The web "summit" expanded after NPR's M.J. Bear (right) asked Cindy Johanson (background) whether PBS could open its meeting to radio.
Challenge: staying on course in a web world gone manic
Originally published in Current, Feb. 7, 2000
By Steve Behrens and Mike Janssen
A shot of electricity ran through the first Online Summit for both public TV and public radio—seeming confirmation that webheads will surely rule the media world. The morning's news, Jan. 10 [2000], was that America Online was buying one of the more competent giants of the old media world, Time Warner.
That stunner somewhat overshadowed PBS's own Jan. 8 announcement of an AOL deal: a three-year "alliance" that would put links to PBS-program pages on AOL and related web sites.
With this "prime placement" in AOL's pages, along with last fall's "local/national" redesign of PBS Online, local stations' web sites "are now only two clicks away from the 20 to 30 million member subscriber base" of AOL, said John Hollar, PBS executive v.p., learning ventures.
Also within a click or two will be TV program sites from PBS, as well as from Time Warner and other media firms. "Pokemon and Looney Tunes will be there, but there will also be Zoboomafoo and Clifford the Big Red Dog," Hollar told Current.
The two-day PBS/NPR Online Summit itself was indication of the web's rising status in pubcasting. PBS's first annual meeting in 1998 had just 30 attendees, mostly computer specialists; the second drew 120 last year, according to Hollar; and this year, through NPR's cosponsorship, there were 450.
How will public broadcasting fit into this digital scene, with the web's emphasis on sharp dealmaking and big money? The web "visionaries" brought out for the conference's first panel generally advised pubcasters not to try to fit in too well.
Software will allow searching of candidate videos on web
PBS and Wisconsin PTV are among the media organizations planning to adopt a new technology that allows web visitors to search for specific content in online video.
The Wisconsin network hopes to use software from Virage, Inc.[www.virage.com], to give voters searchable access to video interviews, speeches and free-time statements by state legislative candidates this fall, says production chief James Steinbach. The technology may also be used to let educators search for specific information in long-form programs.
PBS Online will begin using the software this spring, said spokesman Kevin Dando. Virage, based in San Mateo, Calif., said Jan. 27 that PBS, Yahoo! and Lifetime are joining ABC, the New York Times, Salon.com and other companies in using the search technology.
The technology is used on the ABC News site to let web visitors search by topic through President Clinton's long and winding State of the Union speech. If you choose the "unemployment rate" option from a menu, you will soon hear a RealAudio clip of the President talk about it. To divide a long video into short, searchable clips, Virage software monitors scene changes in video and recognizes words in audio. Several sites will use Virage technology to do searches of C-SPAN campaign coverage this year.
Lucy Mohl, programming director for media publishing at Real Networks, said that public TV and radio have earned an enviable amount of trust among the increasingly cynical consumers of media, and advised pubcasters to "guard your trust very well."
"NPR and PBS have what every new media operation wants to have, and that is credibility," said David Weir, a founder and now East Coast editorial v.p. of the e-zine Salon, who was once executive v.p. of San Francisco's KQED-FM/TV.
To some extent, pubcasting is a misfit in the web culture, Weir said, being essentially "a nonprofit in an anti-market stance," which clashes with the stock-options mindset of many net professionals.
But pubcasting's credibility comes from that same non-marketplace, nonprofit status, said Chris Ma, senior v.p. of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive. If public broadcasting doesn't protect its distinctiveness, it loses that crediblity. "You are different now, and what you really need to be in the new world is different."
Ma said the Washington Post is likewise trying to protect its reputation for quality and avoid diluting it by letting it appear commonly on many web portals. When Kenneth Starr's report on the Clinton-Lewinsky affair came out, Ma observed, web visitors didn't come to the Post for the report itself—which was available everywhere on the web—but for the analysis by Post writers, Ma said.
Weak spots for pubcasting
To some extent, the web is an open playing field for pubcasters, according to some participants in a roundtable of public radio general managers at the conference. Overseers at the FCC and CPB, who have given guidance in the past, haven't told pubcasters what to do in this new situation, noted Jon Schwartz, an NPR Board member and g.m. of Wyoming Public Radio. And unlike other aspects of public radio, "this is not something that's our own little piece of the world, hidden away," Schwartz said.
But how should stations use the web? Who maintains the sites? Should public radio compete with major news outlets, whose new media personnel and resources dwarf those at many stations? As participants talked over these questions, they named possible weak spots in the system:
- Budget and staff limitations. Keeping a web site fresh can tax a small staff. What do I budget for web development? asked Cleve Callison, g.m. of WMUB in Oxford, Ohio. Callison told Current that he personally maintains the station's web site in short bursts of available time, but wondered if that was enough. "The reason I'm here is to get answers to these questions," he said. After the summit, Callison said he wants to beef up the local content on WMUB's site, and possibly hire a student from his licensee university to keep up the page.
- Old thinking about a new medium. M.J. Bear—NPR's new media chief, who was promoted to v.p., NPR Online, after the conference—said only a third of Internet users have listened to radio online, suggesting that online programmers in public radio should develop web-only material instead of simply streaming their broadcast signal. So far, Bear said, pubradio hasn't ventured there much. Jon McTaggart, MPR's senior v.p. for new media, said the web can be a useful place for programming that attracts listeners but not enough listeners to give it much airtime.
- Weak leadership. "We really need some fresh thinking," said pubradio consultant Mark Fuerst, who told Current that the medium's move online poses "the hardest question that I've ever faced in working in public radio for more than 20 years." Fuerst says one of two things could jumpstart the process: the threat of a crippling blow to public radio's well-being, or a "powerful vision of something positive happening." "That second thing is definitely missing," he said. Schwartz closed the discussion with a challenge. "We've got to be strong," he said. "We can't just kind of hang on and survive."
The deal with AOL
PBS's deal with AOL, negotiated over more than a year, will be worth millions to PBS during the next three years, though Hollar said no dollars are changing hands. Even though the web audience is atomizing into smaller and smaller interest groups, he told Current, a simultaneous "aggregation of distribution" is drawing more and more of its traffic to web sites controlled by big site operators like AOL.
The deal will give public TV "branded content placements" in AOL's Kids Only, Families, and Research & Learn sections, as well as spots in other AOL vehicles—CompuServe and Netscape's Netcenter.com site, Hollar said at the conference. The PBS material generally will not be exclusively available to AOL users—the links will go directly to program sites on the open web.
But AOL will get some exclusive content from PBS producers, such as a new "Kratt's Creature Adventure" feature with Martin and Chris Kratt of the public TV program Zoboomafoo, PBS said. Another thing AOL will get is quick on-air mentions. When public TV broadcasts contain "web marker" promos for web pages, PBS will add language mentioning that viewers can go to "AOL keyword 'PBS'," as well as to PBS Online, Hollar said.
"This opportunity significantly builds the ubiquity of the AOL brand, and enables us to showcase the enhanced and interactive TV viewing experience to more consumers," said Marshall Cohen, AOL senior v.p. of brand development, in PBS's press release.
Cindy Johanson, senior v.p. of Internet and broadband services at PBS, predicted that the network will make additional deals like the one with AOL to bring more traffic to public TV sites.
PBS said that nearly 35,000 visitors to PBS Online had activated the new localization process that allows the PBS server to automatically offer information from the visitors' selected local station whenever the visitor returns to the PBS site. The result is that most PBS Online pages are suddenly "co-branded," featuring the station's name next to PBS's logo. PBS was also asking stations to "co-brand" their own pages, and 55 stations — about a third of them — had done so.
PBS will lay out funds to national producers for more web content, especially material about Election 2000, said Johanson. The network will increasingly launch program-related sites two or three weeks before broadcast, to help promote tune-in, she said. On the revenue side, Hollar said, PBS will move away from banner ads, which are "inconsistent with where we want to be long-term," and toward more aggressive sales of sponsorships of web offerings.
Web page posted Feb. 29, 2000
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