Structure
D. Structure
To make public media more local, more inclusive and more interactive, steps should be taken to align the structure and funding of public media to meet these goals. Here are recommendations:
1. Restructure the Corporation for Public Broadcasting as the Corporation for Public Media. Break down barriers between television and radio and consider a new structure based on strengths in types of content.
Some argue that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has outlived its usefulness and that a new entity is needed to transform public media for the digital age. That is not the recommendation of this paper. On the contrary, in spite of some episodes of political meddling, CPB has functioned well as the firewall between government and independent media. Such a firewall will be even more important in a distributed media environment with multiple sources and entry points for media makers and consumers.
Under its current leadership, CPB is taking steps to encourage its constituencies to plan for the future with its funding of the Public Media Platform, the Diversity and Innovation Fund, the Local Journalism Centers and the Grow the Audience project. Although hamstrung by legislation that dictates where federal funds will go, CPB still has $36 million in annual discretionary funds to use to promote change. CPB itself has discussed whether it should be renamed the Corporation for Public Media, which would make a powerful statement about its new direction.
To make true change, public television and radio entities need to move further and faster in breaking down the silos that create a yawning chasm between practitioners in two media. In the course of the interviews conducted for this paper, station managers talked repeatedly about the lack of interest in partnership on the part of the other public media station in town. Within the public television and radio worlds, old rivalries persist and hinder cooperation that would benefit the public.
It would seem that digital platforms would be the perfect place to meet and march forward. The Cleveland stations that decided to merge have seen the benefits. Joint licensees like KQED are making progress. But these examples do not prevail in the majority of communities.
One approach could be to abolish the structural divisions along platform lines. What if public media were instead organized by content type? Instead of television and radio, there would be a news and information division, an arts and culture division and a children and education division. Such a structure would utilize existing and complementary strengths, avoid duplication of effort and expertise and allow public media to develop depth across platforms. Some local public media organizations are already making changes along these lines. Cleveland’s ideastream is promoting cross-platform expertise in several areas, including education and local arts and culture as well as news. Its content producers are expected to create specialized material for television, radio and digital platforms.
2. Improve community governance structures.
Bill Kling, the highly successful founder of Minnesota Public Radio and Southern California Public Radio, argues that the public media system has been allowed to underperform by regulators and federal funders and is held back in large part by the structure of its stations, 65 percent of which are licensed to universities, state and local governments, libraries, boards of education and other institutions whose primary mission is not public engagement through media. Many of the most successful stations are licensed to independent community organizations. NYPR has thrived after a community group was able to purchase WNYC from the City of New York.
Yet there are also universities that incorporate public stations into their teaching and service mission and provide high-quality news and cultural programming in communities where such fare would otherwise not exist. A solution would be to require all license holders to have a community board, which would be charged with supporting the mission of the station. Such a requirement would provide important outside feedback and developmental support.
Stations should get help in building successful boards. Numerous stations can serve as models, including those named in this paper. Resources, including written best practices, conferences and professional development, should be made available to stations to help them recruit community boards that can support their mission. CPB/CPM could offer these capacity-building services, perhaps with help from charitable foundations.
Even stations with community boards may be lacking digital expertise. Digital expertise among board members is no substitute for the knowledge and skills needed among staff. But boards need that expertise to set effective policy for the digital age. Efforts should be made to encourage both national and local organizations to recruit board members with digital knowledge and a system should be set up to help them identify candidates. CPB, whose members are appointed by the president, should include digital experts.
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