Todd Mundt

Todd, Mark:I couldn’t agree more with the spirit, the tone and the specifics of of what you have written here and I have been convinced of the absolutenecessity of offering an aggregated, consolidated, listener-centric hybrid broadcast and web service since the full dimensions of the digital challenge became clear several years ago.

The main thing I have to add to your worthy list of imperatives is to point out the curious avoidance of the core issue at stake here: it is not just the structure and service design of public radio that needs fundamental transformation — but the existing business model.

What is that model? While the proportions vary, most public broadcasters have diversified and hedged their income portfolio over the years to include a combination of listener contributions, grants, underwriting, and tax-based (CPB) revenue.

The problem is that every one of these income streams is vulnerable to disruption and decline in the world we are moving into.

I’ve developed this point in more detail elsewhere (see the link to stephen hill : spatial relations on the right) (bookmark Stephen’s site - Todd) but the main reason is that for the first time in its history, public radio will have significant competition for both its chosen content areas and for general “attention share.” This will have the effect of reducing listenership, which will reduce income from underwriting, foundations, and the public. What will happen to CPB funding is anybody’s guess, but is not something that we can trust, at least in the current political climate.

So I would add to your list of “why aggregation makes sense”

(d) the need to provide a truly competitive value propostion and level of service
and
(e) the need to build a financial platform that can support the mission and the system in the digital era.

The implication of these two points is that the current value proposition underlying public radio — as expressed in fundraising, underwriting and grant pitches that say essentially “support us because we are the only place where you can get this kind of programming” (or this particular program) — will be devalued or rendered obviously false.

Camus said that “There is only one truly serious philosophical question and that is suicide.” In the same way, there is only one truly serious issue at the core of this challenge, and that is how we design our infrastructure and business proposition to pursue our mission.

As far as I can see, this is the primary reason to build the kind of aggregated, consolidated, mission and listener-focused services you and other system progressives are proposing. If the resulting services cannot provide a competitive value proposition for both listeners and funders, the public radio system as we have known it is in for a long, unpleasant decline. Public television since cable provides an all too instructive example.

Yet discussion of how we would revise the core business models in the system is still a “third rail” issue: approached, but never really touched. We have to get past that to move forward, and I am eager to participate in the conversation.

:: Stephen Hill

Stuff on this topic is now categorized here as “newrealities” (oh that I could offer tags); I’ve also started tagging this stuff on del.icio.us as “newrealities.”

Further Reading: Stephen Hill’s “12 Realizations for Public Media (after iMA 2006)”