PBS aims at school video-clip market with tape offer
Originally published in Current, Nov. 9, 1998
In a major departure from usual pricing, PBS Video has begun leasing a 275-tape package of historical documentaries to schools and libraries--the "PBS VIDEOdatabase of America's History and Culture."
Educators buying the package also get access to an expanded electronic index to the tapes--going online this week--that aims to answer teachers' need for short video segments on specific lecture topics.
PBS is responding to the need with the new offering instead of a more elaborate and risky "Learning Port" video-on-demand system proposed by a PBS education task force last year. Private-sector suppliers like the Arizona-based Educational Management Group have also offered video clip services for schools.
Don Jalbert, v.p. for sales and customer service at PBS Video, says he doesn't see EMG as a competitor, but both services address the market for short clips.
At the prices of $3,500 for the first year and $3,000 a year thereafter, PBS Video will lease the 275 cassettes, plus two sets of all print materials, free replacements for lost or broken cassettes, a guaranteed additional 20 hours of new programs per year, a looseleaf index, and access to the more extensive online index. Sets of the tapes can be purchased and used by single schools or shared by groups of schools.
The collection includes some science as well as cultural history, but does not include Nova programs because PBS doesn't hold the rights to sell that series on cassette, according to Jalbert.
In the 1980s and early '90s, edtech experts assumed that teachers' need for short illustrative clips would be met through random-access technologies that could let a teacher call up a video clip almost instantly, without fast-forwarding tape. Indeed, PBS did try publishing condensed versions of The Civil War and Eyes on the Prize on 12-inch videodiscs.
"We thought that was going to be the thing, and it fizzled awfully fast," says Jon Cecil, director of PBS Video.
Too few schools bought the big videodisc players, and their time now has passed, says Jalbert, but it's too early to start publishing school materials on the new, smaller digital videodiscs (DVDs), which do not yet have a proven market in schools.
Most schools do have videocassette players, however, and PBS has been publishing printed indexes with the school version of many documentary cassettes since Ken Burns' The Civil War in 1990. The indexes have been prepared in Boston by a team led by Leah Osterman, according to Cecil.
The indexing technology was the simplest possible. Instead of relying on VCR counters or putting hidden timecodes on the tapes, which would be read with special hardware, PBS placed a small translucent time readout in the bottom right corner of the picture (similar to the counter pictured at left). "You kind of see through it," says Cecil. "Some teachers have said it's distracting--for about 30 seconds."
The teacher looks up a topic in the index, pulls the appropriate tape from the shelf and watches the clock while fast-forwarding to the right segment.
The online version of the index--accessible only for VIDEOdatabase subscribers with passwords--is not only updated more frequently but also adds opportunities for browsing that make it easier to find material, says Cecil. The print index cites 37,000 very specific topics, but the web index in addition lets teachers browse through descriptions of 1,700 "chapters" in the 275 documentaries, as well as alphabetical and chronological listings.
Listings on the web site also are linked to teaching materials that can be printed out from the web.
To help sell the leased package, PBS is giving teachers free 30-day access to the online index.
The index and other print materials give schools some extra value for the tapes, which PBS Video typically prices higher than the home-video versions that are available for some shows. Now, the online index further differentiates the school version. And the online index makes the package eligible for educational funds that are earmarked for technology, according to Jalbert.
Even if the DVD never becomes a common medium in schools, the VIDEOdatabase may eventually end up in a random access medium.
Schools are now beginning to consider buying video servers, according to Cecil, and PBS may soon have to figure out new pricing for school systems that want to put documentaries online for their classrooms. Five years from now, teachers may be downloading segments of tapes from a PBS computer, from one at a local station or from one at school district headquarters, he speculates.
Web page created Feb. 9, 1999
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object to PBS rights leverage and low cassette prices, 1992.