Digital TV/radio transition funders: Sources: CPB figures for federal aid, NETA figures for state/local aid, and APTS estimate for private-sector giving.
We raised it: $1.5 billion entry fee for digital era
With the ultimate DTV transition coming up in less than five months, Current asked two public TV leaders to reflect on what has already been accomplished to prepare public TV for that transition. Mark Erstling is acting president and CEO of the Association of Public Television Stations (APTS) and Skip Hinton is president of the National Educational Telecommunications Association (NETA), the largest association of public TV stations.
With the Feb. 17 digital switchover rapidly approaching, the impact on public television stations is yet to be determined, but there are a lot of reasons to be hopeful.
As leaders of national organizations that work with stations all around the country, we can appreciate what they and their supporters have accomplished over the past 15 years to prepare us for the DTV era.
Though DTV still has much to reveal about its potential uses, we succeeded in securing $1.5 billion for our technical transition during a period when the technology was just coming together. In 1995, what was called the Grand Alliance — a consortium of technology experts drawn from entities such as MIT and Zenith — agreed upon a digital television technical standard that would change the way media enterprises interact with their viewers. While many observers were touting the picture clarity made possible by high-definition TV, leaders in public broadcasting saw even greater opportunities through multicasting and other content distribution capabilities.
Over the next decade, public broadcasters would develop service models and launch capital campaigns that would position our industry as the content and services leader of the digital transition.
Securing critical investments
In the second half of the 1990s, no one would have believed that our industry would seize upon the promise of digital technology to raise close to $1.5 billion to primarily fund the technical costs of the transition.
But, we did.
Public broadcasting enjoys immense support among Americans, and that support is reflected on Capitol Hill. Public broadcasting’s national organizations are doing our part to translate that popular support into money for stations.
Since fiscal year 2000, through the advocacy of APTS, PBS and NPR, and working with CPB, Congress has invested more than $632.4 million — or 42 percent — of the money raised for public television’s digital transition, according to figures compiled by CPB and NETA.
Local stations secured almost an equal amount, $622.7 million—or 41 percent of DTV money raised—from state and local governments.
Viewers, members and other private donors contributed an estimated $257 million, or about 17 percent of the total raised.
Through $1.26 billion investment in local stations’ digital conversion by states and the federal government, stations purchased transmitters, antennas, towers, digital master control equipment and production systems, according to a survey by NETA. To put these numbers into perspective, the $1.26 billion invested by states and the federal government since FY2000 amounted to nearly 38 percent of the general CPB appropriation over that same period!
Clearly, our industry was effective in making the case to government funders about the tremendous benefits of digital. Our track record in securing this level of support in difficult economic times — with the costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq coupled with disaster recovery efforts like Hurricane Katrina weighing on scarce government resources — gives us reason to be optimistic as we move forward. We just have to make the case.
Developing a new generation of content
As station development professionals know, the key to raising money for something as big as the digital transition was having a good story to tell. During the course of the last 13 years, public broadcasters repeatedly made the case at the local and national levels by focusing on the tangible benefits digital would bring.
In 1988, KCTS in Seattle staked out public television leadership in HD television. That year it produced the nation’s first live HD broadcast of a symphony orchestra concert. Public television stands alone on seizing the full range of opportunities that digital provides: creating compelling HD content; developing new multicast services; datacasting content for education and homeland security; developing websites that allow the audience to stream and download content; and working to develop mobile television.
Our leadership in pushing the envelope of digital technology and making the case to our funders that this technology can be used with positive effects for our communities is impressive. As an industry, we should take pride in the fact that public television launched the first truly multicast channels. Local stations at the forefront include Twin Cities Public Television, which launched the Minnesota Channel to allow nonprofit, educational, governmental and other public service organizations to partner with TPT to create programs that enrich the organization’s community impact. Public television stations in Florida created the Florida Knowledge Network (a comprehensive instructional television for grades K-12, and professional development for teachers), the Florida Channel (a gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Florida Supreme Court’s oral arguments), and programs such as Florida Crossroads and Capitol Update.
The stations’ multicast offerings, coupled with new national programming streams such as V-me, World and Create, truly differentiate us from others. These offerings further our reach and enable us to tell a great public-service story to those in a position to invest in our future. These tangible services also enabled APTS and PBS to reach digital carriage and video-on-demand agreements with NCTA, ACA, Verizon and DirecTV that commercial broadcasters do not enjoy. Public broadcasters have real, exciting programs that content distributors value and want to make available to their subscribers.
Unexpected opportunities
While we knew early on that DTV technology enables multicasting, we were pleasantly surprised to discover new applications — like datacasting — that open a new range of service opportunities for stations. In making the case for continued public support and investment, it was extremely helpful to be able to point to essential non-program-related services that digital public television stations could provide.
Kentucky Educational Television and Nashville Public Television were pioneers in developing datacasting, with great potential to assist public safety agencies. Vegas PBS, Thirteen/WNET, the New Jersey Network and other stations also worked with datacasting to solidify the case that digital public service media will have tangible, positive benefits for communities.
These local datacasting public safety efforts gained national attention through KET’s outreach to Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) — and helped launch APTS’ initiative to use public television datacasting to enhance public alerts and warnings. This outreach culminated in the February 2005 partnership between APTS and the Department of Homeland Security/FEMA that would secure public television’s role in the federal Digital Emergency Alert System (DEAS).
These local and national public safety projects would not have been possible if leaders in public broadcasting had not embraced the digital transition in 1995. Today and in the future, these projects help us make the case by showing the wide range of opportunities presented by digital broadcasting.
Digital age public-service media
We firmly believe that there is a great opportunity for our industry to define itself as public service media for the 21st Century.
Opportunities for expanding our mission. Because the move to digital technology changes the ways stations operate, we are able, as a system, to redeploy our resources and expand stations’ missions.
We have proposed, for example, an initiative called the American Archive, a promising effort to preserve, archive and make available to the public our rich legacy of local and national radio and television content. This will be a demanding undertaking, but creating this digital archive will ensure that our chronicle of our nation’s history is not lost.
Another proposal, for a fiber-optic network faster and more reliable than the Internet, called the National Public Lightpath, would provide significant broadband capabilities in every public media outlet, allowing station professionals to work collaboratively with creative communities to produce the next generation of digital services.
With the capabilities of the Lightpath and the Next Generation Interconnection System (NGIS), stations will be able to collaborate with each other and community partners without geographic restrictions.
Stations across the country are using datacasting to expand their public safety missions. In Nevada, Vegas PBS is a great example of a station using digital technology to expand its mission. It has adopted new distance education, emergency response and workforce development “service portfolios” as part of its digital strategy.
New Jersey Network’s Jobcast service provides workforce skills training on-demand on the Web as well as through broadcasts. In Colorado, Rocky Mountain PBS works with the state Department of Labor and Employment to provide datacast services to as many as 70 workforce one-stop centers in the state.
Kentucky Educational Television is expanding its mission through datacasting. In partnership with the Kentucky Department of Family and Health Services, it transmits up-to-date information from the department and the Centers for Disease Control to hospitals.
While we are only beginning to see the potential of future “killer applications” for digital, it’s encouraging to see the enthusiasm with which stations are developing and pursuing multicasting and datacasting service models.
When it comes to multicasting, our digital carriage agreements with cable, Verizon and DirecTV show that these carriers see that the multicast programming stations are offering is valuable and desired by their communities.
Other digital initiatives that can transform the way stations serve their communities include mobile video, activities of the national producers, and multiplatform distribution business models.
Station operations in the digital age. As a system, we have been ahead of other broadcasters in seizing the opportunities created by digital. That said, we are all aware off short-term challenges posed by the transition, including producers’ need for training so they can make full use of digital technology, and support for metatagging of content and distribution in new digital platforms. At the same time, producers will need to clear additional digital rights to increase its value to teachers, students and other digital consumers.
Development professionals also will have to change how they approach their responsibilities in the digital age. PBS and CPB are reexamining the traditional on-air pledge drive to assess its effectiveness in an age where users have so much control over how they access our programming. Determining new and better practices for development in the digital age is especially important given the nation’s current financial stresses.
Finally, we know that one of digital’s promises is increased operational efficiencies for stations. But realizing economic savings from these efficiencies may be one of the most difficult challenges for the station leader in the digital age. We cannot take lightly that “overhead” and “operational efficiencies” often refer to real people who have made a lifetime commitment to the enterprise of public broadcasting. Retraining and redeploying station professionals to effectively support digital stations must be a high priority for all of us.
ThinkBig about the future
of public-service media
We have come a long way as an industry — far above and beyond what many would have believed possible in 1995. We raised $1.5 billion on a vision of the benefits that digital provides. If we make a commitment to use that same energy and enthusiasm to raise as much funding to create digital content and services, imagine the ways each station could truly leverage its digital assets. We have the infrastructure in place, now we have to ThinkBig and invite our communities to imagine many other ways to use it.
ThinkBig is a grasstops/grassroots campaign launched by APTS, PBS and NPR to secure transformational funding for public service media in the digital age. The campaign has been endorsed by CPB, NETA, the Affinity Group Coalition and many of the affinity groups in public television.
APTS is working with Edelman Public Relations to identify the value proposition and develop the argument for this further funding that appeals to leaders on Capitol Hill.
With its partners NPR and PBS, APTS is also working with Soapbox Consulting to create a Leadership Council, a network of key contacts who will serve as a new army of messengers to carry our message to Congress.
We are bullish on the many ways digital allows stations to expand services and distribution paths. Public television stations should be proud of their preparation for the digital transition in February. The challenges ahead are many but public broadcasting has proven its ability to turn significant challenges into great opportunities.
Web page posted Oct. 11, 2008
Copyright 2008 by Current LLC
