Mountain Lake PBS Productions » Future of public media

Buckle up: Traditional TV is in for a heck of a ride

production — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 21:48:17 +0000

Good overview on where media may be headed. “MSO” refers to multiple system operators, the big cable companies.

The first wave of commercialization on the Internet had a tremendous impact on our lives and has disrupted most — if not all — industry value chains. The print industry was in the eye of the storm, with decline in readers and advertising budgets forcing many major magazines and newspapers to shut down, while the survivors continue to scramble to deal with the disruption. The primary reasons for the debacle of the print industry were:

High fixed cost structures left incumbents unable to match the niche segmentation requirement and accountability benefits of online advertising

Professional publishers denied consumers’ appetite for short form and user-generated content

High debt loads on the legacy businesses created an inability to cannibalize core revenues

Continued…

via gigaom.com

Joe Berlinger’s case yields preliminary “wins” for both sides

production — Sat, 17 Jul 2010 21:53:58 +0000

Both sides have claimed early victories in the case of documentarian Joe Berlinger vs. Chevron over access to the raw footage he shot for his expose “Crude” on Amazonian oil exploitation. I’ve blogged about the case and the filmmaking community reaction here.

On Thursday, the appeals judge ruled that Berlinger must turn over Crude footage that does not appear in any public version of the film’s release if it shows the counsel for the plaintiffs in the Lago Agrio class action lawsuit against Chevron or any experts or Ecuadorian government officials involved in that case.

This is bad news for the plaintiffs in that case, and likely good news for Chevron. Thankfully, the court also found that Chevron had to use the footage strictly for legal defense purposes and could not use if for marketing or other PR purposes. But whether this decision means that filmmakers can rest assured that their footage is safe from similar “takings” is still pretty unclear.

As for the case’s potential use as precedence on non-confidential information and journalist’s privilege in the future, Floyd Abrams, the famed First Amendment lawyer representing the media amici, cautioned that a ruling alone is not enough grounds to gauge its future applications. “We have to wait for the opinion of the court to see how they applied the law,” Abrams said. “It’s too early to tell where we’re going in this area.”

via money.cnn.com

Berlinger himself seems both confident that the court will ultimately uphold the narrowing of the original request and the difficulty of any court appeal to prevail:

Most appeals are unsuccessful and the appealing party has a lot to prove. I was very relieved the court seemed to be sympathetic to my primary concerns about the case. Nobody expects the decision to be completely reversed. Having covered the legal process, I know there are times you want journalists to be compelled. But it can’t just be a fishing expedition. If I knew I had any evidence that was exculpatory, I would want the footage to be turned over. But only if the First Amendment standards of true relevancy and exclusive access of information are met.

via thr.esq

iPhone HD film-making has arrived!

production — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 18:59:47 +0000

Look out – here come’s mobile film-making! No excuses – the editing application is in the phone!

via vimeo.com

Let’s Put the ‘Public’ back in Public Broadcasting

production — Fri, 21 May 2010 00:49:55 +0000

I usually try to shorten reposted blogs, but this Gwen Ifill/Jay Rosen dialogue has really caught my interest. I’m convinced that public media needs to be looking at itself HARDER and with more real concern than we are. Because the tidal wave is about to wash over us… (for more background on the Ifill/Rosen story click on the “The Nobility is Annoyed” link near the bottom)

Cutting edge… 1962

Yesterday, while I was sitting at my kitchen table typing out my angry screed about Gwen Ifill, I was also listening to NPR, as I do every morning.

NPR happened to be running their annual beg-a-thon, their fundraising drive, which reminded me that Public Radio and PBS, the PUBLIC Broadcasting Corporation, are paid for by us, the listeners, or viewers. That is, PBS is ‘our’ network. Viacom may belong to Sumner Redstone and NBC may soon belong to Comcast, but PBS belongs to us. As Ronald Reagan said, “I paid for that microphone”.

This is particularly annoying when it comes to Ms. Ifill and the pure arrogance of PBS.

Initially irritated with Ms. Ifill and her cavalier treatment of Prof. Jay Rosen, I posted a response on her PBS’s website, on which she writes a blog. I posted a response because the blog calls for comments. And even if responses are limited to 500 characters (think of this as a kind of super-twitter, I suppose), I was rather astonished that Ms. Ifill did not deign to publish my response. I was so astonished, I posted again. In fact, I posted five times.

Nothing.

Now, what responses did Ms. Ifill choose to post?

Here they are:

thank you Gwen the lone voice whispering reason in the wilderness

and

Thank you for your good job of hosting and presenting the views of the reporters on washington week. It is one of my favorite media presentations. I am not one who is pleased with the divergence from “Cronkite” news to opinion dominated media programs. I applaud the program and your hosting of it. I will continue to be a faithful viewer.

or this one:

Double thank you for reasoned, focused, in-depth reporting and analysis. Thank you for not letting us know your own opinions, and thank you for giving me the information I need to make up my own mind. Thank you for being you. We love you for your generosity of spirit and for being professional in your work. And lastly, thank God for PBS which allows us to get NEWS and not opinions! What in the world would we do without you.

You see. And all this time I thought Ms. Ifill was working for “Public” broadcasting.
She is not.

She is working for Pravada. Or so she seems to believe. Perhaps she has confused ‘public’ broadcasting with ‘The People’s Broadcasting’ as in ‘The People’s Democratic Republic of China Broadcasting’.

Now, here is the interesting thing about ‘Public’ Broadcasting.

When it was founded in the 1960s, (thank you Ed Murrow), the technology of television and video was so expensive and so complex that it cost millions (even a lot then!) to put someone on the air and push that image through the em spectrum into millions of homes. So PBS gave voice to those who could not get onto NBC or ABC or CBS (as that was all there was). It was a good idea for 1962.

But that was a long time ago.

The technology has changed.

Today, the Public uploads 23 hours of video to YouTube every minute.

The Public posts 240 million blogs on the web.

The Public has something to say.

Perhaps in the 21st century Public Broadcasting should be reflective of what the Public is talking about. Perhaps Public Broadcasting should put itself front and center of the new technologies that are liberating millions of voices. Perhaps Public Broadcasting could be about becoming a publisher and editor for those millions of voices and giving them a larger and more focused platform than YouTube does, as opposed to becoming a highly controlled vehicle for Ms. Ifill to express her opinions and bathe herself in praise.

The Public has a voice and an opinion and wants to be heard. Freed of the constraints of the need to sell commercial time and appeal to the largest possible audience, perhaps Public Broadcasting could place itself on the cutting edge of the obvious revolution that is happening before our eyes in public discourse and become the pinnacle of that vibrant discussion.

This, I think, we would all be more than happy to pay for.

Instead, what is our money buying us?

Gwen Ifill… that ‘one voice whispering in the wilderness’.

Come on.

Lone Voice?

Wilderness?

Related posts:

The Nobility Is Annoyed Oh no, Ms Ifill… PBS’ Gwen Ifill is annoyed….

Al Atwitter tell me something…. I was on the Curtis Sliwa…

Hitler & Twitter Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Fuhrer…. (25) New technologies…

Should News Take Place in the Public Place? Everyone has a story to tell… The Knight Foundation…

The BBC’s “Digital Revolution” Think ‘documentary filmmaker’ and you conjure up images of the…

via rosenblumtv.com

Lobby group wants to make docs a priority for Public Television

production — Fri, 14 May 2010 03:41:41 +0000

This group is looking worldwide, but I wonder how PBS might respond to this group’s plea.

Lobby group wants to make docs a priority for PSBs

by Kelly Anderson

At the recent Hot Docs festival, MercuryMedia CEO Tim Sparke took the opportunity to announce the launch of the Documentary Distributors’ Association, a group that aims to lobby public service broadcasters to consider airing more documentaries.

Sparke says the idea behind the Documentary Distributor’ Association came from MercuryMedia chairman and former ITV director of television Simon Shaps. “He felt it was something that the industry really needed,” says Sparke. Shaps will be chairman of the DDA, while Sparke’s role right now is to get the word out and get the first 10 distributor members on board.

The main goal is to approach public service broadcasters to get docs back on their schedules. “It’s about documentary fighting – and I use that word guardedly – for an enhanced position within television schedules and on other platforms,” says Sparke. “There’s no doubt in my mind that television is still the preeminent place for telling people about what’s going on in the world and documentary is the single most important tool [for] telling people that.”

CTD…

via realscreen.com

Ouch! “Need to Know” takes one for the team!

production — Wed, 12 May 2010 21:02:22 +0000

Washington Post Critic takes on PBS for replacing Moyers with Need to Know:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/05/10/AR2010051005113.html

I’m not sure it is really deserved. Watch here and decide for yourself: http://video.mountainlake.org/program/1458405365/

via video.mountainlake.org

PBS Revolution Discussion Continued…

production — Wed, 05 May 2010 13:53:29 +0000

Below is a thread that began several weeks ago (as reported here and here) on Revolution PBS, an anonymous blog. I’m picking up the thread mid-stream. If you haven’t seen the beginning, you can start with my post linked above and then the “Spoonful of Sugar” post picked up here.

I’ve added my comments from today to the bottom of the post so they follow the discussion.
John Proffitt said…: Two thoughts…

First, I’ve heard the “tailoring our programming for our market” argument for years and I must say it’s fallen flat for me from the beginning for three reasons:

[1] Most stations run the same programs most of the time anyway; even though they have local control, they don’t really exercise it much

[2] Local differences are minor and are more reflective of the programmer reacting to a few complainers or major donors than actual community-based sensitivity

and

[3] If local differentiation is so important, why hasn’t Discovery created tons of micro-channels to serve each little niche in every corner of the country?

Back in Anchorage our programmer tinkered with the broadcast schedule to “serve local interests,” but when we ran out of money and switched to PBS’ “Schedule X” service (in which virtually all local control is given up in favor of a pre-programmed service), there was some audience grumbling but in the end we brought in the same donor dollars (if not more).

I tend to be a cynic anyway, but this local argument doesn’t hold enough water for me to be an effective clarion call for the maintenance of local station operations (in the traditional way).

Second, many local stations have a “cult of the Emmy” problem, in which traditional television production methods are sacrosanct. Which is why you need $100,000 cameras, million-dollar studios, multi-million-dollar editing and broadcasting gear. But what about small HD cams, laptop editors and more as promoted (and proven) by Michael Rosenblum for years now?

Consider Rosenblum’s provocative question: “If Google came to your town to setup a TV channel, do you think they’re going to spend several million on a huge TV studio and tons of big cameras and edit suites and more? Or are they going to hire an army of one-man videojournalists with small HD cams, laptops and a talent for storytelling?

Local funding and efforts need to be locally-focused and locally-scaled. Why don’t we leave the huge investments to the big players and focus instead on actual public service media that makes a difference right where we are?

You’ve already pointed to the education/outreach work your station is doing. What if you kept that, eliminated the TV producers that can’t produce cheaply, shutdown the studio, streamlined master control down to a repeater + minimal inserts shop and boosted your web operations and community connections?; April 17, 2010 10:54 AM
PBS Revolutionaries said…: Well stated, John.

Points of agreement:

1) Google is an apt example. Massive computing power from a web of small units rather than fewer huge mainframes.

2) The “cult of the Emmy” is definitely in play and counterproductive. We don’t believe for a moment that regional Emmys = greater funding or better community service.

3) Providing local content shouldn’t mean upholding the current station model. We can’t say whether that means changing to a repeater, a distribution agreement with a local commercial broadcaster, or some other method (those with solutions please chime in), but we believe there are ways to ride the wave of shifting consumer habits for the benefit of PBS stakeholders and viewers.; April 17, 2010 12:15 PM
derrick said…: Fodder for the discussion from 2004: http://www.current.org/ptv/ptv0412starvingpbs.shtml

Regionalization of infrastructure and administration seem like a worthwhile and meaningful “first” step.; April 19, 2010 9:47 AM

Colin Powers said…: Sorry, I missed the continuation of this thread last week and need to respond to John (and Rev’s) comments.

My producers DO produce cheaply. Their biggest expense is gas to cover the huge rural area that we serve – not glamorous high budget production gear or per diems. Our station has been shooing on Cannon XL1 (DV) for over 10 years, now we shoot on Sony VIU and ZIU HDV cams and have two XDCAM full size for our “deluxe” shoots. As for editing on a laptop… a real FCP edit bay only costs a few thousand more and is twice as efficient. You know what render times are like for HDV on a laptop? How do you edit audio?

Our entire station’s yearly budget is around 3 million dollars, so we’ve got no “100,000 cameras” or million dollar studios. We produce well over a hundred programs every year – almost all of them in the field or with substantial field content – NOT talking heads four times a week.

Expensive studio? Let me tell you – a studio is a concrete block room with a bunch of paid-for lights. Ours is a tremendous asset for local production and gets used every week of the year… we even take a week each November to bring in 800 chorus singers from kindergarten to seniors in to record a local Christmas show – try doing that in a borrowed space – it’ll look like a home video. All this with volunteer camera ops and floor managers.

Finally, we block out primetime 8pm – 9:30 from Wed – Fri every week for local content. Our public affairs block airs 6 times in multiple slots each week to make sure it is available when our viewers want it.

Our audience is rural, typically not high-speed connected (we’re working on rural broadband, too) and many get us off-air. Substituting web and “community connections” for what we’re doing now would mean abandoning that audience on the wrong side of the digital divide.

And what does “streamlined master control down to a repeater + minimal inserts shop” mean? We’re as lean there as you can be and keep the gear turned on.

I’m not trying to suggest that other stations don’t have many of the issues you’re talking about, but I still think these are simplistic arguments. Show me an example of where a model you describe is working. I’ve seen glimmerings and pieces of these here and there, but many of them rely on talented, but grossly overworked single people who are turning out great material in a largely unsustainable way. Let’s talk about living wages for real (albeit very hardworking) people with families.

In the week since I posted my reply neither Revolution, nor commenter John Proffitt have responded to the arguments I’ve laid out above. I realize that Mountain Lake PBS is both smaller and perhaps more ambitious in its local agenda than many stations they are directing their invective at, but I still have a problem with their simplistic “solutions.” Michael Rosenblum does great work, but, as far as I know, has not translated his methodology to pub TV (if I’m wrong – straighten me out.) In fact, as mentioned above Mountain Lake has done a great deal to move toward the Rosenblum model.

In my response, I’ve tried to be as specific and detailed as I can regarding our approaches to the very problems that Rev and John have identified and I don’t believe there is a simple answer. Yes, broadcast television will become increasingly irrelevant as more people accept broadband-delivered content. And yes, it seems crazy to put lots of money into transmitters that may or may not outlast the remaining broadcast holdouts (or available spectrum.) But they haven’t gotten me to believe that professional local content can be produced without the kind of resources that our station brings to bear.

More examples and models of the kind of community-based television that they are talking about are clearly necessary to take this discussion into the realm of the practical. The Lonely Island example cited by Rev in a later post is hardly one that represents sustainable community based storytelling… rather I see it is yet another variation on the “Blair Witch”-precocious-young-techno-geeks-make-their-way-to-Hollywood story.

Mountain Lake PBS’s local programming efforts are far from perfect (check out our results on our video player), nor have they YET brought in the kind of financial support from members I’d love to have. Nevertheless, our public affairs-magazine block has broken station records by selling 13 out of 16 possible underwriting spots to local businesses who respect what we’re doing for the region and want to be associated with the trusted brand that we represent.

I’d love to have a few more precocious-young-techno-geeks to help create more content, more cheaply and faster than we do now, but I won’t sacrifice the diverse multi-experienced mix of young and old storytellers that I have for a pipe dream Blair Witch story. So I say… John, Rev… bring on some examples of pubTV stations putting these practices to work and let’s talk shop.

Sister station with a mission! WSKG has the best mission/vision/values that a station could ask for!

production — Wed, 05 May 2010 02:36:32 +0000

Thanks @AmyWoo and the Twitter Chat group #pubmedia for the tipoff to go read this statement.

About

Mission
Guided by your aspirations, WSKG serves to inspire with the highest quality educational programming, explore the arts, culture and heritage of the region and beyond, engage in thoughtful consideration of news and issues of importance, and entertain with the very best in multimedia programming.

Vision
WSKG: striving to be your trusted partner, enriching the lives of the people and communities we serve.

Values
At WSKG we strongly value:

· Diversity: in opinion, thought and culture;
· Creativity and Innovation: in thinking, programming, and content development;
· Integrity: in how we conduct our business, in the programming we create;
· Courage: to be different, accept failure, to take a stand;
· Transparency: to open the activities of the station to public inquiry;
· Accountability: in all our actions;
· Open Mindedness: in how we approach issues and opinions;
· Responsiveness: to community interests, needs and new ideas.

These values help us to clearly define our mission as an organization serving our community.

WSKG Goals

Content and Services:
· Goal 1: Increase relevance, significance and impact of content and services.
· Goal 2: Develop partnerships to address community interests and needs.
· Goal 3: Explore new and innovative content platforms and services.

Financial:
· Goal 1: Diversify revenue portfolio.
· Goal 2: Increase funding for production of content.
· Goal 3: Build Operating Reserves.

Organizational:
· Goal 1: Create an organization culture that engages the community in our daily work and responds to its needs.
· Goal 2: Develop a culture of fundraising throughout WSKG.
· Goal 3: Develop and implement business policies and procedures.

Brand:
. Goal 1: Develop a distinctive, relevant and consistent brand that creates a shared pride with our communities.

via wskg.org

MediaPost Publications

production — Wed, 05 May 2010 02:30:36 +0000

Why Online Video Fails To Meet Its Lofty Expectations

With television advertising being a $70 billion market and total online advertising weighing in at $22.7 billion for 2009, you can’t help but wonder why online video advertising only represents a $1 billion market.

In fact, according to the IAB, video advertising grew from $734 million to $1.017 billion from 2008 to 2009 — or 38%. That’s not bad, but when you consider that total video consumption per month has soared from 10 billion videos in July 2008 to over 33 billion in December 2009 (or 230%), you wonder why the revenue growth hasn’t mimicked the viewership.

For sure, economics tend to trail consumer patterns. Moreover, the recession and advertising slump didn’t help either. And yes, the so-called experts might not be all-knowing either, after all.

I personally think there’s more to it than that.

The Genie is Out of the Bottle

In 2000, I worked at a search engine company. We gave away our search engines for free and sought to generate revenue via advertising. The Nasdaq crashed and took down the ad market, after which point we sought to collect licensing revenues for our technology. With the cat out of the bag, it was impossible to get people to pay for the product afterwards. Lesson learned: If you give something away for free, you can’t charge for it subsequently.CTD…

via mediapost.com

An argument that professional content will continue to dominate the audience’s attention and that the likely way it will be paid for is through ads. But will the ad revenue be enough to fund the programming we’re fond of? Maybe a reality show, but probably not Lost, or CSI.

Response to PBS Revolution

production — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 17:42:14 +0000

Here is my response to the provocative site PBS revolution and the thoughtful post by John Proffitt posted yesterday.

Colin Powers said…

Like John, I’m interested to see how the dialogue develops on some of your provocative ideas. Anyone involved in the PBS system who doesn’t feel the pain of investing heavily in distribution technology with ever-shrinking lifespans is in denial or in the dark. And no one wants to do away with pledge drives more than those of us who have to go on air and conduct them.

A content driven model is hugely desirable, but I need to understand just how the funding flow would change.

I’ll describe the situation I know best and maybe you can help us find ways to repair or replace it… we need the ideas!

Our station has more filmmakers, journalists, editors, videographers and educators creating local content and providing hands-on educational outreach to the community than it does administrators, technicians or management. I’m not sure how much leaner we could be as a pure local content provider with a lighter technical burden. We’d still need a studio, edit bays, field equipment, engineers to maintain them and some sort of master control room to insert the local programs into the stream you imagine we’d feed to the commercial tower. Plus, we’d have to sacrifice our multicast channels that our audience has decided they really like. We would save on transmitter and other transmission costs.

Unfortunately the content creation side of media is expensive… just what the newspapers have discovered – and they don’t record in high-def!

I suppose we could transition to some system whereby national content fed via a national television feed and local content was strictly available via web, but I see two issues with this: First local content would hit that digital divide – back to the “people who need PBS the most” point. Second, local stations tailor their programming to suit the needs of their community – this would go. It would be Nova, American Experience, History Detectives nationwide at the same time every week. Convenient for branding and promotion, but not very reflective of regional tastes. Our station runs local content in prime time 3 or more nights week – much more on weekends and daytime.

Also, even a web-based local public media outlet requires the same facilities, equipment and personnel that I outlined above – especially to deliver professional content that will draw eyeballs in a cluttered media environment.

Finally, this discussion (and others on the web) have focused heavily on programming content and journalism, but few have addressed the value of station-based education departments that provide tens of thousands of hours of early childhood literacy, media literacy and teacher professional development training to school children and school districts throughout the country. Your pledge dollars support these activities, too. Where do those resources go in the FPBS?

April 14, 2010 11:50 PM

via revolutionpbs.blogspot.com