Four provocations
From Mark Fuerst

1. At some recent meeting someone from NPR suggested what we are calling the "2-2-2" approach, which I thought was very impressive: They were suggesting that public broadcasters try to move their online service from what it is now--two visits a month-- to two visits a week and finally to two visits a day. I thought that the approach could be combined with radio and TV occasions for a national campaign to literally, try to have as many people as we think feasible use public broadcasting services twice a day. This would encourage us to think broadly about service platform without seeing them as competitive to one another: we want to reach people at least twice a day on air, on line, or through personal media like podcasts, DVDs and downloads. It would encourage us to think about recycling audience in a new way: Morning Drive to lunch-time news site visits, or ATC to PBS prime time. It would encourage thinking about media as something that people use in different ways during the day--generally choosing the most convenient medium for their needs in the car, in the office, on the run.

2. I think you need to find a way to address the obvious futility of the "everybody do your own website" approach. The evidence of inadequacy is overwhelming: low visitor counts, non-existent business models, small and isolated staffs. After ten years there are still only a handful of stations that have anything resembling a serious "web presence." This is an issue that is damaging public radio's core service: news. Because the system as a whole has not developed an effective news strategy online, "public radio" has very limited online news presence. As this persists other competitors will fill this space. The research we did in January (attached) about the use of public radio Election/Politics web content shows how little impact our online content has even at the best radio stations.

It's not all bad news. MPR's Select A Candidate was a notable success which may point in the direction of opportunity: it was syndicated to public and commercial media regionally or nationally. NPR and maybe APM/MPR are gaining some traction, but neither has achieved the impact that they were hoping for.

3. As a special application of the last point, I hope your group will look at small and medium stations that, I think, cannot grow fast enough to make "multi platform publishing" a reality. All the talk about "multi media publishing" and "distribution through multiple platforms" obscures the reality that most public radio stations have a companion website, a stream and, in some cases, an archive of locally produced programs. That's it, and they will be very hard pressed to do more. Why? Because the vast majority of stations are too small to fund the level of staffing required. This can no longer be viewed as developmental issue, where large stations, funded by CPB, can will lead the way and smaller stations can adopt the best practices discovered by their larger-station colleagues. Even the largest stations with staffs of six to sixteen people working the web are having trouble developing a "web presence." One person shops will never follow that model. One might think that PI would be able to provide a solution for some. They have a reasonable number of affiliates. Yet, for reasons I don't understand, PI clients don't seem to be much better off than the go-it-alones. SRG and "think tank" organizations need to take up these issues more seriously.

4. The greatest revenue opportunities may be the most difficult to discuss: direct personal gifts to programs, networks or program steams through state-of-the-art transaction platforms, aggregating online traffic and underwriting sales. A fair appraisal of opportunity should, I think, include these revenue streams. I have been interested in "the next generation of membership" for several years, and I always felt that, if asked, I would give to NPR and to a program, and to a station. By channeling all my gifts through a local station--which might be great or might be bad--public radio is leaving $100 or more dollars on the table. I felt even more strongly about this after I talked with Chris Trimble from Dartmouth who advised me that successful innovators always place some of their existing revenues at risk.

Mark Fuerst
markfuerst@gmail.com