DDC Group, Day 2

Communicating

Today, we worked on several things, beginning with our plan for communicating what we’re doing. I can promise you right now that this is going to be the most open change process that public radio has ever undertaken. Yes, there will be some sensitive information that we won’t share; but we are prepared to talk openly about what we’re working on on our wiki, which has just opened for business, and in blogs like this one. If I were you, I’d be looking at the wiki every day or two and we’ll be asking for your input, so share it. Email us directly, or – even better – post to the wiki for all to see. Every page has a discuss tab at the top and on some pages, you’ll want to join in the group editing process.

Why are we being this deliberate about communicating our work? Well, the Internet is a big open space and being open about our plans seems to be the proper spirit. We want you to be able to follow our work so you know where we’re coming from and you have a better idea why we’ve arrived at the conclusions we have. In the end, of course, we hope you’ll accept and move forward based on our conclusions. And finally, since New Realities in May, there’s been rumbling here and there that NPR has a secret plan and is planning to foist it upon everyone soon. That’s hogwash, to put it kindly. We hope to prove that it the coming weeks.

Meeting with CPB

Loren Mayor and Andy Russell stopped over from CPB to talk with us today. It provided us with an opportunity to get a broad view of CPB’s activities in the new media space, and also to get their thoughts on where we might find money for the projects that develop out of this effort. For instance, could we consider trying to get a one-time appropriation for develop of an internet interconnection system for public media, in the same way that Congress has regularly funding interconnection for broadcast? (problematic) Would there be existing funds within CPB available to us for such a system? (maybe) Given CPB’s role as the channel for federal funds to radio and TV, and its important role in funding projects like PBCore, this was a good moment to sit down with them; I think we’ll have a couple more conversations with them as our work progresses.

Planning the Plan

I’ve never had any experience with creating a business plan before, so this is completely new to me. And it’s not easy. It’s sort of an endless drilling down, deeper and deeper, trying to get the essence of issues like competitive advantage and value proposition and risk. There are no simple answers to questions like who will benefit from the services we create; where will we face competition; what do we create; what existing services can fit the project; and most important, where will the revenue come from to make this sustainable?

I think all of us in the group agree on a very simple diagram for how our system might work – how a centralized distribution system could draw content in from multiple sources (all stations and networks) and send it out in all directions (npr.org, local station.org sites, Google, Yahoo, Verizon, etc), with all the backend tools like metadata, etc., that make this possible. But go any deeper than that and you run into hard questions. Here’s an example: NPR, PRI and several of the largest stations have their own separate content deals with companies like Audible and Yahoo, etc. If the system we create is able to negotiate group deals to get content to these providers, most of the smaller stations would probably love to sign up because they’re left out, currently. But while we love all that locally-produced stuff and we know that over time it might be the most important part of what we provide, we also really need that premiere content that NPR and APM produce. So how do you design the rights, governance and revenue-sharing in such a way that it provides a benefit to all involved – and enough of a benefit to the big producers for them to, over time, let go of their separate deals with the Googles and Yahoos and join us?

We don’t have a perfect answer for all that, or even a great answer. But we do have a good answer: the on-demand/podcast trial has been a winner and one of its wins has been the revenue its returned to participants, big and small. Mind you, this revenue stream isn’t much, but that’s the current reality. We believe that will change over time. The business model for the podcast project is old, new, borrowed and blue, but participants have been almost universally pleased by what it’s leveraged over the past year, in underwriting, positive press, and gratitude from our listeners. You would do well to pay attention to that little podcast project. It’s more important to what we’re going to become as public media than many realize.