* Public Media makes its money by “selling” content to a listening/viewing audience – all the flows of money are based on ONE thing that there is content on air and that there are a set segment of people who use it during the schedule. The station is tied to a limited piece of real estate – the point on the dial, the slot n cable and the time on the clock. So is the “audience” The audience is limited by choice on the dial – it tends to be mainly white middle class and over 40 for radio and over 50 for TV. With the limits of the “appointment”, you cannot shift this – who will take off Morning Edition and put on Bryant Park as a replacement. Why would say in Canada the mainstream audience listen to a show on Native Canadians? Why would Native Canadians tune in just for one show If you strip it down – this is the essence of “Air”. We are trapped in time and in space and the frame of our content limits us to a narrow part of the public.

* Just as the content that we could rely on being unique and only available from us is going to be no longer scarce. Content – no matter how good is moving to a supply that is infinite on the web

* Whether we like it or not – the audience is also decisively going online – news and even video has crossed the Rubicon

* With a web delivery we shift all of these dynamics – this is not only about streaming the current schedule! It is about supplying a myriad of communities with context, content and a place for community and exchange. Where there is No Limit to time and space and to frame. Where the connection shifts beyond the transactional – where the public can be part of us and we part of them.

* As a consequence, as we are seeing in the FTMC project, we can reach segments of the population that will never watch or listen to our current on air offering- we reach them at first by helping them – then we can set up web channels that serve them and we can alter our content mix and add their own – all that is required is “Curation” as KCRW will be doing for music to give them a fit.

* As we become involved in strengthening the place that we live in – at the moment helping people keep their homes – maybe later reinventing the economy – Local Food, Health etc – our connection transcends the transaction and becomes part of the identity of the partner – we become Vital to our communities rather than merely good to have around.

Your argument only makes sense if you think that AIR is expensive and Web is cheap, but you have it backwards. The AIR is much cheaper.

Public Media doesn’t create individual units like newspapers do, a paper being delivered to every home. Public radio or TV makes one unit — a signal that everyone can grab. That signal may be initially expensive, but then hundreds of thousands of people consume the same item. The cost per person is very low.

The cost per person of streaming on the Web is much higher. Stations must pay per bandwidth used. It becomes the newspaper model of delivering mesured packets to each home — more consumers, higher cost.

So while people who enjoy watching technology may see air broadcast as a dinosaur, it is actually the better revenue model.

The other piece that you don’t understand is that public media is not tied to the same single channel of income as the newspapers. Newspapers have advertising and that’s it. Public Media has several sources of revenue — members, sponsors, grants, endowments. All of these have a tax incentives for the groups doing the giving. Changing from AIR to Web-only doesn’t change any of this, but it does raise the costs.