Public Broadcasting and Public Affairs: Opportunities and Challenges for Public Broadcasting's Role in Provisioning the Public with News and Public Affairs

This Berkman Center for Internet and Society "Media Re:public" paper discusses public broadcasting in the United States (US): its historical evolution, the differing structures of radio and television, financing, the types of news and public affairs programming available, two phases of digital challenges, finding solutions to the challenges, experiments that may point to future changes, leadership challenges, scenarios for change, and next steps. The authors analyse how public broadcasting can use its assets - "highly trusted and useful programming, and a close relationship with an active part of the U.S. citizenry' - to overcome the culture of one-way messaging in mass media and embrace the digital culture's two-way audience as "ally and colleague".


The challenges of moving to the digital age show the strengths and weakness of US public broadcasting. Its strengths include: highly visible and trusted brand names (for example, Sesame Street), a creative and far-flung talent network, and a highly "balkanized" [a term originally used to describe the geopolitical process of fragmentation or division] structure of individual stations, which invests funders and audiences in the survival of local stations. Its weaknesses include an audience that is ageing, particularly the television audience; a reputation for elitist programming; and that same highly 'balkanized" structure, which inhibits decision making that responds to the changing environment. Radio has been more successful at attracting listeners than public television, in part because it uses news programming as a core. Competition in programme production has brought diverse voices and formats to radio. Public television has had to work under more political scrutiny, making quality news service difficult. It has become a medium more recognised for children's and cultural programming than news, public affairs, or series documentaries. Financing for public broadcasting is complex. "Each of the three major sources of funding - government, viewers, and corporate donors - comes with its own set of constraints."


With interactivity being the future of digital broadcasting and funding for change being scarce, public broadcasting is struggling with adjusting its role to new distribution possibilities, as well as systemic aspects of change. Also, political advocacy is needed to secure a public stake in the communications spectrum as new platforms emerge. Broadband communication now allows for very localised programming, a place in the media market that once required the local public broadcasting infrastructure. Now that physical presence in a community and the one-way communication model are fading, public broadcasters are experimenting with engaging publics around issues and communities, but they need the “metrics that can trace and make transparent all interactions, and tools that can enable listeners and viewers to become commenters and contributors to public broadcasting. Best practices for using and measuring the impact of those participatory tools remain elusive.” Problematic aspects of change include: funding, projects developed for specific local contexts that may not work in others, and development in isolation from the national networking possibilities. "Although several organizations are helping stations to coordinate around solutions, no single organization is positioned to lead the full range of public broadcasting entities through digital and online transitions."


The conclusion suggests how the interlinked entities may evolve. One possible scenario is that stations could redefine themselves as "a version of an electronic public library for the community....They could become lively, interactive local hubs for community knowledge creation and transmission, building on the centralized programming resources such as Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), national Public Radio (NPR), ...Sesame Workshop, Public Affairs TV... and others." Or they could go national: "A core group of organisations could work to make high-quality, national-level public broadcasting programming available on all platforms, all the time, cutting out the station middleman." They could "partner up" by leveraging existing assets, particularly the talent in their network, and developing partnerships with rising internet businesses that need both content and the ability to create content. Further, they could let stations that fail to develop funding "strands" close and let the strong (sufficiently funded) stations survive. For those who support public broadcasting, the authors recommend growing local leadership in executive management in the digital area, perhaps using the resources of local business schools. Also, a national "engine for innovation and investment" could partner with foundations to encourage the development of interactive digital projects for public broadcasting systems, as the Knight-funded MediaShift Idea Lab is doing with community news innovators. Collaboration might include cross-platform partnerships or hybrid public-private business models. Defining what success in public broadcasting looks like and backing those already showing signs of success, might offer a route to public broadcasting transition in a digital age.