DDC Group: Wrapping up the First Week

2006 July 4
tags:
by Todd Mundt

While we’re on holiday, let me give you an update on our work.

Business Plan

Some people have asked me why we’re writing a business plan for this project. There are several reasons, among them, it’s a great way to systematically think through the many aspects of this idea – opportunities, potential partners, potential audience and customers, existing assets, etc. If this project goes forward, there will be costs, and a business plan is a tool to plan those costs and orchestrate the expenditures. And a business plan is about making a case to potential investors, and there are many potential investors in this entity, including the public radio system. We want to have our ducks in a row.

Over the past several days, each of us has written a first draft of sections of the plan. The next few weeks is going to be all about working and re-working these elements, so we have something coherent and sustainable.

Meetings

We spoke last week to representatives from the CPB, to get a broad overview of federal funding for public broadcasting, and how a digital distribution entity may or may not fit into that funding. We’ve had a few people drop in to listen for a while, too. This week, we expect to learn more about public radio’s Content Depot and public television’s Next Generation Interconnection System (NGIS). One of the big questions for us is how a digital distribution entity might connect to Content Depot and NGIS. I expect we’ll also meet this week with members of the Digital Distribution Task Force, a list of whose members is on the front page of our public wiki. That’s a broad group of individuals (some of us DDC’ers are members, too) that we’re using as advisers.

On the Road

We have three road trips planned this month – to Boston 7/10-12, to San Francisco 7/24-25, and to Los Angeles on 7/26. We’ll be packing these trips full of meetings with experts inside and outside of public media. This digital distribution system we envision requires us to tap the expertise of many. I expect the wiki will have a list of who we’re talking to, as that’s determined. I’ll put up a list here, too.

Your Comments, Thoughts

These are welcome. You can comment here, on Jake Shapiro’s weblog, or you add your comments to the wiki.

  • What do think about public media in the digital age?
  • Does our mission change or expand?
  • What opportunities are there for public media? Pitfalls?
  • What are you doing at your station to serve your audience online?
  • What services should public media be offering online that it’s not already?

Your thoughts on any of these questions would be very helpful.

from → Uncategorized

  • Zeroing in on your question "does our mission change or expand?"...

    I think it stays exactly as it has since the beginning. Check out Bill Moyer's stemwinder from the recent PBS Showcase conference. Watch it or read the transcript

    Moyers says :

    It's right in our own PBS guidelines. Go to Paragraph F, under headline "Courage and Controversy."

    You will read there: "The ultimate task of weighing and judging information and viewpoints is, in a free and open society, the task of the audience."

    You will read there the pledge we have made as public broadcasters to seek "content that provides courageous and responsible treatment of issues, and that reports and comments, with honesty and candor, on social, political and economic tensions, disagreements and divisions."

    You will read there the promise that our "overall content will offer a broad range of opinions and points of view, including those from outside society's existing consensus" - those from outside society's existing consensus.

    We couldn't ask for a clearer statement of our mission.

    We couldn't find a more affirmative reason for being.

    We couldn't want a more resounding call to action.


    Go Bill! Go public radio and TV!
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