Converge

I’ve already written about Ning and it’s potential for public media, from social networking at conferences to the platform for your station’s public forum.

Rob Paterson mentioned his plan to use Ning for a project in the comments, and now he’s posted in great detail on how he and KETC, and a larger community of public media folks (myself included) are using Ning to track an important initiative that KETC is undertaking to address the sub-prime mortgage crisis. This project is one to watch.

So, you have everyone at KETC, you have Rob, you have other partners, and you have a small group of public media “advisors” around the country - how do you keep everyone on the same page? Rob’s screenshots shows the power of Ning’s platform - you can see how they’re making use of internal blogs, asking questions and fomenting discussion in the forums, embedding clips of content as it’s created.

This is exciting stuff. You can do it with Basecamp and other tools, but Ning adds a social wrapper the project management that’s going on here.

I’m not a paid Ning spokesperson, nor do I wish to be, but I’m enthusiastic about the potential uses for this tool.

Nice piece by Rob Bole, of One Economy (described as a global nonprofit using technology to improve the lives of low income people), describing ways in which public media can gain more traction in a diverse and jam-packed media landscape.

Rob offers some thoughts on how he thinks public media can leverage its high quality content online, partnering with new media companies who are starving for this kind of stuff, find more creative and engaging formats for that content, and market it. That way, quality audio and video from public media “infects” a marketplace that needs it and wants it.

Rob dropped me an email yesterday and said he’s finding that his work with One Economy is starting to intersect with public media, which reminds me of one of the meta-discussions at Beyond Broadcast: what is public media? There’s a growing recognition that it’s much bigger than the government sanctioned media outlets that call themselves public broadcasting.

Here’s his post.

Remember this? If you do, you must have a long memory. “The Machine that Changed the World” is probably the most complete documentary created about the history of the computer; it aired on PBS in 1992 and it’s been nearly impossible to find since then. What’s more, the documentary features interviews with the pioneers of modern computing, a number of whom have since passed away.

Andy Baio, Simon Willison and Jesse Legg have tracked down and digitized all five parts of the documentary, and you can find them on Viddler or on BitTorrent (not that I have any idea what BitTorrent is :))

Baio has included detailed notes for each episode, along with the promise to remove all of it immediately, should the content owners “reach out” to him, or if the documentary comes back in print again.

I vaguely remember catching one or two of these episodes, long ago on WTTW. So this is my first chance to see the entire series. This kind of stuff is what the Internets are for, people.

The video says it all - thanks to PRX and Launch Production (as well as CPB) for all the hard work of recruiting these talents!

Diane Mermigas has a great piece exploring ways for public media to monetize its content and generate new revenues - something a lot of us are thinking about… well, right about now.

Her strong opening line: Nonprofit public media–and most especially public broadcasting–will embrace interactive Web tools that connect companies, producers and distributors of content and their target consumers in ways they once considered “commercial.” Three words of advice: Get over it.

She proceeds to list a number of those “formerly commercial” opportunities, each of which arises from either the quality content we’re already creating, or new initiatives we have underway to explore other platforms.

Her recommendations include better systems to acquire and process donations and contributions, stepping beyond the traditional concepts of membership, perhaps even a central fundraising mechanism; monetizing the connections we’re building with new tools like twitter and Facebook; and getting content out to third parties like Hulu and iTunes, where people can purchase it.

Mermigas offers only a couple examples of ways we’re currently generating revenue from our content, but in truth, there are only a few. She notes there are a lot of interesting things we’re doing that could be revenue generators, from our social engagement on twitter, to signature content we create.

And: An estimated $3.5 trillion of available investment funds are on the sidelines in the U.S.–as much as $40 trillion worldwide–as a result of the credit crunch, cautious lending and economic turmoil. There is a precedent for conditional, nonprofit investing that simultaneously advances social goals and business interests.

Mermigas isn’t giving us all the answers; her post encourages us to think again about what we’re doing and how we might pay for it.

It’s worth a close read.

Dennis Haarsager has introduced me and perhaps many others to the excellent analysis of Diane Mermigas through his blog Technology360. Some of you will remember Diane from her appearances at the Public Media Conference, most recently this last February.

Note: Here at WFPL/Louisville Public Media, we’re pleased to be listed among her examples of public media engagement.

It should be sometime between 2015 and 2020, says the Digital Radio Working Group, in its interim report. The Guardian reports that, by then, all the national, regional and major local stations (BBC Local Radio and others) would have migrated to DAB.

But this wouldn’t necessarily be the end of analog FM - the interim report says the legacy band would still be home to small local or community radio broadcasters.

The unresolved issues will sound familiar: automobile manufacturers aren’t including digital radios standard in all new cars; DAB service doesn’t reach the entire country (although it’s now at 90% penetration and will reach 93% by the end of 2008); whether the government might help those who can’t afford a new radio.

Digital radio has a higher penetration in Britain than in the US. The latest research shows 22% of individuals in England own a digital radio (lower in Scotland and Wales), and 34% have listened to digital radio on their televisions (Freeview and Sky). These higher numbers when compared with the US result from a number of factors - including, most likely, more effective marketing, as well as the considerable investment the BBC and other broadcasters have made in developing new content for DAB.

In keeping with my recent obsession interest in long-form video, here’s a weekend video pick that may take a few weekends to consume. CUNY Professor David Harvey is making all 26 hours of his lectures on Marx’s Capital available online. They’re on iTunes, too.

This is a guy who has been teaching Marx for 40 years, so we can safely assume that he has it down by now. Two episodes are online as I write this. I’ve been watching the first episode, and it’s good stuff. Reminds me of my days minoring in Econ in college, except that this is interesting.

Thanks to Open Culture for serving up this tasty platter of Communism. BTW, if you’re in the market for smart content, you should chain yourself to this web site; they’re always finding something interesting.

Rob Paterson has posted a presentation on the project he’s working on with the team at KETC in St. Louis. It’s quite impressive, with interesting partnerships, including with an online newspaper, and a well-chosen first issue: the subprime mortgage crisis.

It looks like they’re calling the concept 9Network (I love the name). This is a multi-layered initiative that draws on the strength of the television operation (and 9 STL is doing pretty well) and weaves into the strengths of the community. The result is a network mobilized to serve the community: public media.

This is an initiative to watch and to shamelessly copy.

I’ve already noted some of our early video work, mainly using the Flip cam. One of our reporters, Gabe Bullard, has some professional experience with video, and has been training the news team to take effective videos.

None of these examples is perfect (although each is better than what I could do) but I want to share them so you can see ways we’re playing with the medium. We’ve been experimenting in the following ways:

• - what kind of video content can enhance a particular story we’re doing
• - how to juggle the responsibility of collecting good audio, conducting a good interview, along with handling a camera
• - workflow: the extra time required to edit and produce video; when overlaying the professional audio track on the video is worth the extra time, etc.

Our approach has been simple: give it a shot, see what happens, learn what works or what doesn’t, go out and try it again. So far, the reporters seem enthusiastic about being able to add another dimension to their reporting.

YouTube is doing away with it’s 10-minute posting limit, allowing a new maximum file size of 1 GB. Silicon Alley Insider has the story, noting this test applies only to “content partners,” but this has important medium-term implications for public media, and it signals (I hope) a more nuanced view of online video than the “people only want short clips” mantra.

There are two great pieces on this: Mark Cuban goes at this story from a business angle, arguing that Hulu is kicking YouTube’s butt because it has better content, controls the content, and therefore can monetize it effectively. Very interesting argument.

Robert Scoble looks at it from the view of a content producer. He writes that YouTube’s decision is smart because long-form content draws fewer viewers at present, but far more engaged viewers, and that means an audience that’s arguably more receptive to an advertiser’s message. “Longform wins and wins big.”

Public Media takeaways:

• *If you have a content partner relationship with YouTube, you may now have, or might soon have, the option to offer more long-form content on YouTube. That’s a good thing because we have a lot of that stuff - more long than short - in our archives.
• *There is an audience for long-form video. Yes, it’s a smaller audience than the millions who might view a 2-minute clip of a cat playing the piano. But, the audience is more engaged… cares more about that content… has likely sought it out… and wants to see it all.
• *The widespread availability of the “full-screen toggle” and the media center systems that marry the TV with the computer are making for a much different online viewing experience - one that’s closer to TV, and one that’s likely to result in longer average viewing times for online video.
• *Better broadband in the home and on the go is creating the possibility of two very different kinds of video consumption experiences. Video viewed on mobile devices is often short-form; even with EVDO and HSDPA, it’s still easier to download and manage shorter clips on mobile devices (although this is changing). At home, there are a small but growing number of users (myself included) that get almost all their video from online sources like Hulu and iTunes. The two minute clip is cute, but we’re searching for the real thing, not a tiny slice.

There is a market for the long-form stuff your station or network is producing, and although it’s small, these folks are your core - your members (or should-be-members) - and the audience for long-form will only grow.

Here’s the online video I’ve watched in the past three days:

• The Cook and the Chef (ABC Australia) 26 minutes
• Check Please Bay Area (KQED) 26 minutes
• ScobleizerTV: Bluepulse (FastCompany.tv) 30 minutes
• WineLibraryTV (WineLibrary) 20 minutes
• TED Talks: Chris Jordan (TED) (in HD) 12 minutes

Last week, I watched Top Chef online (60 minutes) and I have an hour-long video lecture sitting on iTunes, waiting for this weekend.

I’m not going to try to pass myself off as the mainstream of society, but I want to make this point:

We should be prepared to recognize that it’s quite likely the 5-minute video podcast of our hour-long show is reaching people who either don’t really care that much about our content, or it’s angering our core audience who have accessed it hoping to see all of it, and who are willing to engage with our content on a deep level, and derive deep benefit from it.

We’ve gone through this already with audio podcasts. Some stuff is just made to be short - Story of the Day, alt.npr’s Groove Salad Pick of the Week, etc. Some pieces of long-form shows are discreet elements - perfect for excerpting. But most of the time, if we package 5 minutes out of an hour long show and upload, all we do is make people mad.

Public media, in aggregate, has the deepest, richest, most important content archive in the world. People want to hear and see this stuff like you wouldn’t believe. That’s why initiatives like the BBC’s, to make it’s ENTIRE archive (kind of mind-boggling) available online are so important, or PBS’s agreement with Hulu to put several shows online. And have you seen all the stuff on iTunesU? Tons of video, including lots from public media, much of it long-form.

I don’t want to downplay short-form content; but I want to emphasize that there’s an audience for both - and when it comes to the kind of people we want to reach, as public media entities, there’s tremendous opportunity in long-form content that we’ve not tapped.

That’s what I think… but, more important, what do you think? Please comment!

Conference organizers are always trying to make their event have an impact well beyond the actual conference. Ning’s “Make your own social network” product is a good way to do that.

Beyond Broadcast used it for yesterday’s conference; WAMU also uses it for its forum called “The Conversation.” Check out the sites. They look great. They have all kinds of functionality - profiles, discussions, groups, among other things.

The set up is just familiar enough that attendees won’t be scared off by it, and can interact with that at whatever level they prefer. Beyond Broadcast has always made great use of these tools - essentially handing them over to conference-goers and letting them make their own online/offline groups, enter their information, etc.

The first two years, the conference relied on a wiki. Using a social network is a step forward: some people are afraid of the arcane wiki markup language, and products like Ning have more versatility.

IMA used a wiki for its last Public Media Conference; for the next one, they might want to try a social network. PRPD is always looking for ways to keep members connected - hmm… I’m just saying…

You can explore all kinds of stuff tagged by attendees here.

UPDATE: Rob Paterson says KETC is going to use Ning for its Mortgage Project.