The Mediavore began 7 months ago as an all-volunteer shop, with two guys who already have too much to do.

But Graham Griffith and I think that there’s so much interesting public affairs, music, interviews, discussions, and documentaries on NPR, PBS, APM, PRI, BBC, CBC, TVO, and dozens of select local stations across the country, that we should share what we discover with the smartest and most curious audience there is – the millions of us who consume information voraciously and who count public media as our primary source.

An hour ago, we published our 1,001st post. We’re still an all-volunteer shop of two, communicating between Louisville and Boston via email, Google Talk and Campfire, and we’re still just as overwhelmed by all the great content that floods in every day. We have far more than we have time to post.

It’s a lot of work, but we’re still convinced that it’s important. The value of public media’s content is directly proportional to how widely it’s heard and appreciated. The technology we have today puts nearly everything that every radio and TV station produces in the hands of anyone who wants it.

Seven months ago, we wrote that there’s a real need to curate this stuff to surface the best content; and there’s room for many curators. But, oddly, there are very few. The Newshour with Jim Lehrer consistently discovers resources from radio and TV stations, helping it to cover stories better on its web site.

Then there’s NPR.org, which consistently, perhaps unintentionally, sends the message that there’s no value in offering a video discussion from The Newshour next to a related report it’s produced. NPR implies that listeners who enjoyed a great interview on Fresh Air wouldn’t appreciate watching a video of a different interaction with that same guest on Charlie Rose. NPR implies that a lively discussion about a national environmental issue on Minnesota Public Radio’s Midmorning is only important to Minnesotans.

We use NPR.org only because it’s a prominent example. PRI.org is pretty much all about PRI. MPR.org has unveiled a great new web site today, focusing on what’s important to Minnesotans, but apparently only stuff produced by MPR is important to Minnesotans.

This isn’t criminal behavior; it’s simply a failure to recognize that putting some of the pieces together makes all of it more valuable to our audience. Or maybe it’s a recognition that this is hard to do. And it is – it requires a lot of listening – not only to make basic recommendations, but to make connections that jump across shows, stations, networks.

But is the effort worth it? Yes, we know it is. We have a working model: every public radio and TV schedule in the US.

We say all this not to complain, but to point out an opportunity.

We’re spending somewhere close to $2 billion a year on public media in the US; another $1.5 billion in Canada, and around 4 billion Pounds in Britain. Are we leveraging $10 billion in impact? Couldn’t we leverage much more than that?

About a year ago, I wrote about our decision to end our subscription to cable after 20 years, and rely on off-air DTV and online sources for our viewing. (It was the subject of a piece that ran on CNN Money in February, 2009)

This decision was driven by a couple factors. First, I got tired of paying around $70 a month for access to video content I never watched. I can afford it; I make a lot of money. But what’s the “Pleasure ROI” on about $850/year spent on cable? Well, it’s unbelievably low, even when compared to something as fleeting as two $200 a plate meals. So, what’s the point?

Second, our decision was driven by the vast amount of content now available online, legally: iTunes, Hulu, etc.

In May 2008, we ended our cable TV subscription. We kept the cable Internet service because, at 20 MBps, it’s the fastest service available in our area. (Unbundling cable from Internet costs an extra $10 a month where we live.)

We connected an Eye TV USB HD receiver to an unused Mac G5, connected a small antenna to it, and connected the computer to our 32-inch Samsung HD set.

The end result: the EyeTV’s included software turned the computer into a DVR for viewing/recording/timeshifting over-the-air (OTA) content. The computer’s internet connection delivered all Internet video. Our DVD player connected us to our Netflix habit.

An important caveat, which I noted a year ago: we’re not big fans of live sports, and we don’t watch a lot of live news on TV. If you fall into either category, you probably won’t be happy with the results.

So, in the past year, what have we watched? Nearly everything we wanted to, with a few exceptions, which I’ll note below.

Over-the-air: Despite having all the local channels available to us through our little antenna, we’ve watched only public TV, and our OTA consumption is has been almost exclusively how-to shows: Lidia Bastianich, Rick Steves. The computer records them, and we watch them later.

DVD player: we watched our weird assortment of Netflix videos – travel shows, documentaries, horror movies.

Online: everything else. We watched some episodes of 30 Rock, Family Guy, and a couple vintage shows on Hulu. We subscribed to Top Chef and Project Runway on iTunes (after NBC Universal returned). We bought single episodes of cable series like Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations. We subscribed to video podcasts and watched them full-screen on the TV, from Deutsche Welle to TVO to WineLibraryTV to TED to The Cook and The Chef on Australia’s ABC. We watched tons of streaming video full-screen, ranging from Frontline and NOVA at PBS.org, to live CBC News from Toronto, Montreal, and PEI, BBC World News, Radio-Canada’s 24 hour news network RDI, to live coverage of the Mumbai attacks on Indian TV. And specialty sites delivered a lot of good stuff to us – from the aforementioned TED to Fora.tv, among others.

What have we missed? On election night, I wanted to watch live returns from every possible source all at the same time. With cable, this absurd desire is basically achievable. Without it, you’re left with ABC/NBC/CBS/PBS and a few online sources. We listened to NPR and watched a variety of video with the sound down.

That’s the only time, thus far, where I truly wanted cable. That said, I miss indulging my Barefoot Contessa habit on Food Network, but I had already grown bored of channel-flipping so I was weaned off it long before we got rid of cable.

Now, long-term? This is where it gets interesting. I’m not a big believer that all video is going to go online for free, or even in some advertiser-supported manner. I think a fair amount of stuff will stream free with ads, and I think the iTunes subscription model for series is reasonably viable.

What about the rest? I think cable companies will swallow the online distribution model through new set-top boxes that make watching TV and the Internet a near-seamless experience; and second, they’ll develop content deals with networks and producers to offer a huge array of stuff either through their own on-demand libraries (disastrous) or perhaps more likely, through Internet delivery platforms that are available only to cable subscribers.

This will add the magic element of Actual Revenue You Can See On A Balance Sheet to the online video equation, and most content of consequence will shift here. And again, the new set-tops will make the transition between traditional cable channels and Hulu-style internet delivery basically seamless.

Which means in 5 years, maybe I’ll be back on cable again. This has been my theory for the past two months. Two months from now, I might have a different theory. But that’s why this is fun, right?

Between now and then, we’ll be transitioning to a Mac Mini to reduce the electronic footprint in the living room.

The Sound of Young America host Jesse Thorn commanded a stellar panel at the recent IMA Public Media Conference in Atlanta:

Merlin Mann of 43Folders, Homestar Runner creators Mike and Matt Chapman (aka The Bros. Chaps), and Jeff Olsen, creative director of adultswim.com.

The Sound of Young America

The panelists talked about how to do something on the Internet that people will actually care about, to paraphrase Thorn. Merlin Mann fans might recognize that this was a kind of John the Baptist for a panel that Merlin and John Gruber led at SXSW.

Keith Hopper developed the concept for this session. (I may have contributed the session title “Blow up your Brand” for which I apologize profusely.)

Tod Maffin has the basic details here for CBC and for Radio-Canada.

Notable:

• * 80 job cuts in the newsroom. The actual number of layoffs will be lower after voluntary retirements.
• * Radio One’s The Current, the flagship morning show, will be cut 10%.
• * Radio One regional noon shows cut from 2 hours to one.
• * On Radios One and 2, Outfront, The Point, Inside Track cut, among others. (Some US public radio stations air episodes of Outfront.)
• * Regional “Living” programs canceled on TV
• * Investigative programs Marketplace and Fifth Estate see budget cuts
• * The Border, Being Erica, Little Mosque on the Prairie will have fewer episodes (The Border is getting some airings in the US. Is Mosque? Not sure.)
• * Regional radio cuts aren’t evenly spread. Production centers where the cost per listener is highest get deepest cuts: Sudbury, ON for instance.
• * There was talk of finding synergies between Radios 2 and 3: some sharing of programs? Perhaps the return of the old Saturday run of Radio 3 on Radio 2? The weekend edition of The Signal is cut.
• On the Premiere Chaine, the French regional noon shows will go away, replaced by a national show.
• * Windsor ON’s morning show on the Premiere Chaine will be canceled, replaced by the Toronto morning show.

There is some good news today: Maffin reports Ottawa will continue its expected funding of CBC this year, including the annual supplement of $60 million for programming. The cuts would be worse without this.

Will there be a stink about CBC not getting any bailout money, now that commercial networks Global and CTV have gone crying to the government for money? We’ll see. CBC got hammered for supposedly making the ask, but that was before Global and CTV started begging.

And, after you sell $125 million in assets to make up this year’s deficit, what do you do about next year’s deficit, if there is one? Uh oh.

How to get there: 400 jobs at CBC, more than 330 at Radio-Canada (the French side) and 70 admin positions. Most of the cuts look to come at the network level, with the regions bearing less of the burden (70 job cuts). CBC/Radio-Canada will also sell more real estate and other assets. CBC will announce a voluntary retirement program and leave open positions unfilled, which will reduce the actual number of layoffs; they’ll be announced in May.

Canadians who know, correct me if I’m wrong, but this looks different from the massive cuts of the late 1980’s, which went deep into the regions. After that bloodletting and additional cuts in the 90’s, CBC had slowly rebuilt some of the regional newsgathering/production capability, using supplemental funding from Parliament and other money from cost savings and real estate sales.

It looks as though much of this capacity will stay in place, pending deeper cuts: the supper hour TV newscasts will continue, for instance, and no stations will close. Also relatively unaffected: the CBC Radio One schedule and the regional noon radio talkshows; and the local morning shows, many of which are at or near the top of the ratings.

Again, correct my errors here, but this looks like an effort to cut in such a way that the rebuilding process will be easier once the economy improves. You don’t have to reopen stations you’ve closed down, for instance. It also looks like the way to proceed if one wants to maintain (in some way) the recent increases in local/regional service.

So… what about Radio 3? And, if Radio One emerges somewhat unscathed, does that mean Radio 2 gets a low and tight haircut? Also, the French cuts might be proportional, but Radio-Canada produces more of its own content. Will cuts here be more damaging to the leading position of Radio-Canada in Francophone Canada? Oh, and whither Newsworld? Radio 2’s auxiliary online streams?

All of this will get more clear tomorrow.

My e-reader arrived on Wednesday, so my experience so far is limited, but I have a few observations. First, a long setup.

I haven’t read printed books in some time. Aside from a few keepsake books that have special personal value, or copies that get a fresh reading regularly, I’ve largely divested my book collection, giving hundreds of volumes to charity and the public library. I don’t feel comfortable with the resources required to create a physical book, and I’ve downsized my stuff and my personal space to support a more compact, (hopefully) environmentally friendly lifestyle. While the creation and consumption of digital content also has an environmental impact, I feel marginally more comfortable with that, and I purchase carbon offsets.

My reading, up to now, has been listening, mainly: audiobooks. I have a monthly subscription with Audible.com, and I’ve listened to dozens of audiobooks while in the gym or out walking. (Disclosure: I have a relationship with Audible, as a contract narrator.)

Audiobooks have a number of advantages, but there are some genres that don’t work for me in the audiobook format. Intricate histories are hard for me to follow, probably because I listen to audiobooks while doing other activities, like working out. And Audible’s library currently offers around 50,000 products. The bestsellers are there, and so are the classics, but the catalog isn’t deep, and I’ve been adding more books to my Amazon wishlist in the past two years, reluctantly conceding that I’d need to buy them in book form.

So, enough scene-setting. A few observations about the Kindle 2:

• * Amazon’s store currently offers about 250,000 titles. The first thing I noticed was that every book I’ve dumped into my wishlist is available for the Kindle. It’s surprising how deep a 250,000 volume “library” can be.
• * The buy-and-download-instantly model is almost an exact replica of the iTunes experience, by which I mean, it’s perfect. Buying books is so simple, delivery is effortless, and the result is: I spent $50 on books in the first 20 minutes of Kindle ownership; that makes it dangerous, too, for people like me who like to consume books.
• * To think of the Kindle as simply an e-book reader is to misunderstand the power of the device and its capabilities. Andy Ihnatko still has the best piece on the Kindle, and its true killer app: the Sprint EVDO connection, coupled with a (simple) web browser. This is a simple Internet device, and there’s a lot of power in that.
• * The new design is sleeker, cooler, still not perfect. The five-way toggle switch is annoying from an ergonomic standpoint, the “next page” buttons closer to the bottom of the device than I’d like (I hold it closer to the top, for some reason.) E-ink has to flash the page to display it, and that, combined with the delay is bothersome, but not greatly so. After reading for several minutes, you kind of forget about it.
• The experience of reading on a Kindle is immersive, more so than I expected. It takes some time but the device does seem to melt into the background, in the way that a physical book does. The interface doesn’t strain my eyes, and the reader is light enough to hold and substantial enough to feel like a small book.

I like physical books, but I’m not interested in turning them into a fetish. They aren’t inherently better or more pure than any other kind of book; that’s entirely a matter of personal preference, and I refuse to debate anyone over their personal choice in this matter.

For me, the Kindle is a new way to transport and enjoy books and it has a lot of potential as an always connected Internet device (within Sprint territory).

Note: I bought the Kindle 2 with my own money. I don’t accept review copies of items; actually, I’m not an A-list blogger, so I never get offered review copies of anything.

Organizational must haves: Chief Innovation Officer, Chief Information Architect, Chief Social Officer and Chief Search Engine Optimizer.

It’s important to set online targets. Innovation doesn’t happen on its own. MPR doesn’t set its pageview targets by comparing itself to others in public media: it compares itself to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which still has much higher monthly traffic.

Their innovation plan: “enough with web pages.” Because the next horizon is mobile, organizations should stop building new static web pages, and instead structure and break out content for microformatting. The structure helps create meaningful search results for users and causes your content to rise higher in search.

This thinking extends to site design. Reszler says about 40% of all traffic to the site comes from search engines, so your next redesign must begin with the article page and NOT with “home” because that will be the landing page for close to half of your users. What navigation and links do you have on the article to encourage 1) deeper exploration and 2) a click to the home page?

Reszler recommends the following internal process: Invite, Innovate and Instruct. Brainstorm with staff: what do we have to do in next 3 months to meet audience needs? Empower staff to act on the good ideas.

Interesting aside: MPR mobile site traffic is <1% of all traffic. It’s a growing component of online service and has shown huge growth in the past year, but not yet at MPR.

Thanks to the following twitter people: @candacejeanne, @jsheppa, @mcranevt, @aschweig, @stacybond, @beyondbroadcast, @juliaschrenkler, @matthewtift

John Palfrey
co-director, Berkman Center
author, Born Digital

It’s time to get in front of this mob and call it a parade

There are 1 billion people with access to the Internet. There’s an access gap but there’s also a participation gap.

It’s not just kids who use these tools in sophisticated ways – there are digital settlers who were born in an earlier era, who understand where the Internet is going.

Digital Natives – children born after 1980, who have an environment where they have access to the network.

• * the extent to which identity is created online as well as offline: the two are converged. There is no difference
• * multi-tasking and switch-tasking, and the impact on attention as a result
• * young people presume that the content they’re interacting with is digital. The idea is to share the content
• * young people are very good at working in teams. But the standard education environment is built around competition. Interestingly enough, once students get into the world of work, they’re expected to collaborate

- there’s an international dimension to this community (Global Voices Online is an example)

Myths That Are True

Young people do, in fact, share too much personal information in networked environments, and they don’t understand the consequences of sharing it with unintended audiences.

Young people do take content without paying for it, and share it with others. They know it’s illegal – they’re sticking it to the man. They’re confused abut their rights when it comes to using and remixing content.

Digital natives dip into news they’re interested in, or content that’s been recommended to them by their friends. They don’t go to libraries to research information – they go to Wikipedia and other sources for information, and a small percentage do additional research to verify what they research.

We’ll see people continue to turn to peers to help them discover important things, as a tool to manage information overload.

Young people can be the creators of information, as well as consumers, and we need to provide them with opportunities to do so.

Takeaways
It’s clear that the audience includes young people, and they don’t consider themselves to be just the audience. We’re all creators and audience, and everything is global, even if it crosses local, regional or national lines.

The power in public, private and other collaborations is enormous. There’s so much going on in the public sector that can connect to public media.

Bigger bets are called for at this time. This is, in fact, how people are interacting wth media. So we need to put more wood behind the arrows. This is much more mainstream than we’ve admitted so far

IMA General Session
Joaquin Alvarado
Founding Director of the Institute for Next Generation Internet at San Francisco State University

Technology doesn’t create communities; communities create technologies to stay connected.

National Public Lightpath
There is a solution to the problems of expanding broadband to more Americans
Universities are connected to next-generation networks – Regional Optical Networks
- so many of our stations are on university campuses, connected or potentially connected to these networks

People are searching for information from YouTube – it’s now the second largest search engine on the Internet.

We need to use the word “networked” rather than “digital.” We’ve had digital for 50 years, but are we ready for the network?

Is everything your doing right now ready to be modularized? Your job is not to figure out how people will use it but to make it possible for people to use it.

Stations: Start talking about 10GBps – and start talking about it right now. You want uncompressed video and a superfast network to collaborate with other stations and producers
Schools must have this kind of connectivity – we don’t have the network effect with schools

National Public Lightpath would connect public media, schools, universities
Stations should work with NPL to write an NTIA grant that connects the station, the local schools, adds vital non-profits, and then work with the city or with private contractors to build the network.

We need to get into the networked environment because others are moving very quickly in this space

It’s clear that audience includes young people, and they don’t consider themselves to be just the audience.

The power in public, private and other collaborations is enormous. There’s so much going on in the public sector that can connect to public media.

Bigger bets are called for at this time. This is, in fact, how people are interacting wth media.

Hal Plotkin
ReelChanges.com/reelchanges.org

crowd-funded documentaries
Maryland Public Television and ReelChanges
http://mpt.org/reelchanges

We need new funding mechanisms for high quality, public media projects. Maryland Public Television has launched it today. MPT has developed spots that air before local productions that encourage viewers to see trailers of new shows in production and to support them to make them possible.

Mark Fuerst: We accept that users will have more control over our content. But we continually say you can only support us in very particular ways.

http://spot.us/ is a similar site that hires reporters to report stories once they’ve been funded by listeners.

Maintaining the Firewall and Making Money
Mike Reszler
Tim Roesler
Bryan Moffitt
Tim Olson

Roesler: this [maintaining the firewall] has been less of an issue than we’ve made it out to be. I’ve become very optimistic about public media.

MPR Finance Channel

stock quotes info – very basic, but has generated about $30,000

The Current – enhanced playlist

ecommerce is built into the application
$1,500 monthly package
Reszler: this is also all about search – the search for an artist

“The Current do Groove Mix” – connected to Blue Cross “do” campaign to get people to exercise more. iTunes playlist of local musicians created for users to buy and download

Tim Olson
KQED’s #1 ad sale is the listen live application. it’s sold by week in flat fee chunks.
there is no value-add inventory on the site. There are packages but nothing is “thrown in”

The content verticals on the site conform to the content priorities of KQED – arts, food, science

KQED is doing some interesting work with sponsors to showcase their message – special sponsor messages, and special advertising sections

LENS on Atlanta
Public Broadcasting Atlanta
Milton Clipper, Wayne Sharp and PBA team

the challenge
- how do we evolve as our audience is involving?
- how do we promote discourse and interconnectedness in out increasingly sprawling metro?
- how do we re-connect with our original democratic process?
- how do we use PBA to reconnect the city?

PBA engaged IBM to create a web site and a concept video to demonstrate the potential of LENS

The Lens on Atlanta (in alpha) site focuses on community discussion, groups based on subject and location, blogs, wikis
Fuzebox built the web site platform
LENS will be packaged as an open source package for other stations to use

LENS is working to engage the community to guide the conversation and act as bloggers – reaching out to existing bloggers, using tools and techniques to manage the tone of the conversation. profanity filter, etc., prominent messaging about the rules of engagement, plus user moderation.

Implementing a content strategy that, at least at first, avoids controversial content. PBA won’t introduce this content, but others may do so, and the site will use tools where necessary

PBA will use its brand to establish an independent platform, partner with diverse organizations who will join in the discussion on the site and provide content and answers, host physical gatherings

Sustainability:
- The question is not how do we justify a new business venture, but how can we justify business as usual when everything around us is changing?
Full business plan in place, looking to different funders and donors

Robert Williams
National Public Media
Introducing Public Media Interactive (PMI)

now, NPM is governed and financed by NPR, WGBH and PBS

PMI is announcing an outsourced operations facility on its web site, announced today

page views per month are commonly used as the main metric for underwriting sales.

Ad servers:
- Google Ad Manager: free. a hosted ad management solution
- Atlas, small cost: operated by Microsoft
- DART for Publishers: hosted solution, owned and operated by DoubleClick, now Google.

PMI Network
New network of unsold banner inventory on station/network web sites
sold in conjunction with NPR and PBS display proposals
65/35 revenue split with stations (stations get 65%)
12 founding stations in network
currently >5 million+ impressions/month
$125,000 booked YTD in first 60 days
small up front effort and no work involved after setup
all creative approved to NPR/PBS standards

NPM provides an Atlas tag to stations, which prioritizes local ads and promotions, then fills in with served ads

Outsourced Operations announcement
pilot program launching this month with 10 stations
Goal: to help stations get selling locally without the hassle of managing an ad server or operations team.

Costs
$500 setup
$85/mo up to two display units in each of three web zones

PMI Ops
small to medium stations
stations with little or no local online sales activities or are looking to ramp up
40,000 – 500,000 monthly pageviews

Bryan Moffett, Director Digital Sponsorship Ops
bmoffett@nationalpublicmedia.com

The new study Public Media 2.0: Dynamic, Engaged Publics is released today

What is Public Media 2.0?
Mission: providing content/context for publics to form around shared issues, using new tools and new platforms
Doc Searls – the customer is the new platform
a People-Centric public media

Where is the market failing now?
- investigative reporting
- local news
- public culture, arts
- civic engagement

Two ways to thrive:
- create/curate public media content
- forming partnerships with other organizations

Hybrid projects are beginning to flourish
- professional/amateur
- non-profit/for-profit
- multiplatform

New partners can include policy organizations, cultural organizations, commercial media

What’s needed at the national level
- support for content
- coordination of participatory platforms (should we always depend on YouTube etc)

New roles for stations
- local hubs for public participation
- conveners and collaborators
- aggregators of quality content
- nodes in the national network

The core function of public media 2.0 is to generate publics around issues

Applications
twitter
Ushahidi
Big Art Mob
WhiteHouse.gov
cctvcambridge.org
theworkinggroup.org – built around and extending the PBS “Not in our Town” series on hate crimes

An interesting conversation about partnerships that work and that don’t.

KQED: Tim Olson: blogger network – Bay Area Bites, Quest, Arts – successful model of paid bloggers
Milton Clipper, Public Broadcasting Atlanta – public media should be threaded throughout all aspects of the community
Rob Paterson: Social capital is one of the most important factors in a community; if we can show that we are making an impact in improving/healing the community’s social capital, we’ll have a tangible way of making a difference.
Bruce Theriault: we need to make sure that we can justify continued federal investment, as others claim the mantle of public media
Jake Shapiro: There are organizations that want to work with public media but are growing impatient while public media works out its own issues.

An Overview of Online Activity
Lee Rainie’s slides are available here.

2000
46% of adults use internet
5% broadband at home
50% own cell phone
0% connect to internet on wifi
<10% use cloud
slow stationary connections built around computer

2008
74% adults use internet
58% broadband at home
82% own cell phone
62% connect wirelessly
59% cellphone data
42% pc data card
>53% use cloud
fast, mobile connections, outside servers and storage

IDC says there is 10 fold growth in digital info created, captured, and replicated worldwide from 2006 to 2011

The internet has now surpassed newspapers as the source for national and international news

Forrester: to advertisers, the value of people online is one-tenth the value of people who read magazines and newspapers

News Consumer Typology
traditionalists 46%
integrators 24%
net newsers 14%
disengaged 16% (this cohort is growing faster among the young)

young people rely on their social networks more to keep them informed

The venues of intersecting with information and people multiply and the availability of information expands to all hours of the day and all places we are. – Nielsen Co

People’s vigilance for information changes in two directions:
attention is truncated (continuous partial attention)
attention gets elongated (the age of expert amateurs- Terry Fisher)

The vibrance and immersive qualities of media environments makes them more compelling places to hang out and interact
Metaverse Roadmap Project
virtual worlds
mirror worlds (virtual representations of things that exist in real life- Google Earth)
augmented reality (additional rich data around the virtual representations)
life-logging (Gordon Bell, justin.tv)

The relevance of information improves — search and customization get better as we create the “daily me”

The voice of information democratizes and the visibility of new creators is enhanced. Identity and privacy change.
This is a new 5th Estate, and so far, it’s more Left than Right. Statistically, there are more Republicans online than Democrats, many because of the socioeconomic profile.

Voting on and ventilating about information proliferates as tagging, rating, and commenting occurs.

Social networks become more vivid and meaningful. “Networked Individualism” – Barry Wellman

64% of online teens have created their own profile on a social network site; 35% of adults have done so. Fastest growing cohort on Facebook is women 55+

20% of online adults say they remix content they find online into their own creations

Homo Connectus
Different species with a different sense of…
1) expectation about access to information
2) place and distance
3) presence with others (conversations never end)
4) social networking possibilities
5) capacity to build community
6) possibilities of play
7) time use
personal efficacy

The two-step flow of information has been transformed to at least a four step flow

Challenges of attention
- leverage your traditional platforms
- offer alerts, updates, feeds
- be available in relevant places
- find pathways through users’ social networks
Challenges of acquisition
- be findable in a long-tail world
- pursue new distribution methods
- offer link love for selfish reasons
- participate in the conversation about your work
Challenges of assessment
- honor the ethics of your kind of storytelling
- be transparent, link-friendly, and archive everything
- aggregate the best related work
- when you make mistakes, seek forgiveness
Challenges of assistance
- offer opportunities for feedback
- opportunities for remixing
- opportunities for community building
- be open to the wisdom of crowds

Which reminds me that it’s not a bad idea to revisit that post and offer some impressions after 9 months without cable. (Has it been that long?)

In the last (almost) 5 years I’ve been using Gmail, I’ve used a variety of email software to access it, from Outlook to Thunderbird, Apple Mail to Entourage. And while I’ve never had major issues with how Gmail’s IMAP works, there have been a few annoyances and a variety of tweaks have cleared some of them. but not others.

So, inevitably, I return to the web interface, and that’s why extending the capabilities of desktop software to Gmail in the browser has been at the top of my wishlist.

It’s a beta product and I’ve encountered some minor problems with it, but I’ve not lost any email, and frankly, I’m used to a few quirks with Gears on Google Reader and Docs, so I don’t get too ruffled by it.

I’m about 28,000 feet over eastern Washington state as I write this, and my core tools are open and working: Gmail, Google Docs and Google Reader… all of them running on Gears. It won’t be long before Internet access is available on most domestic mainline aircraft, so we’ll have reached the final frontier. But even then there will always be slow or flaky connections that we encounter – times when it’s easier to “work local” rather than fight the net. The real power of Gears is how it creates a seamless experience, bridging online and offline.

But these are difficult times and NPR has acted prudently to protect its financial position, going forward. The NPR roster of programs has sprawled in the past five years, and some recent investments haven’t paid off in terms of station carriage and listening. This doesn’t mean that the programs were bad, or that the staff lacked talent. But any wise steward of resources will, as quickly and painlessly as possible, end or retool the experiments that don’t work. And in an economic downturn, it makes double sense to focus on the core services.

Day to Day and News and Notes will end early next year. More than 60 people will leave NPR, including a few of the most well-known voices of NPR programs over the decades, a couple of whom I’ve heard, in one capacity or another, since I began listening to public radio at the age of 13.

Local stations around the country have also cut positions and there will be many more such announcements over the coming year. Each job loss represents a talented human being who is being turned loose into a falling economy. This is all quite painful, but let’s hope that the pain we experience now is a downpayment on the future growth and success of NPR and public media.

This is probably one of my favorite TED talks; I’ve watched it three times so far. Liz Diller (DS+R) talks about architecture, design and how it weaves itself into the surrounding environment, and sometimes creates its own environment.

Her talk is fascinating, but the pictures are even better – her renovation of Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, and the breathtaking Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, among others. This is a 20-minute tour inside the mind of a brilliant architect, who solves complex problems of space, materials, gravity, clients. This is a real winner from the large and ever-growing library of intelligence curated by TED.

A great presentation and interview with Brad Anderson, the CEO of Best Buy, about the company’s use of tools like wikis to speed up learning inside the company and improve customer service. There’s some pretty innovative stuff here, like the use of prediction markets to monitor progress on projects.

Peter Hishberg chats with Anderson at Google Zeitgeist about how traditional management structures mesh with these tools that promote the origination of (and follow-through on) initiatives at the frontlines.

Harvard Business Review has explored this in a few articles, but here’s a real life dude on stage who is doing it, you know?

I think the core piece here, for me, is the harnessing of the intelligence of employees at all levels of the enterprise, and the ways in which Best Buy is reaching out to incorporate the intelligence of its audience, like American Public Media and others are doing with Public Insight Journalism, to use just one example from our industry.

Good stuff.

The blog serves a national audience, but the appeal is also local. We want listeners to our three formats (WUOL, WFPL and WFPK) to appreciate public radio more, to discover more of the stuff they enjoy, from segments they may have missed on shows we broadcast, to shows we don’t offer.

But this blog is designed to be national in scope, mining NPR, APM, PRI, CBC, BBC, independent and local shows and pieces from all stations for interesting content. As we grow, maybe you’ll come to think of us as PRX without the massive infrastructure (and royalty payments). The Louisville Public Media brand is minimal because the point is discovering and extending the value of a wealth of public radio (and public TV) content, wherever it comes from.

What do I want from you? Three things.

First, I want tips – pieces you’ve heard, shows that are excellent; particularly local shows. I’m importing every RSS feed from every station and network that I’m aware of (the amount of content we’re generating with $2 billion a year in funding is staggering) but I could benefit from your curation. As the audience for The Mediavore grows, we’ll also depend more and more on readers for suggestions.

Second, if you want to contribute a piece – a single piece, or something regularly – I’d love to talk to you about it. I don’t want to be the sole byline on the site.

Third, once you think it’s good enough, you should place The Mediavore RSS in your web site sidebar somewhere. We hope that The Mediavore will help fans of public radio and TV discover more new stuff, which in turn will deepen their appreciation of public media for the ways in which it enhances their lives.

Public media listeners and viewers have more content available to them than ever before. Hundreds of stations streaming 24/7, and a wealth of talk, newsmagazine and music shows that far exceeds the capacity of local station schedules, and time available to listen.

The Mediavore is designed to weed through the content each day and highlight/aggregate the really great stuff that listeners and viewers shouldn’t miss. It’s launching with a heavy tilt toward news/talk, but we expect to balance it over the next few months with more music and cultural content. We’re also looking to beef up our exploration of content produced by local stations, and we will add much more video content. Our current output is 20-25 posts a week – I expect this to double over the next few months.

Keeping in mind how much work is ahead, we’re still happy to be where we are at launch, and we hope fans of public radio and television will find it useful.

The Mediavore is a service of Louisville Public Media.

MEDIA ADVISORY

November 10, 2008

For immediate release                                                                                                                                     Contact: Lorena Duarte

Twin Cities Public Television Mourns the Loss of
Former Vice President and General Manager Cindy Browne

ST. PAUL—Twin Cities Public Television (tpt) is mourning the loss of Cindy Browne, former tpt Vice President and Station Manager.

Ms. Browne’s tenure at tpt was only one part of a very successful career in public media, one in which she championed the leadership of women, inclusion and community engagement.

Ms. Browne earned her bachelor’s degree in history and an MBA in finance, both from the University of Minnesota.

She began her career at tpt in April of 1973 as receptionist, part-time camera operator, and air control operator. She worked her way up to the position of Vice President and General Manager, a position she held until January 1998, when she was recruited by new Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) President Robert Coonrod.

At CPB she served as both Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer.  She led events intended to educate and motivate the leaders of public television (PTV) stations around the country about the coming digital transition and instigated a series of process improvement efforts in grant-making and publishing to upgrade many of CPB’s internal processes. She also significantly upgraded CPB’s strategic planning and budgeting processes.

In 2000, Ms. Browne took the position of President at Leader Evolution LLC, a consulting practice focused on supporting public broadcasters and other nonprofits. Her clients included Houston PBS and Houston Public Radio, Minnesota Public Radio, Public Radio Capital, Michigan Public Media, Wisconsin Public Television, as well as tpt.

In her capacity, she presented at numerous national public broadcasting conferences including one in 2003 for Partnership Continuum Incorporated. The speech, reprinted by Current Magazine, was titled “Women’s Leadership to the Future of Public Television.”  In it, Ms. Browne was quoted as saying, “Women leaders have an important strategic role to play in the future success of PTV.  The beauty of this situation is that we, and only we, have the power to turn this situation around.”

In August of 2005, Ms. Browne was appointed Executive Director at Iowa Public Radio (IPR).  At the time, IPR was a new structure created to consolidate the public radio stations at Iowa State University, the University of Northern Iowa and the University of Iowa into a statewide network.

She was forced to step down on June 30, 2008 due to the progression of her illness.  At that time, Art Neu of Carroll, chair of the IPR board of directors said, “We are grateful to Cindy Browne for her efforts. In a relatively short time, she brought these stations together to create a unified organization … It’s been a period of tremendous change and tremendous success.”

Ms. Browne will be remembered by her colleagues at tpt as a gracious, powerful and committed leader.  Executive Vice President Bill Hanley says, “Cindy saw leadership not as the top of the mountain, but as one point in a circle.  She accepted both victories and defeats with equal grace and humility.”  And President and CEO Jim Pagliarini says, “The public broadcasting family has lost a beloved friend and an important leader.  Cindy had a quiet passion and commitment for both the cause and the people of public television and radio. One that, all who knew her will remember and cherish.”

Memorial Service to be held 4-8 p.m., Friday, November 14, at Holcomb Henry Boom Funeral Home, 515 Hwy 96, Shoreview. In lieu of flowers, memorials preferred to Twin Cities Public Television, 172 East 4th St., St. Paul, MN 55101 or Iowa Public Radio, 1200 Grand Ave., Des Moines, IA 50309

ABOUT tpt
The mission of Twin Cities Public Television is to “harness the power of television and other media for the public good.” A not for profit educational, civic, and cultural resource, tpt presents original television productions for national and state broadcast. Productions include the Emmy Award winning Benjamin Franklin? the Emmy winning The Forgetting: A Portrait of Alzheimer’s? the Emmy winning Suze Orman: The Laws of Money, The Lessons of Life? the DragonflyTV science series for kids? the popular public affairs program Almanac, and the innovative Minnesota Channel, which magnifies the impact of Minnesota’s finest public service organizations using the power of television. One of the most watched PBS affiliates in the nation, tpt is based in St. Paul and operates seven digital stations in addition to analog channels tpt 2 and tpt 17.

Presented with the “mess” of a cancer diagnosis, and its resurgence, she got to work and created an action plan, complete with a team of traditional and alternative care providers to address each aspect of the disease. Presented with the “mess” of three not-so-friendly station groups, factions engaged in mini-wars ranging from petty to damaging, she sat down and created an action plan for Iowa Public Radio.

That was a crowning achievement in a long career of achievements. By the time she left Iowa Public Radio earlier this year, every element of her plan was complete or nearly so. The sad part is that most action plans against cancer can only lead to battle victories; cancer gets to win the war.

Cindy passed away last night.

If you want a good, 20 minute explanation of the concept of Flow, here’s Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to provide it. It’s great if you’ve not been exposed to this idea about states of intense, sustained creativity. But even if you have a basic working knowledge of Flow, there are still nice tidbits here.

One of my takeaways is a kind of mashup: where flow meets Gary Vaynerchuk’s impressive and arresting talk about personal branding and pursuing the vocation you truly love and desire, at the Web 2.0 Expo.

Watch them back to back and see what you think.

Whatever it is, we’re experimenting with it at WFPL.org. This is the first of two posts about it.

The experiment is a first stab at trying to address three problems: first, public radio web sites are really quite static. Yes, most of us publish all our news there, and WFPL reporters are churning out a lot of stuff every day. Yes, we switch out the boxes and pretty pictures and we update the text.

But compare any public radio web site to a blog like Talking Points Memo. Ignore the point of view, and look at the site. Two thirds of the page is the basic grouping of content call-outs, ads, RSS feeds, etc. It’s the near-static stuff that’s common on most public radio web sites. But what’s the heart of the site? The blog that’s squeezed in the left hand side. New stuff appears there all day, sometimes way into the night. Sure the content is compelling to partisans, but the pace of content itself drives audience. Technorati’s regular State of the Blogosphere reports make that clear: generally, the more fresh content, the bigger the audience.

Second problem: there’s a lot of stuff squirreled away on our internal pages, some of it good, some of it really good. There should be a better way to call out that great stuff on the one page most everyone arrives on (and leaves) than an auto-generated list. Sometimes it’s worth putting the graphic designer to work on a tile box. But often, it’s a piece of content that’s interesting or important right now, not yesterday, not tomorrow.

Third problem: Our radio stations succeed because they have a distinct voice, personality, point of view (I’m not talking politics). Our web sites are like a stainless steel room. All the “furniture” from the radio station is there, but it’s been scrubbed clean of any scuff marks, photos, curtains – all the personality and voice that is the connective tissue of public radio.

Now, users of public radio web sites connect with them for different reasons than they listen to the radio. Their “handling” of the web and radio are different. The architecture of the web is different than the architecture of radio, and we build each differently. But do they have to be that different?

Blogs help because, by their very nature, blogs are more personal (even when authored by many), off-the-cuff, they have a distinct voice. So our ancillary blogs help us create a kind of stationality on the web.

But why does that sense of life and personality exist in a separate place from the main web site? Why couldn’t we find a way to combine them? Community tools do this very nicely, but we think we can approach it from the content side, too. Naturally, I’m not talking about turning our journalism into blogging. But our journalism co-exists with our stationality on the radio; at WFPL, we think it can co-exist on the web.

We’re experimenting with the WFPL Content Concierge as a toe in the water to begin addressing these problems. On Monday, I’ll write about what we’re trying.

Featuring host (and vocalist) Marion Dries of 91.9 WFPK Radio Louisville.

Oh, and to illustrate how great minds think alike:

from The Essential 885 XPN Songs

With fundraising in full swing, we didn’t fully activate the WFPL page until last weekend. (NPR is allowing station groups to operate multiple pages, so our other stations, WFPK and Classical 90.5, will launch as soon as NPR gives the go-ahead.)

NPR has wisely decided to let station pages launch with all community features turned off; stations that don’t have time, personnel, or an interest in pursuing this can let it be, and listeners who choose WXXX as their favorite will still see a page with basic information about the station.

But, more adventurous stations can turn on a number of features – an events listing, blog, photo and video upload – and listeners who “favorite” the station can directly contribute to some of the features.

At Louisville Public Media, we’re throwing a few darts at the wall to see what sticks. As soon as we decompress from the membership campaign, we’ll be actively encouraging listeners to join the community on-air, on our web site and on our twitter feeds. Our blog on the Community site will feature 2 or 3 posts a day on weekdays, and we’ll be adding more pics and videos. We’ll also encourage our staff to join the community – some already have.

I wish community membership at npr.org could port over to our station sites, and there are a number of other quibbles (no html view in the blog editor makes embedding video very hard) but this is a great start and it’s exciting to see a lively community already developing.

Sullivan writes that blogging is jazz to established journalism’s classical music. One doesn’t replace the other, but each requires a different way of performing, a different way of listening and interacting. Each complement and enhance appreciation of the other.

In fact, for all the intense gloom surrounding the news-paper and magazine business, this is actually a golden era for journalism. The blogosphere has added a whole new idiom to the act of writing and has introduced an entirely new generation to nonfiction. It has enabled writers to write out loud in ways never seen or understood before. And yet it has exposed a hunger and need for traditional writing that, in the age of television’s dominance, had seemed on the wane.

Sullivan says that the platform defines the style and interaction.

Reading at a monitor, at a desk, or on an iPhone provokes a querulous, impatient, distracted attitude, a demand for instant, usable information, that is simply not conducive to opening a novel or a favorite magazine on the couch. Reading on paper evokes a more relaxed and meditative response. The message dictates the medium. And each medium has its place—as long as one is not mistaken for the other.

This drags us to a bigger question, one that goes beyond the rather petty distraction of bloggers vs journalism:

Why are we publishing our public radio journalism on a computer screen in almost the exact same way as we publish it to an electrical signal transmitted through the air?

Television requires a different kind of journalism than does radio. So what is the appropriate, legitimate and journalistically sound way for public radio and TV to translate its reporting to the web?

By copying and pasting reporter’s scripts to the site? Probably not. This is a big challenge. What are we dreaming up? What experiments are we conducting? Are we being too prissy and unimaginative about the platform?

To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”

To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.

But a number of public television stations have broadcast the documentary and it’s available online for viewing anytime. Without getting too cliche-heavy, this is something you should see.

Lest I get too prickly about PBS, let me know note how they continue to advance their public service mission by pushing some of their best stuff to other places where people can discover and view it. Frontline’s latest installment of “The Choice” is on YouTube and Hulu, and probably other places. (Hulu directs you back to PBS.org to watch the video, as it does with CBS programs, etc.). And WGBH pushed a few gigabytes of the American Experience presidential profiles to iTunesU, where you can download them, free.

This is the kind of stuff (the content AND the strategy) that makes me proud to be in the business of serving the American people.

Election results are blacked out until local polls close, a law that worked in the days of terrestrial radio and TV, but is now basically unworkable. Newspaper and other media web sites shut down their election coverage until polls close in the far west, and satellite subscribers get blacked out channels, but that will hardly stop bloggers and twitterers, who will be among the principle sources of news for those who want to follow the election as it unfolds.

• * CBC News: Canada Votes
• * The Globe and Mail
• * MediaScout
• * Chantal Hébert (one of the best political columnists in the country)

I’ll call this my Mark Fuerst post. This graph shows pageviews for our Election 2008 page over the last 30 days, ending yesterday. As with most stations, unfortunately, our Election 2008 page has not had much traction, despite lots of on-air promotion (at least once per hour). Mark pointed this out at IMA’s Public Media Conference in February.

What happened last Friday (the first spike) and this Wednesday (the point farthest right) to cause the spikes? Well, certainly the debates, but our big change was shifting from heavy generic promotion of the election site to heavy specific promotion of what we had to offer.

Generic Promotion: the latest election news, issues in-depth, an interactive map to explore races around the country.

Specific Promotion: watch the video of last night’s debate, fact-check the candidate’s statements, read NPR’s political blogs.

Notice, also, the halo effect on Monday and Tuesday – we had increasing pageviews both days after our typical weekend dropoff. These numbers still aren’t great when you consider that our election coverage is so front-and-center on-air, and it’s something listeners reference quite often.

This isn’t rocket science, of course. We avoid generic promos because they’re never as effective as the specific promos. But this is a nice visual illustration of the just how effective they can be, and a reminder that we have to be as diligent about web promotion as we are about every other kind of promotion we do. It means more time crafting and updating promo copy, but ultimately, it means more people find what we’ve worked so hard to create for them.

When I saw news about it yesterday morning, my first thought was Wow, now I can easily listen to NOAA Weather Radio from Little Rock AR. Perhaps not a great reason to spend $5.99 for it. What makes it worth considering is Wunderground’s partnership with RadioTime to offer easy, searchable access to many tens of thousands of Internet radio streams, utilizing RadioTime’s database to display station logos, as well as what’s currently on the air. The app also grabs your GPS location, and serves up a listing of nearby radio stations that stream

I don’t know exactly what the new Public Radio Tuner app from APM will offer (beyond the basic info we’ve heard), but the ability to get a listing of nearby station streams via GPS, and “what’s on” info are two nifty elements that could add some great new functionality to the APM app. RadioTime’s database isn’t always correct, but a closer partnership between station and developer (certainly the case with the APM product) could give stations more control over updating this data. I’m willing to bet APM is planning to include features like this in updated versions.

This whole mobile thing is exciting – it greatly expands our listening options when we’re out and about with our devices (iPhone and others) and when you combine it with the aux jack in your car, it’s an even bigger deal: now it’s not just your iPod’s library playing through the car stereo, now it’s KCRW while you’re driving to work in Louisville KY, WNYC while you’re driving in Chicago because WNYC has The Takeaway, or Chicago Public Radio while you’re walking to work in mid-town Manhattan because they don’t carry The Takeaway.

This is simply the next step in a transformation that’s really nothing new. The Internet doesn’t make the act of broadcasting to listeners obsolete; it probably won’t make the use of AM and FM transmission obsolete for a long time; but it does mean that I’m no longer a prisoner to what one, two or even three public radio stations are offering on the legacy radio in my area. If my local station’s Morning Edition sounds like crap, and I already know what the weather will be today, why wouldn’t I listen to Maureen on KPBS’s Morning Edition on my commute? I have more than a hundred different Morning Editions streaming to me at any given moment in the morning.

Izzi Smith was saying this way back in 2004 and 2005, holding up his Treo at conferences. Remember?

Here’s a sample from our in-studio “Live Lunch” program on WFPK Radio Louisville. The setup is simple – a couple of cameras, with audio piped in from the control room mix. (And, yes, by the way, we’re using two Flip cameras for this.) My personal preference isn’t for a lot of these “slow fade” transitions, but we’re having a good time trying some of this stuff out, and trying to provide a more meaningful experience for the vast majority of our audience not in the studio for the live performance.

We can’t offer long-form video of these concerts without incurring additional rights expenses, but several artists have granted permission for video streaming of one or more of their songs.

Over at Classical 90.5, we’ve tried to take advantage of occasional guest interviews, offering listeners the chance to be viewers.

We’re lucky to have a team of smart people at Louisville Public Media, who understand why this stuff is important, and are willing to learn how to do it.

Marcella Hazan and Faith Willinger are leading lights of Italian cooking, but I think declaring that Mario Batali, Joe Bastianich and his mother Lidia, have wielded enormous influence over America’s understanding and appreciation of Italian food in the past twenty years, is at least defensible.

As business partners, Mario and Joe have opened good restaurants like the two Mozza’s in Los Angeles and Esca, excellent restaurants like Babbo, and controversial restaurants like Del Posto. Thousands have enjoyed Mario’s restaurants, but millions have watched him on Food Network. The “Molto Mario” series began awkwardly, as most Food Network series did back then, but it matured into one of the most enjoyable programs on the channel… Mario holding forth, explaining, evangelizing, cajoling his in-studio friends and celebrities (and his at-home audience) to use fresh ingredients, shop in-season, and enjoy the simple beauty of Italian food.

Mario and Emeril made Food Network – they were on the set almost from day one; perhaps they knew that eventually Food would tire of them. Now, most of Food’s shows feature emaciated, bird-boned presenters who must summon all their energy to open the bag of mesclun mix for their “semi-homemade” creations. Batali still has a place on the network – “Iron Chef America” – and his level of invention and execution make it possible to endure the ridiculous spectacle.

If you’ve ever watched “Molto Mario” you can see instantly that Batali is made for public TV. He combines education, entertainment, good humor and pure joie de vivre in roughly the same measure as Julia Child did in the days of “The French Chef.” (I’ve just refreshed my memory of Julia with 36 episodes from the WGBH DVD’s.) “Molto” wasn’t about food porn, it was about the passion of this big guy who loves to cook with friends hanging around, and wants to share what he knows. Like Julia, Mario’s show was less about flawless performance, than the joy of cooking, come what may.

Batali did another series for Food Network around 2003, called “Ciao America.” I think it’s disappeared now, nearly forgotten, but it shouldn’t be. Mario invited viewers to discover and appreciate the varieties of Italian food in America, with reverence and passion, without gimmickry. The first episode was about pizza and, to this day, I think it’s one of the finest public TV food programs never produced for public TV – not a mere food show, but a documentary. The only thing that approaches it is select episodes of Alton Brown’s “Feasting on Asphalt” series.

Mario has a new second home now, on public TV, and I hope he likes it enough to stay for awhile. Like most of you, I’ve seen only the first episode of “Spain… On the Road Again.” But so far, I’m charmed by it. Batali and Mark Bittman have goofed off on public TV many times before, on Bittman’s own series. Gwyneth Paltrow obviously cares about food, loves Spain, speaks the language; she aint deadweight. And neither is Claudia Bassols, who serves as the honest-to-God link to Spain, as well as lighting up the screen.

That’s a lot of star power for public TV. (There’s a risk that it might actually draw viewers.) Sometimes, it feels a bit too much, like those 70’s movies that featured busloads of Hollywood stars. But the producers have sensibly paired them off for separate adventures, allowing them to reunite at the end of the show. I think there are times where I want to see Bittman and Batali carrying on by themselves because the show would have more focus, but food/travel shows always walk a thin line when it comes to maintaining a focus. This series holds up well, with the first episode serving a nice mix of sights and sounds, along with visits to food producers and two bona fide cooking segments.

The production values preserve the aesthetic of public TV, but still manage to set a higher standard than that to which we’ve been accustomed. Public television has rightly resisted the food porn trend, but, in my opinion, it’s neglected the potential of more lifestyle-oriented shows to create a loyal cadre of viewers. Ina Garten plays gracious host on “Barefoot Contessa” but she makes good food, too, and shows how to do it. The educational mission is still there, with jacked-up entertainment value. Same with the new Batali series.

If Batali decides he wants to stick with us for awhile longer, we could do far worse than re-creating his “Molto Mario” vehicle, or sending him off another quest to discover American traditions. He has a lot to offer our viewers, and that can only be good for us.

All parties agree the long-range future is HD radio. The promise of multiple channels delivering a range of programming remains out of reach. Dana Davis Rehm, NPR senior vice president who oversees program services and audience research, said multicasting on various channels is the eventual answer. “There’s been slower progress on HD adoption than any of us would have hoped.”

The Internet is the answer for the short-term future.

Just how “long-range” is this future where HD Radio is the answer? And, how’s the adoption rate of the “short-term” Internet?

Interestingly, NPR makes special note of NPR staff who are part of the community, an attempt to foster communication between staff and listeners.

NPR’s entry into social media is low key, but it looks to be a nice implementation and there’s room to grow prudently.

Ramsey delivered Saturday’s keynote at the PRPD Conference last Saturday – the audio is now available. Ramsey is the President of Mercury Media Research, and he delivered a compelling call to stations to create new content, experiment, and focus on serving the audience. It was one of the highlights of the conference, and if you missed Ramsey’s talk, it’s well worth a listen. In fact, I think it was one of the best moments of the conference.

PRPD will be posting audio from all the sessions in the coming days, with general sessions and keynotes available to everyone. (disclosure: I’m on the PRPD board)

UPDATE: Thanks to Dan Misener for the link to the mp3 download. It’s the third link I’ve posted – let’s hope it sticks!

Wilson is the Executive Editor of USA Today. Before that, he was the editor of USAToday.com, and he played a key role in USA Today’s much-talked-about web site relaunch last year.

He replaces Maria Thomas, who left to join Etsy earlier this year, ultimately becoming COO.

• * Transcript of Newshour interview with Kinsey Wilson (2005)

It’s a good deal, and users seem to think so, too. In an email to participants last week, Product Manager Demain Perry said that Mobile pageviews grew 20% from July to August, reaching 1 million pageviews for the month. NPR’s latest deal is with AT&T and it puts them front and center on the internet homepage of several of the company’s phones.

Stations – it takes a little work to get the pieces in place for NPR Mobile, but the payoff is another avenue of service to listeners.

I feel a little awkward because APM announced this last Thursday and I’m blogging about it a week later. But I was busy at the programming conference. That’s why this is a blog and not the news, right?

The app has a lot going for it: it will feature audio streams from any public radio station that submits its stream (today is the deadline to be included in the first release, with weekly updates to deliver new streams), and stations get the nice extra of having their logo displayed.

You can get a sneak preview by checking out the MPR Tuner (shown here), released a few days ago. It features Minnesota Public Radio’s three streams; simple and effective. (Search for it on iTunes)

NPR Mobile’s service offers lots functionality to participating stations and end-users – access to updated newscasts, text stories, a link to donate – but it doesn’t include access to station live audio streams.

Streaming audio (and video) is becoming more important than ever in the mobile space, thanks to the explosion in mobile internet use, driven largely by the iPhone but also by other phones and PDA’s. And for the iPhone, apps and services like Public Radio Tuner and NPR Mobile are vital because they enable the iPhone to access streaming content.

If you’re a listener, check to see if your station is partnering with NPR Mobile and watch for the new Public Radio Tuner on the iTunes Store. If you’re a public radio station, you should be partnering with NPR Mobile and with APM.

CPB and the Association of Independents in Radio (AIR) have announced the Public Radio Makers Quest 2.0 to disburse up to $400,000 in grants (each ranging from $20k-$40k) to producers who are “reshaping programming to fit new media.”

Ingrid Lakey, former PD at WETA in Washington and Executive Producer of Justice Talking, is the talent manager for the project.

This is exciting news and is another example of a growing commitment at CPB to “throwing open the doors” as Theriault said in his address this morning.

Promotions
Michigan Radio, Ann Arbor
runner-ups: Oregon Public Broadcasting and WUNC, Chapel Hill

Classical Programming
Classical Minnesota Public Radio (for the third year in a row)
runner-up: WSHU, Fairfield CT

Jazz Programming
KXJZ, Sacramento
runner-up: WNYC, New York

Triple A Programming
KUT, Austin

News/Information Programming
KNAU, Flagstaff AZ
runner-up: North Country Public Radio

On-Air Fundraising
KCRW, Santa Monica AND WGLT, Bloomington/Normal IL
runner-up: WSHU, Fairfield CT

PRPD had a record number of entrants this year, and you’ll be able to hear all the entries on the PRPD web site in the coming days. (I also published this to the PRPD blog)

Our best practices are no longer enough. The one thing that will take us into the new era is to throw open the doors. The real reinvention of public radio will be accomplished as new people with new ideas change what public media is and can be.

Opening to diverse communities: our audience is 82% white and they look like most of us. Not becoming more diverse damages our service to our communities.

Chicago Public Radio’s Vocalo is all about inviting new people in to share their content. WBEZ wants to become necessary to their community. WNYC and PRI’s The Takeaway sounds different because it’s trying to attract a new audience. PRI is using a new metric to measure success – the share of college-degreed listeners, particularly among blacks and hispanics.

In Los Angeles we’re trying to create a new 24/7 English service for Latinos. We have tremendous opportunity to serve this audience. It’s a huge challenge but if we’re successful we can serve new audiences.

WILL’s Youth Media Project is reorienting the station toward the community.

Public radio needs to throw open the doors to young people. Youth Radio is an amazing multimedia center in Berkeley, CA. This isn’t new media to them – it’s just media.

Technology has caught up with our aspirations to serve many audiences with content when they want it.

The broadcast-only world is gone, and we’re now in the world of converged media.

CPB is funding a new project with AIR. AIR will find a dozen producers to create small projects that show us the potential of converged media.

What happens if we don’t open the doors: we will no longer find the support we need and we will be replaced by others who understand the potential of converged media.

We must risk change. We cannot satisfy ourselves with past successes. We must throw open the doors.

Ike had diminished to a tropical depression by the time it came through Louisville, KY yesterday, but it was still an intense experience. We were under a wind warning from noon until 3pm, and during that time, we had winds in excess of 75mph. No rain or thunderstorm activity, just lots of wind. I went out during the windstorm and after to shoot pictures of the damage.

I have more dramatic photos to upload later today, once I don’t have to monitor my battery usage so carefully.

Louisville Courier-Journal coverage

The coming couple of years will see an increase in the availability, and the demand for, more long-form video. If your video strategy involves uploading the 90-second promo for your 60-minute TV series, you’ll need to revisit that strategy.

Back to Chow: these episodes have been around for a little while, but I ran into them only a week ago, and watched all of them in one sitting. (More, please.) I don’t mind the short length because I leave with something substantive, not meaningless promotion for something I have to watch in another context.