.  ¶ All of public broadcasting with the exception of the big NPR news shows and a few others is a niche in the media world. Geographically defined, locally focused services are also another niche in Internet logic. ...

  --Dennis

NPR - The Opportunity

Rob Paterson was the consultant to National Public Radio when it was conducting a series of valuable "New Realities" meetings two years ago, and he's since consulted with other public media organizations.  I was on its board of directors at the time and now Rob has written a post on his blog giving advice to yours truly as the new interim CEO of NPR.  Be sure to read the comments also.  Link:  Robert Paterson's Weblog. 

Also check out three other of Rob's related posts: [1] Making real progress in Public Media - Acknowledging the Innovator's Dilemma.  Link:  Robert Paterson's Weblog. [2] Consultation? Could we do better? Part 1.  Link: Robert Paterson's Weblog. [3] Consultation? Could we do better? Part 2.  Link:  Robert Paterson's Weblog. --Dennis

What's Next for Open Source and Public Media?

I've been consumed with commuting from Idaho to Washington, DC for the past couple of weeks and the run-up to that, so I've been remiss in blogging.  And frankly, I'm even wondering if I can write about radio at all in the next year or so, since some people will try to find meaning and direction for NPR in all that.  So I missed Doc Searls' excellent post in Linux Journal with this title.  At about the time he wrote this, Doc joined Diane Mermigas (below) and Rafat Ali on a panel I moderated at the Public Media 2008 conference in Los Angeles.  Thanks to Todd Mundt, who quotes much of it here, but I'd recommend reading the full text.  Link:  Linux Journal.  Don't miss this one. --Dennis

Public TV Needs Media Need To Join Media Revolution

Diane Mermigas, who participated in a panel I moderated at the Public Media 2008 conference, wrote shortly after that meeting:

Public media has a dilemma. It has been one of the most culturally, intellectually, socially and politically unique entities in the U.S. But it is woefully under-monetized in today’s burgeoning digital world. It doesn’t need to be that way. The powers that be at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Public Broadcasting and public media outlets can lead change by embracing it. ...

... Many of public media’s identifying factors make it a perfect fit for digital interactive applications within flexible definitions of what constitutes non-commercial media. Some of the key change agents public media can leverage are:

* The elevation of quality niche content
* Building social and community networks around particular topics, crusades and events
* Capitalizing on the participatory nature of interactive media
* Connecting related content providers, consumers and purveyors of commerce
* Advertising and sponsorship migrate into interactive marketing and transactions
* Relevance and personalization almost always mean local
* Smart mobile devices will dominate and make everything-to-go ...

Link:  On Media in MediaPost.  --Dennis

Change at National Public Radio

Regular readers of this blog will probably know that I've been a long-time public broadcasting exec in the Northwest.  No one much cares if I'm speaking for a medium-sized public radio operation and a small public television operation, so I've not had to be too careful in those instances where I've departed from pointing at news you need to know and offered my own opinions.  But that's changing.

I've been a member of the National Public Radio board of directors since '05 and its chairman since November.  A few days ago I became its interim chief executive officer at the board's request.  So now it's a little different.  Since some people will take this blog as speaking for that great institution, you should know that I'm speaking here in a personal voice.  That's what blogs are about.

I'm not going to comment on the reasons for this change except to say they were multivariate and that much of what's been speculated about this is dead wrong.  Rather, I'd like to continue on the themes I've raised in this blog in the past because I think they inform the future.  I invite the curious reader to visit John Proffitt's excellent list of articles and posts on the subject of this management change.  This is not a coup by Luddite station CEOs who want to stop or slow down effective responses to very types of disruptive change we've been trying to strategically accommodate.  NPR can't and won't do that.

Sure there is a diversity of opinion about disruptive change within public broadcasting.  A small number of people feel that spending a dollar on emerging media is taking it away from core functions.  Another small number of professionals feel that the legacy media are doomed (see, e.g., Jeff Jarvis's post).  Of most concern, though, is that the largest number of people have no position on this at all because they're "up to their asses in alligators" just trying to make this year's budget come out right.  There is no organized opposition, especially at the station management level, to investments in emerging media.

The drawing on the right (click for larger version) is from an old presentation of mine that illustrates what public media are facing today.  Frankly, most of us still think that the traditional flow of content on the left is valid.  But in fact, everyone is able to play every role, including our listeners and viewers -- and they are doing so with very low barriers to entry.  As Gordon Borrell says, "The deer now have guns."  I won't belabor this, but it is now a very different world from the one in which almost all public media managers learned the business.

In a meeting with the NPR staff on Friday, I talked about there being three layers that we need to consider.  At the top is why we're here at all as a non-profit.  There are surely better formulations, but we make people smarter, better citizens, more culturally engaged.  Let's call this the mission layer.  The next layer is what we do.  For NPR it's journalism -- really good journalism -- and other programming.  Let's call that the content layer.  And then there is where we do it.  Historically, that's been over licensed broadcast transmitters, but online distribution is coming on much faster than broadcasting did in its developing years, so we're doing that also along with satellite and mobile distribution.  Let's call this the distribution layer.

So this isn't a battle between the content layer and the emerging media part of the distribution layer any more than it's a battle between the content layer and transmitters.  People now have and are making a wide variety of choices in how they get programming.  We must make it easy for them to access it.  If we make it a contest between layers, our users will lose and ultimately so will we.

I've been asked to keep NPR moving forward, not march in place, in the relatively short time I've been given to lead the company.  That's not a repudiation of its current direction; to the contrary.  In spite of that time constraint, I think that the great people who make public radio happen at stations and at NPR can make real progress in that time -- especially, as Jeff urges, if we seek out and pay attention to what our listeners are telling us directly and by studying how they allocate their attention.

--Dennis Haarsager

NY Times: Is PBS Still Necessary?

Charles McGrath writes:

For the eighth straight year the Bush administration has ritually proposed taking a hefty whack out of the federal subsidy for public broadcasting. ...  ¶  Every year, though, it gets a little harder to muster the necessary outrage, and now and then a heretical thought presents itself: What if the glory days of public television — the days of “Monty Python,” “Upstairs Downstairs,” “The French Chef” — are past recapturing? Lately the audience for public TV has been shrinking even faster than the audience for the commercial networks. The average PBS show on prime time now scores about a 1.4 Nielsen rating, or roughly what the wrestling show “Friday Night Smackdown” gets. ...

... Considering how much it costs to create new topnotch programming, the best solution to public television’s woes is the one that will probably never happen: more money, not less. ...

Link: New York Times. 

In comparison to public TV, McGrath makes favorable comments about public radio (I'm affiliated with both).  In fact, public television invests less of its economy in national programming than does public radio, though it's relatively small in both cases.  Viewer-sensitive revenue (memberships and the noncommercial advertising we call underwriting) makes up less of public TV's economy (about 40%) than does listener-sensitive revenue in public radio (about 60%).  So one could make an interesting argument -- not one I'll develop here beyond stating the hypothesis -- that public radio stations are closer to their listeners than public television stations are to their viewers. 

Update 19 February 2008:
Also see the comments appended to this NYT article.  --Dennis

Public Media in a Zero-Distance World

Doc Searls begins a post with this title by linking to Michelle Thorne's post, Public Broadcasters Opt for CC (as in Creative Commons) in iCommons.org, itself a worthy reading excursion.  But he goes on to make this interesting observation:

... We’re one good UI away from the cell phone becoming a radio. (Thanks to the iPhone, it already serves as a TV.) And we’re one smart cell company away from radio- and TV-as-we-know-it from being replaced entirely — or from moving up the next step of the evolutionary ladder.  ¶  Public broadcasters know that. That’s one reason they now call themselves “public media”, a move that separates the category from its transport methods. It’s also why they’re thinking hard and long about the role their online transmissions and archives play in a world without physical borders. ...

Link:  The Doc Searls Weblog. 

I'd add that it's not just cell phones, but other portable devices as well that blur the lines among computers, phones, PDAs, etc.  I just got a Nokia N810, a Linux computer the size of a PDA with a spectacular screen and the first decent speakers I've seen in a portable device.  Oh, and its browser supports Flash.  Oh again, it comes with Skype, so it's a WiFi phone.  My intent was for it to replace my HP PDA and a Sprint smartphone with pretty good media software but pathetic speakers.  It lacks PIM software but the media portion is great.  The development community should have a PIM up and running in no time.  I'm using it mostly for radio, email and RSS.  --Dennis

KCRW Launches Amped-Up Internet Radio Player

Eliot Van Buskirk has a post about public radio station KCRW's new (in beta) player.  A number of such efforts are underway in public broadcasting.  He writes:

Santa Monica College's KCRW, which has already attracted a relatively large online following for its webcasts, doubled down on its digital strategy with a new web-based streaming application that lets users choose mix and match radio segments into their own customized stream.  ¶  The service has a slick, easy-to-use, multipane interface with components that slide out of your way as needed.  Segments and mixes can be embedded on blogs and social networks, which should help KCRW's reach grow significantly. ...

Link:  Wired.  Thanks to Arthur Cohen in PRPD News for Programmers for the tip.   --Dennis

Program pledging competing with station pledging?

Wired editor-in-chief and author of The Long Tail book and blog, Chris Anderson listens to public radio via podcasting and writes in his blog about responding to an embedded podcast appeal from This American Life to help with its $100k/year streaming bill but not responding to his local station's pledge week.  He does acknowledge that the money local stations aggregate for TAL far exceeds this $100k, without which that show and others like it wouldn't exist in either broadcast or podcast form. 

Also implied in his comments are a contradiction to the old saw in broadcasting that people listen to radio stations but watch public television programs.  There's a lot of truth in that, but public radio (for those not familiar with me, I manage Northwest Public Radio's stations among other things) is an unusually program-oriented medium, so podcasting works well in that context.  But does our listen-to-radio-stations approach to pledging work against that?

Check out Anderson's posting.  Link:  The Long Tail.  Thanks to Tim Eby for the tip.  --Dennis

Mapping Public Media: Inside and Out

The Center for Social Media at American University is out with a new downloadable report with this title by Jessica Clark.  Here's the executive summary:

The landscape of public media is shifting to accommodate an evolving, always-on digital media landscape shaped significantly by users as well as media-makers. Such a shift demands a remapping of the public media field, a project addressed by the Center for Social Media’s Future of Public Media project. This new territory, which comprises online, film, print and user-generated elements, demands new and interdisciplinary research approaches. This paper examines efforts to examine three public media projects—defined as projects that engage publics for the purpose of informing them and moving them to action—through two contrasting analytical approaches. Case studies by Center for Social Media researchers, with interviews and elements of market and online research, present an “inside” look at the projects under examination, while network and issue mapping tools designed by the Amsterdam-based Govcom.org provide a more distant “outside” assessment of the impact and reach of these projects.  ¶  Comparison of the case studies of the three projects — independent documentary film The War Tapes, PBS documentary and outreach project A Lion in the House, and international blogging site Global Voices—revealed commonalities among these projects, and more generally among contemporary media projects attempting to survive and thrive in the volatile online environment. Emerging public media projects are mission-driven, designed to engage multiple publics, enriched by strategic partnerships and forging new pathways and routines. They also share a number of challenges with both commercial and independent media-makers: spanning multiple platforms, navigating evolving roles for editors and producers, planning for multiple moments of connection and outreach with audiences, staying abreast of ever-shifting technologies and tactics, and grappling with questions of content ownership.  ¶  While the case studies provided a wealth of data—from media-makers’ personal anecdotes to audience statistics to accounts of complex outreach partnerships—the online analysis and mapping tools developed by Govcom.org provided a more quantitative analysis of the online reach of these media projects. The research team, led by University of Amsterdam’s Richard Rogers, has developed a method that “scrapes” data from Google and other online sources, analyzes that data to reveal networks of sites related to particular issues or projects, and then, after content analysis by researchers, displays the data as a series of network maps using a program called ReseauLu. The evolution and use of these tools is discussed below.  ¶  A very different picture of the publics served by the three media projects under examination emerged when the case study accounts were contrasted to the Govcom.org visualizations. This paper examines the differences in approach and results, conflicting accounts of how publics might be understood and quantified, and further directions for research that examines public media.

Link:  Center for Social Media.

Public Media Conference reminder

If you're in public broadcasting and haven't yet registered for the Public Media Conference 08 in L.A. -- the best use of your time this year -- get on the stick!  Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales is the welcome keynoter. And, not that this alone would get you there, but I'll be moderating a panel on "Technology and Trends" 2/21 with Rafat Ali (paidContent.org) and Diane Mermigas (MediaPost) and also doing some kind of presentation for that general session.  They've both forgotten more than I'll ever know about this stuff, so how do you spell entimi... intimm... intimidation?  --Dennis

BBC iPlayer puts rocky start behind...

Daniel Langendorf writes:

The BBC heavily promoted its iPlayer, an online TV catchup service, on TV, in the press, and online during the holiday season. The effort seems to have paid off. Sort of.   ¶  UK Internet traffic to the iPlayer Website increased “14-fold between the week ending 8 December 2007 and the week ending 5 January,” according to Hitwise, and the service ranked as the 80th most visited Website in the U.K., having peaked at No. 62 on New Year’s Day.  ¶  It appears that the BBC has recovered from its rocky online TV start. When the initial iPlayer was launched, it was not without controversy. The BBC was accused of being corrupt due to the player’s reliance on Microsoft technology and lack of Mac/Linux support. UK ISPs were also critical of the iPlayer’s use of peer-to-peer technology and potentially high bandwidth costs. ...

Link:  last100.  --Dennis

Horowitz Assoc.: news video has top online usage

Horowitz Associates has released a study of broadband video consumption on multiple platforms.  It's the first I've seen that gives information about the relative popularity of what people are using.  And it's good news for those of us in public media.  News video segments top the list, moving from 22% to 36% online weekly usage, 2006 to 2007.  That beats "non-professional online videos," which doubled from 15% to 30%.  The report overview says this about motivation:

... While consumption of broadband video has grown, the study shows that television is still the preferred platform for traditional TV content.  The vast majority (70%) of Internet users who watch TV online say do so because they missed the episode on TV.  About two out of ten (18%) of these respondents say they watch TV shows online to watch them a second time (after having watched them on TV), or that they watch TV shows online just when they happen to find them or when someone else tells them about them (20%).  Conversely, one out of ten (13%) Internet users who watch TV shows online say they watch them directly online, and not on regular TV. ...

Link:  Horowitz Associates.  Thanks to Craig Birkmaier on the OpenDTV mail list.  --Dennis

PBCore metadata standard

The PBCore metadata standard is, IMHO, one of the most important and, arguably, the most progressive thing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has ever funded.  It's a necessary tool to enable public media to transition to the digital age -- assuming, of course, that public media's managers can find their way to the digital age. 

Marcia Brooks is directing the project from the Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media at WGBH in Boston and she's written a great article on it for the December 17th issue Current, the public broadcasting newspaper.  Current seems to delay posting its articles online for some reason, so the the Public Television Digital Archive has posted a copy of Get going in metadata today with this amazing free kit! online [PDF].  Nice job, Marcia, and thanks to Nan Rubin for posting this important overview.

Update 29 December 2007:  I see that the PDF has also been posted at the PBCore web site.

Update, 4 January 2008:
An HTML version is now posted at Current.  --Dennis

Public Media 08 registration now open

The best conference in public broadcasting ... er, public media ... is the annual Public Media conference put on by the Integrated Media Association.  This year it will be in Los Angeles from February 19-23.  Registration for the conference is now open.  For more information or to register, use this link.

Although IMA was originally designed as the professional association for webheads in public media, and still serves that function well, I think the conference is particularly important for my fellow station CEOs, in fact there will be a separate CEO seminar on the 19th-20th.  If you can go to only one conference this year, make it this one.  None of us know exactly what tomorrow's public media will be like, but I know in which room it's being invented.

Oh, and Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, is keynoting this year.

See you there.  --Dennis

Who Needs LPFM? - Why Not Just Expand the FM Band?

Says David Oxenford, who writes:

At last Tuesday's FCC meeting, the Commission adopted a controversial order, over the objection of two Commissioners, that could limit the processing of some applications for improvements by some full power FM stations, and would restrict translator applications, all in the name of encouraging Low Power FM (LPFM) stations to provide outlets for expression by groups that cannot get access to full-power radio stations (see our summary of that action here). In recent weeks, two ideas have received some publicity providing an alternative outlet for these prospective local broadcasters - and both provide a simple solution (one more immediate and ad hoc than that other), but both leading to the same result - why not just extend the FM band by using TV channel 6? ...

Link:  Broadcast Law Blog.  No matter how much sense this makes -- and I think it does -- I don't think it has much of a chance.  But I'm concerned that politics is out-pacing science here and that Congress will never adequately fund the FCC to take on the regulatory mess that LPFM brings along for the ride. 

Also see his, FCC Meeting Adopts Rules Favoring LPFM, Restricting Translator Applications, and Possibly Impeding Full Service FM Station Upgrades.  Link:  Broadcast Law Blog.

 

Updated 2 December 2007:
Joel Rose covers the story for National Public Radio.  --Dennis

BBC, ITV and Channel 4 form on-demand service

BBC News reports:

The BBC, ITV and Channel 4 are to launch a joint on-demand service, which will bring together thousands of hours of television programmes in one place.  ¶  The service is set to go live in 2008 and will offer viewers access to current shows and archive material. ...

... The three broadcasters currently offer their own separate on-demand services.  ¶   The BBC's iPlayer and ITV's catch-up service will continue to exist along the new online "aggregator", which will provide a complement to the established providers.  ¶  However, Channel 4's 4oD will no longer be a standalone service once it is incorporated within the project.  ¶  Programming from all three broadcasters will be available for free download, streaming, rental and purchase via the internet, with expansion on to other platforms planned. ...

Link:  BBC.  U.S. public broadcasters are about to be lapped again.

Updated 29 November 2007:
Also see Ryan Jarrett, Finally some sense - BBC, ITV and Channel 4 catch-up services to unite.  Link:  last100.  --Dennis

NPR Music beta, more

Consultant Fred Jacobs has a well-deserved rave review of the new NPR Music site in a post called The Content Mountain.  He writes about why this is important for radio.  Link:  jacoBLOG.

Update:
Daniel Langendorf also has a postive review, NPR opens up NPR Music for our listening pleasure.  Link: last100.  --Dennis

Public radio audience on Sirius, XM

I just bought a new Jeep that came with Sirius Satellite Radio and that and my professional ties to public radio have led to some curiosity about audience levels for the individual public media and classical channels.  The following is from a Spring 2007 Arbitron report (pdf):

• Sirius total, 619400 AQH/6595000 Cume, TSL 11.8 hours
• Sirius 80, Symphony Hall, 2500/57800, TSL 5.4 hours
• Sirius 85, Metropolitan Opera Radio, 600/20700, TSL 3.7 hours
• Sirius 86, Classical Pops, 4000/77500, TSL 6.5 hours
• Sirius 134, NPR Now, 800/47600, TSL 2.1 hours
• Sirius 135, NPR Talk, 600/35000, TSL 2.2 hours
• Sirius 137, CBC Radio One, 100/6700, TSL 1.9 hours
• Sirius 141, BBC World News, 400/19500, TSL 2.6 hours
• XM total, 798900 AQH/10332900 Cume, TSL 9.7 hours
• XM 110, XM Classics, 6900/162000, TSL 5.4 hours
• XM 112, Vox, 600/39100, TSL 1.9 hours
• XM 113, XM Pops, 7600/174500, TSL 5.5 hours
• XM 131, BBC, 800/48000, TSL 2.1 hours
• XM 132, C-SPAN, 700/26800, TSL 3.3 hours
• XM 133, XM Public Radio, 900/48300, TSL 2.3 hours

So on Sirius, the two NPR channels have only a combined 0.2% share of its overall AQH and on XM, the single non-NPR public radio channel has only a 0.1% share!  So much for the Death Star.  There's no music on the Sirius NPR channels and I don't think there is any on the XM public radio channel, but on Sirius, the three classical channels have 5 times the audience of the two NPR channels, and on XM, the three classical channels have nearly 17 times the audience of the single public radio channel.

For an analysis of this satellite radio ratings report overall, see Fred Jacobs', Calling All Satellites.  Link:  JacoBLOG.  --Dennis

NPR Music beta

Congratulations to National Public Radio's Maria Thomas, Sr. V.P., NPR Digital Media, and her team for the launch last week of the NPR Music beta.  I was there for a launch celebration at NPR Hq on Tuesday.  From the news release:

... NPR  Music is a creative collaboration with KEXP and KPLU Seattle; KUT Austin; WBGO Newark; WDUQ Pittsburgh; WFUV and WNYC New York; WGBH Boston; WGUC Cincinnati; Folk Alley.com (WKSU) Kent, Ohio; WXPN Philadelphia, and Minnesota Public Radio. With their deep connection into local arts communities, their incredible music libraries and archives, and their respected on-air hosts and DJs, these stations have invested real energy and resources into the communities they serve.  NPR Music allows you to move beyond the geographic boundaries of radio signals and discover the authentic sense of place created by stations across the country. We expect additional NPR stations and public radio producers, as well as other contributors, to join this collaborative effort in the coming months and years. ...

Link:  NPR.  Early reaction from listeners has been very encouraging.

Disclosure:  I'm on the NPR board of directors and on Wednesday was elected as its chairman for the next 12 months. 

Update:
Also see Rob Paterson's, The New NPR Music Site - A Model for Social Media.  Link:  FASTforward.  --Dennis

Report: How Digital Platforms Change Negotiations between Public Media and Independent Producers

I missed it when released in late spring, but the Center for Social Media at American University released a new report by Pat Aufderheide titled, The New Deal: How Digital Platforms Change Negotiations between Public Media and Independent Producers.  Says the press release:

... The study discovered that television programmers are asking for and obtaining rights for digital distribution, without having concrete plans for distribution on new platforms. The study recommends that producers clarify their expectations and that public television programmers clarify their plans for use of video content. The study concludes that this is an excellent time for documentarians and public media executives to work together on demonstration projects online. ...

Updated 10 November 2007:

Link:  Center for Social Media (pdf).  Important reading for public television types.  Lessons for others as well.

Thanks to Jake Shapiro who, in the comments below, provided a link to an updated version (6/07) of this report.  Link:  Center for Social Media. --Dennis

Why the Internet is good for classical music

Critic Alex Ross has a great article on the salutary impact of the Web on classical music in this week's New Yorker called The Well-Tempered Web.  He provides this in evidence:

... Perhaps the most constructive digitization of classical music is taking place on a Web site called Keeping Score, which is hosted by the San Francisco Symphony. Michael Tilson Thomas, the San Francisco’s music director, has set a new standard for educational programming with a series of behind-the-music radio and television broadcasts. To accompany the TV shows, which delve into canonical works such as Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony and Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring,” Tilson Thomas and the orchestra have set up high-tech pages where listeners can follow the score bar by bar, stop to listen to the conductor’s explanations of the particulars, and see musicians demonstrate how Stravinsky reinvented their instruments. Not since the fifties, when Leonard Bernstein walked across a gigantic blown-up score of Beethoven’s Fifth on the TV show “Omnibus,” has there been such a vividly intelligent introduction to some of the fundamentals of classical music. Tilson Thomas is Bernstein’s most faithful and hopeful follower, and with these programs he is performing radical acts of demystification. ...

But also cautions:

... Those who see the dawning of a new golden age should bear in mind the “Snakes on a Plane” rule: things invariably appear more important on the Internet than they are in the real world. Classical music has experienced waves of technological euphoria in the past: the Edison cylinder, radio, the LP, and the CD were all hailed as redeeming godsends for a kind of music that has always struggled to find its place in American culture. At the end of such bouts of giddiness, classical music somehow always winds up back where it started, in a state of perpetual fret. ...

Link:  The New Yorker.  Ross's blog is, The Rest Is Noise.

This is a must-read piece for music-oriented pubcasters, especially with regard to how the Net enables mini-communities to thrive.  There are lessons to be learned here for web strategies.  --Dennis

Radiohead and why P2P can be a hard habit to break

"Free as in free beer" is such a powerful impulse among us that even when something is offered free for voluntary payment, most people opt for not paying.  Gee, where have I learned that in my public broadcasting career?  The band, Radiohead, is the latest business to discover this as Nate Anderson writes:

Radiohead's innovative digital distribution arrangement for their new album, In Rainbows, lets people pay whatever they want for the music, including nothing at all. Despite that, BitTorrent swapping of the album has been on the level of other major releases. Are people really so cheap that they won't even register with the band in order to snag a free download? The answer appears to be yes. ...

... Once the album became available for download, though, it spilled immediately onto P2P networks, primarily BitTorrent. ...

Link:  Ars Technica. 

Of course, as Radiohead is discovering, that's not to say that the collective economic impact of those who choose to pay isn't a sufficiently compelling business model.  Umair Haque calls this open pricing and points to this post in Valleywag (Radiohead estimates doom record labels):

... What nobody knew was whether fans would pay for a Radiohead album if they didn't have to. Certainly, the record labels had to be hoping they wouldn't. Too bad for the fat cats, because reports are that the average price paid for "In Rainbows" fell between $5 and $8. A low estimate of Radiohead's take in two days is $6 million. Sounds like bands with a following now have permission to skip labels.

Read Haque's analysis in Bubblegeneration, Research Note: Open Pricing and Revolutionizing Value Creation:

... open pricing is the most revolutionary innovation to hit the economy for a long time; how it will absolutely eviscerate massconomy business models; etc.

Also see his Research Note: Death of an Industry and Research Note: Why Radiohead Will Revolutionize Music, also in Bubblegeneration.

  --Dennis (the Dennis who frequently fast-forwards his DVR through commercials to avoid "paying" for what he's watching, but who does contribute to public broadcasting).

Interview with NPR CEO Ken Stern

  Sarah McBride had a nice interview with NPR's CEO, Ken Stern in today's Wall Street Journal.  Unlike many other WSJ content items, this one is not hiding behind DRM.  Link:  Wall Street Journal.  Thanks to Tim Eby for the tip who is (disclosure time), like me, a member of the NPR Board of Directors.  --Dennis

Myth, Media, Meta: Three Information Epochs and What They Mean For Broadcasting

I was happy (though I had to follow two of my tech heroes, John C. Dvorak and Mark Schubin) to give a presentation again this year as part of the Iowa DTV Symposium, a national event held annually in Des Moines and organized by Dan Miller's great staff at Iowa Public Television.  My topic was the title of this post and attempts to use information theory to find a middle ground between legacy media and new media, the former group too often suffering from hubris and the latter often characterized by naïvté.  I made a preliminary series of four posts on this topic back in early June (here's part I and you can get to the other three from it).  My wife the professor and I are writing a book expanding on the topic.  Stay tuned.

I think they'll be posting audio to their web site, but for now, you can look at my PowerPoint deck which I've posted in the Files area on the left of this blog's main page.  Here's the direct link.  --Dennis

Are people who pay for content just chumps?

It's been said many times that content wants to be free.  Or perhaps it's really that we want content to be free. 

Parents who lecture their children on not downloading illegal content are themselves tapping the mute or TiVo fast-forward buttons during commercials, thereby robbing advertisers of some part of the audience they're buying.  That describes my house pretty well.  Voluntary payments don't work very well either.   We pubcasters say that some nine in ten listeners or viewers do not contribute in a given year -- but actually that over-estimates the contributing percentage because the denominator is taken from weekly cume, while annual cume is a much greater number.

We've seen anti-DRM sentiments become an ideology among an influential segment of Internet and DVR users.  Mainstream file-sharers and commercial-skippers all have some personal justification for what they do:  Like, commercials are annoying -- time is precious and skipping saves me 20 minutes an hour -- record companies rip off their artists anyway -- the RIAA and MPAA are bullies -- I've already paid for it here, but want to use it there and their stupid DRM won't let me do that.  Young people generally just hear "blah-blah-blah" when parents warn about downloading movies or music.  You might as well be speaking Latvian. 

Are people who pay for content just chumps?

If so, there  are a lot of content professionals who are depending on those chumps to make a living -- a very few make a very nice living.  Unlike Andrew Keen, I think it's wonderful that amateur content can now be distributed so easily and I'm doing whatever I can to encourage that.  But for those of us in the content business, a way of encouraging both wide distribution and discovery of amateur content and at the same time providing an economic base for excellent professional content is the central problem of our industry today.

The best thing I've read in a long time from a content creator's point of view comes from singer-songwriter Jill Sobule -- though, frankly, I'd not heard of her before this.  She's a professional, but like all professionals, her work needs discovery also.  In an essay titled, Calling All Recording Gurus: I've Got Nothing to Prove, but I Still Need Your Help (See My Video!), she writes of the dilemma for artists like her:

... None of my musician friends are mourning the demise of the record industry. Most of us got crummy deals anyway and never saw a penny of royalties. My nephews expect really expensive birthday gifts from me, as they think that I must be rolling in dough, having been on MTV a few times. I always acquiesce, not wanting to tell them the truth.  ¶  For us, in this YouTube, long-tail, Kara-and-Walt world, it’s an exciting time. But it’s also confusing. How do I release my next recordings? Do I still put out a CD in the traditional way, or just go digital? Do I send demos one last time to the remaining majors or go indie (this time with a company that lasts longer than a year) and get a, say, 50/50 deal? Do I just finance the whole thing myself–musicians, studio, marketing, publicist, radio, promo, video, etc.? And where do I get the money? How do I pay the rent? How do I support my gambling and morphine habits? ...

Link:  All Things Digital.  Yes, watch her video there and go to her web site and download the (legitimately) free 90-minute live performance.  It's terrific!  --Dennis

Antenna advice for improving FM reception

About a month ago, I posted a short article to the Northwest Public Radio weblog on improving FM reception by using a decent antenna -- something that in my experience most listeners neglect.  It's gotten such a good response that I'm repeating it here.
________________________________

I've been reminded recently by conversations with relatives that people are often unaware of the need to use a good antenna for FM reception.  FM frequencies fall between channels 6 and 7 on your television set, so the same principles apply to FM reception as for TV reception.  I received an email yesterday asking about antennas from a listener in Bellingham who is in the "shadow" of Sehome Hill from our KZAZ transmitter on King Mountain.  If you're in such a "shadow" or if you live a long distance from one of our transmitters (or shorter distance from one of our translators or from a lower power station like KZAZ, KNWO or KNWV), outdoor antennas are best.

Here's an expanded version of my reply:

Antenna options depend on the radio.  Most clock radios won’t accept anything other than the strand of wire hanging out the back and most boomboxes rely on a built-in telescoping rod antenna.  However, more sophisticated radios will have either a pair of screw terminals or a coaxial connector similar to what you would find on a television set.

The easiest option is to get an FM “ribbon” antenna (sometimes called a “T antenna”), generally made of “TV twinlead,” at Radio Shack or Wal-Mart.  They’re under $5.  Make sure the end of the lead-in matches the input (screw terminals or coaxial) on your radio.  You can buy them either way.  The coaxial ones are harder to find, but you can easily find a 300-ohm to 75-ohm transformer (sometimes called a “balun”), also for a few bucks, at the same place.  Make sure it is laid out in the shape of a T.  You may need to experiment with orientation for the best reception.  [Click on the image for a larger version.]

If you have a soldering iron, you can even make one out of a discarded piece of 300-ohm TV twinlead.  Cut a piece that's 63 inches long.  Strip off one-half inch of insulation at either end and solder the two wires together at each end.  Now cut one wire in the center of this 62-inch antenna and again strip the insulation back one-half inch.  Solder a random length of twinlead to this and connect the other end to your radio, following the orientation directions above.

An alternate indoor antenna is a set of TV “rabbit ears.”  Extend the elements to 31 inches each and spread them out.  This alternate has the disadvantage of being kind of ugly, but it works well for an indoor option. 

Radio Shack and Amazon also sell small amplified indoor FM antennas for $30-$75, both on the Web only.  They should work well and will definitely look better in your living room, but I haven't tried them.

The very best antenna is a dedicated outdoor FM antenna pointed at the transmitter.  These are not expensive, but installation requires a helper to orient for best reception.  Be careful up on your roof!  An outdoor VHF television antenna is a good substitute, but beware when buying because some VHF TV antennas have a “trap” for FM signals in order to reduce interference to television stations.  Make sure it's rated for FM also.

--Dennis

Single-frequency network proposed for over-the-air transmission in New York City

ION Media Networks (formerly Paxson Communications Corp.) and Richland Towers have announced the completion of successful testing of a single-frequency network (SFN) for New York City.  In brief, a SFN uses multiple synchronized transmitters at different locations, operating on the same frequency, to replicate the coverage of a traditional "big stick" single-transmitter system.  At least one such system for digital television broadcasting is operating in an initial configuration for public television station WPSX at Pennsylvania State University.  From the ION press release:

... The Richland DTx single frequency network consists of a main, high-powered “hub” site in West Orange, N.J., providing coverage to most of the market area; and five low-power DTxT sites that serve the remainder of the area. Multiple rounds of testing were conducted at the main West Orange site and a transmitter site at 4 Times Square in Manhattan. The test teams obtained field measurements from the two sites and compared them to measurements taken from five stations transmitting from the Empire State Building. Field strength, signal quality, reception and all other parameters for the DTx network were comparable to or better than those from the Empire State stations. The test results are being made available to other interested broadcasters. ...

Link to the related article in Broadcast Engineering. 

Public television stations frequently operate with transmitters that are not located at the cluster of antennas used by commercial television stations in a market (my Pullman, Washington station is one such) and therefore operate at a disadvantage in terms of receive antenna orientation.  SFNs offer a solution to this problem.  --Dennis

Teen Radio to Return

Public radio friends should note the "Youth News" item below.  Playing "the radio fortune teller," Bridge Ratings president Dave Van Dyke writes:

... One of biggest - and quietest - radio industry issues to come out of the last ten years has been the theory that one key reason radio is experiencing such attrition from teens and young adults is the perfect storm that was created as technology eclipsed radio's lack of compelling youth radio content. The logic goes that if radio had been a bit more aggressive with radio programming geared to 13-24 year olds over the last ten years, it is possible that radio time-spent-listening among this group would not have fallen so sharply. ...

... I pointed them to a Bridge Ratings' study we published earlier this year that glancingly mentioned some new youth radio formats that had tested extremely well. Not really a mystery since the radio formats were put together and researched with the help of a pretty smart group of average 13-21 year olds.  ¶  Formats of particular interest to these media buyers had working titles of "Youth News" and "Current Blend".  ¶  "Youth News" is fairly easy to figure out - only you wouldn't believe how good it sounded in testing. That's because this new youth information format was written and delivered by no one older than 24 and it had music throughout.  ¶  "Current Blend" is a bit more difficult to decipher. However, I can tell you that it's a music-focused radio format that is not currently heard anywhere on the planet on traditional, satellite or Internet radio! ...

Link:  Navigate the Future.  Encouraging to those who may have written off everyone under 30 to iPods.  Although not aimed at teens to my knowledge, there are a couple of projects in the public radio community aimed at younger audiences.  One such is NPR's Bryant Park Project.  Disclosure: I'm on NPR's board of directors.  --Dennis

Creative Destruction: An Exploratory Look at News on the Internet

Little did I realize reading Joseph Schumpeter as a political theory major in college that his classic "creative destruction" coinage would be applied some 35 years later to news on the Internet.  Thomas E. Patterson has prepared a report with this title from the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.  It was brought to my attention by John Bracken, who has written two posts citing data from the report (on PBS.org and on NPR.org).  Patterson writes:

... This report examines trends in Internet-based news traffic for the purpose of peering into the future of news in America.  In light of the continuing migration of people to online news and the evolving nature of Web technology, our assessments are necessarily preliminary and speculative.  Precise judgments are also made difficult by the range of Internet-based news outlets.  Thousands of siges offer news and news-related content.  Nevertheless, there are emerging patterns.  Like the cable and broadcast revolutions, the Internet revolution is redistributing the news audience in ways beneficial to some news outlets and harmful to others. ...

Link:  Kennedy School of Government [pdf].  NB: The comparative graph is from usage of each site by people who have elected to have the Alexa Toolbar installed in their browsers, so isn't necessarily representative of all users.  --Dennis

Youth Radio: The Power of Collegial Pedagogy

Henry Jenkins has a pair of interesting, if typically long, posts on Youth Radio.  Link:  Confessions of an Aca/Fan, Part One, Part Two.  --Dennis

WOXY.com carried on WVXU-HD2

Former over-the-air commercial broadcaster WOXY, Oxford, Ohio, broadcasting only over the web as woxy.com for the past few years, returns to the air on the HD-2 channel of public radio station WVXU, Cincinnati.  It has an alternative rock format.  This may be the first such combination of non-commercial and commercial radio on one HD Radio station.  See Zachary Breedlove's, Music: (Not) Only in It for the Money.  Link:  CityBeat.  Thanks to Jack Dominic of WCET.  --Dennis

Details on the Noncommercial Filing Window

For only a week this October, the FCC is opening up its first window for filing new noncommercial FM stations in several year, leading to a flurry of activity for many licensees (including my own organization) looking to protect FM translator frequencies or provide new services.  Davis Wright Tremaine has a good overview.  Link:  Broadcast Law Blog. 

Also see More Information on October Filing Window for New Noncommerical FM Radio Stations.  Link:  Broadcast Law Blog.  --Dennis