Todd Mundt

Notes from CPB Senior Vice President for Radio Bruce Theriault’s keynote address, delivered a few minutes ago. Please excuse any typos - I’ll scan and correct as I go:

Our best practices are no longer enough. The one thing that will take us into the new era is to throw open the doors. The real reinvention of public radio will be accomplished as new people with new ideas change what public media is and can be.

Opening to diverse communities: our audience is 82% white and they look like most of us. Not becoming more diverse damages our service to our communities.

Chicago Public Radio’s Vocalo is all about inviting new people in to share their content. WBEZ wants to become necessary to their community. WNYC and PRI’s The Takeaway sounds different because it’s trying to attract a new audience. PRI is using a new metric to measure success - the share of college-degreed listeners, particularly among blacks and hispanics.

In Los Angeles we’re trying to create a new 24/7 English service for Latinos. We have tremendous opportunity to serve this audience. It’s a huge challenge but if we’re successful we can serve new audiences.

WILL’s Youth Media Project is reorienting the station toward the community.

Public radio needs to throw open the doors to young people. Youth Radio is an amazing multimedia center in Berkeley, CA. This isn’t new media to them - it’s just media.

Technology has caught up with our aspirations to serve many audiences with content when they want it.

The broadcast-only world is gone, and we’re now in the world of converged media.

CPB is funding a new project with AIR. AIR will find a dozen producers to create small projects that show us the potential of converged media.

What happens if we don’t open the doors: we will no longer find the support we need and we will be replaced by others who understand the potential of converged media.

We must risk change. We cannot satisfy ourselves with past successes. We must throw open the doors.