2.0 Another View – A way to deal with the biggest threats to your enterprise

September 16, 2009 at 12:35 pm · Filed under 2.0 Business Model, 2.0 Design Thinking, Bryant Park Project, Business Model, Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Social Computing, NPR, PBS, Platforms, Public Media, Public Radio, Public TV, Relationships

I was talking yesterday to a CIO of a major financial services firm. He and his colleagues have been wracking their brains over how a 2.0 view would make a difference. Of course a lot of their discussion revolved around technology and the social aspects both in the organization and outside it.

I bet that many organizations are also having the same internal conversations and being as frustrated as he is.

Looking at where the death threats are is a more productive area of discussion.

For public media Death lurks here – We have to have a much wider based and much larger public that thinks that we are not merely important but VITAL to them. If we don’t we wont make it.

“Wider based” means that we have to break out of our current demographic – of on TV being over 50, mainly white middle class and well educated – on radio of being over 40 and the same.

The challenge of doing this has been the restrictions of our “Air”. We have only 24 hours and one place on the dial.

So to change programming enough to bring in a very different demographic is to piss off the existing foundation with no real chance of adding the new. Example, the CBC have quite good show on the Native Canadian world – my bet is that most of the traditional audience switch off immediately and that First Nation’s people are not going to be tempted to become enthusiastic listeners of the CBC based on one program. This type of programming is lose lose. For NPR it was a new hip morning show called Bryant Park. What station in its right mind will drop Morning Edition for a new entrant aimed away from its main audience?

So long as Public Radio and TV have a secure foundation on their Air – they cannot expand their audience.

Also loyalty and more important financial and voting support merely based on liking content is no longer enough. When I came to Canada in 1972, I was used to the BBC and became a fanatic PBS watcher. There was no other source of good content then. Now there is tons of great content elsewhere. The old tie to content is much weaker.

So how then can Public Media avoid DEATH? How can it expand its reach to a much wider and diverse public? How can it deepen the connection beyond the relatively weak one of content?

An answer is appearing in the work of 70 plus stations working in the 32 worst hit markets in the US where the Economy is destroying the middle and lower classes. In this project – called Facing the Mortgage Crisis – stations are working with each other to pull together/convene groups of community support into a platform that can help people cope with this the greatest crisis to hit most Americans since the 30’s.

This is where the DEATH threat can be answered and this is where Social Media and the whole 2.0 perspective is invaluable.

Here stations are helping people who do not and will NEVER watch our mainstream Air. BUT they do interact with our specialty Web Sites that are focused on this issue and hence on them. More we do a lot face to face. Sometime at the station and many times in libraries and other places of trust such as churches. More, we give the community partners a face and a voice too.

It is the 2.0 web that is at the heart of this ability to offer something meaningful to people who will not connect to our traditional content on our traditional air. Ironically, as the crisis affects all, many of the white middle class are now in the same boat. They too use our 2.0 world as a new resource. In time a common crisis, as in war, brings all together. All people share a common fear and grief. All wonder what to do and how to keep going? All worry about their kids.

I predict that something great can emerge from our web – but it is not about getting more people to watch Nova or listen to All Things Considered.

So what then was my CIO’s Death fear?

I offered up this to chew on. They are in the mutual fund business. Their funds are sold by brokers who do not work for them.

Trust in Brokers, in the market and even in the idea of getting rich by punting in the markets has been weakened. Fund managers still tout their ability to realize performance that can only be achieved by taking huge risk.

What would happen to their business if we had a 1933? After the crash in 1929, the market recovered as it is today. But like today, the market came back independent of how people lived and how the economy at the human level existed. It was a second bubble. The market crashed again and the great depression hit full force. Employment did no rebound until 1941. Stock prices and activity in the market did not return until 1954.

What if we have another 1933 in 2010? Would such a collapse end all faith in the current financial system? What is the risk of that happening – 10% – 30 % – 50% – 60%  – whatever the risk is substantive and worth planning for.

My idea of his DEATH threat was that if they did not do something to show that they could be trusted, that if we had a 1933, they would disappear as did most people like them in 1933.

So how could they become legitimately trusted? How could they hold onto to a public that had lost trust in the system? My advice was this.

Most people are fiscally illiterate. Most know nothing about household economics in the Greek sense of the basics of the human financial life cycle. People know nothing about how to save and why, borrowing, cash flow, how mortgages work, compound interest. Most know nothing about the value of and how risk works. Why you can take risks early but not late in life etc. If they did most would not be in the trouble that they are in now. Most think that it is normal and to be expected that they can get Maddof returns year after year not seeing that such returns imply impossible risk.

The entire fund business is like the food business – we have been trained to seek something that is not sustainable – double digit returns for ever and cheap food forever. Can we train people to be more real? I think not but people can train each other.

Most people now are waking up to the fact that they don’t know enough about money and how it affects their life. They are hungry to learn more. To take control over their financial lives, just as many today are using the web to take control over their health.

What if this firm was to set up a foundation to act as the Trusted Place on the web where people could teach each other all these things?

Here is where all the rules of 2.0 would come into play. The web, interactivity, social groups, partners – the whole gamut of 2.0 is here. By learning how to do this here, the old firm will also then see with new eyes what else they can do back in the mainstream.

I asked in closing what would this mean in terms of the brand and the industry if they were to do this? What if they did a really authentic job of providing the trusted space where people could help each other take back their financial power?

He could see in a heart beat that this would change the relationship – just as I am seeing signs that FTMC is changing the relationship with Public radio and TV.  At first the two worlds of the “Academy” and their traditional business would be separate. But over time there would be some kind of convergence. For who of us knows as much as we should and who of us does not have something to offer?

In time the very nature of the business would change too as will in the end mainstream TV and Radio – but this way the change would be shaped by the active participation of millions of people formerly known and “audience” or “Clients” who right now don’t even have a name.

For what is the label for a person who is part of the ecology that is the new wider enterprise?

So what do you think? Can you radically change your foundation offering without killing the golden goose? Think GM or the Newspapers – all their cash flow came from the old – but DEATH was waiting for sure. How could they have found another part of life where they could have added real value and so attached a much bigger group of people to them?

I am sure that there is an answer. Do you have one?

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It’s the new business model not the web alone that will be the Holy Grail

September 2, 2009 at 11:00 am · Filed under Enterprise 2.0, Network Effect, Public Media, Public Radio, Public TV

Jeff Jarvis has fired the opening shot in what I think will be the most productive discussion so far in the media wars.

But I think Owens hit on it when he wrote this: “I realized I needed to flip the expense/revenue picture upside down. Instead of thinking about how to generate more cash, I needed to figure out how to create a news operation that could exist profitably based on a reasonable expectation for local online revenue.”

Everyone that I have talked to recently in senior pub media roles worries that they cannot find the gross from their web operations that they need to replace their 1.0 gross.

I think they are right – it seems clear now that the web revenues cannot be grown fast enough. So the costs are out of synch. Many are reluctantly finding themselves in the same kind of death spiral that the newspapers are in. So what to do?

I don’t think the Holy Grail is an attempt only to grow web based revenue. I think it is to use a new business model. The good news is that enough of this new model is now here. Our challenge is to “see” it and having “seen” it to build upon it.

So let’s “see” where we are now – “see” what is emerging and “see” what can be done to implement it.

Where we are now.

If we look at ourselves with outsiders eyes, we will see that we face the same problems as the papers do. Today a Public TV or radio station is  a single purpose organization with dedicated staff  organized to do one thing – to keep a TV/Radio station on the air. It gets its revenue by using a transactional appeal based on its content. All its costs are based on supporting this approach.

Each station is an island to itself. It has transactional relationships with other stations and with producers. It has transactional relationship with its staff as well.

As with newspapers – all of this needs to be unpacked and reassembled in a  more personal way. So that it can release the power of the network effect.

What we can “see” emerging?

I observe many of the stations in the Facing the Mortgage Crisis Project, I can “see” that:

The best stations are using their reputation and trust to facilitate the strengthening of a powerful community network of partners who are all working to help the citizens of the city get through the economic crisis.

It has been the trust built up as a public broadcaster that gives them this ability. They a new role as a consequence and a new value that has NO DIRECT LINK TO its traditional CONTENT. Thousands of people who would never watch the traditional content are now attached to the station.

The relationship has expanded beyond content to include true public service.

Expanding from Content to Context – A vital aspect of this public service is to help co create the best Context for issues. Nearly all the debate in America today is lost in wrangling or in sound bites. Pub Media has come into its own with the financial crisis by not only doing a much better job of explaining what is going on but also in engaging with people where they live – in helping them help each other get through this.

Reinvention? – America will have to reinvent itself – we can all see how the health care debate is subject to the same forces that made the financial debate so fruitless. Soon energy, food, education will all come onto the table. The only way through the morass is to help people work through these issues on the ground with how they affect their lives and their communities.

What service? They are using their ability to tell stories and their ability to offer a powerful megaphone to the public. Again this ability has arisen as a product of their history as a public broadcaster. Their new relationship with the public extends therefore beyond showing them content but in showcasing the public’s content about issues that are vital to them.

Part of their new value is to give voice to the voiceless - when a station does this, it attaches those people to it.

It is the web that gives the stations the space to do this and gives the people the cheap and easy tools to use to have their say.

Over time the content mix can shift from 100% professionally produced content to maybe 15% professionally produced content with most of the new being on the web. Over all a major increase in content for much less cost. Most of the new content being for and about people who are New to the Station – a much broader “audience”

They are learning to use the web to support and enhance their offering on Air – the web has given them more flexibility, more real estate and better equity – content lasts for a long time there. The web is no longer just a new form of banner advertising but is not integrated into this new Public Role. The web offers an infinite amount of choice to the public – using an invitation and curation, the station has all but limitless space to fill and can fill it at very low cost. The core new skills – Curation and Facilitation.

They are starting to see signs of the impact of this work that can be used to make the case for this new value. A new way of measuring that goes beyond eyeballs to impact. It will be a stronger case to monetize impact than only content. Using the web and a much broader view of context and content, the station can offer any supporter a precise demographic that was impossible when only the air was measured. People whose lives have been affected will attach their own identity to the station. People who have been able to contribute to issues that are vital to them because of the station will attach their identity to the station.

Being part of true “Public Service” therefore expands and deepens the connection way beyond that great content alone could ever achieve.

Their non profit status has been essential in enabling it to have this role. Being a non profit seems to have a major influence on how much you can be trusted. Many are beginning to see that much of what is news and on the media has been shaped by those that pay the bills. When the public pay the bills the fears of conflicts of interest are mitigated and trust is enhanced. Trust is the most scarce of anything today and so in the end will have the most value.

It is hard for purely commercial media organizations to compete for the hearts and minds of people in thus way – this space of True Public Service is open to Pub Media.

Most important of all they have been learning how to run themselves internally as a network and also how to facilitate groups of outside partners. This – even more than the web tools themselves is the real new value.

Group Forming will be the most valuable skill that any station will have.

We have positioned ourselves to move beyond content – beyond members – to groups that we form. Group Forming is an exponential activity that drives out the value of the Network Effect.

So what next?

Here are a number of steps that they can take that will release the value in the Network Effect:

• Help the leading institutions in their community learn what they have learned. Many important institutions in every city need to use the power of the 2.0 world to improve their ROI as well. Museums, Universities, Performing Artists etc all have to extend beyond their physical walls and a 5 day a week 9-5 time slot. Who can help them do this best? Make a real business out of this. Become the social media/relationships tutor to the institutions of your community. Help them engage their community. Help them expand their “Real Estate” beyond time and space. Help them learn how to Form Groups and realize the Network Effect.

The old Underwriting relationship is transformed to a much deeper and ongoing relationship based on working directly with each other. They become us and we them.

• Expand the Community Partnerships so that more can be done to reinvent the community. Health, Energy, Local Food, Education are all going to move into prominence. There are community partners that exist already in these areas just as they did in the Mortgage Crisis. Again help them learn and do what we are doing.

This will enable us to continue to expand our relationships with and so support from with people that normally would never watch our conventional content.

• Become the “School” for the networked world in their community – The most important new literacy and skill set of our time will be how to use the web and how to facilitate rather than direct. Who better than Pub Media Station to set up such a learning centre?

Tie the young (hence their parents too) of the community into both the station and to our other relationships. We become a vital new factor in the lives of families

• Build a web alternative to on air delivery – Many of the parts for this are ready right now. Here is a case for how and why

In effect set out deliberately to learn build and operate an off ramp where the bulk of the offering is available on the web – where public, local and national content and community involvement all take place

• Create a real Network with other nodes in pub media – Public media itself can shift from a series of entirely independent and single purpose stations in TV and Radio into a real network where many assets can be truly shared and the real power of the network effect realized. Work as a true partner with the local stations and with many other stations and producers across the system. Here the web enables much better curation and sharing of content. Here space can be leveraged as can support services.

Create regional support hubs where common services can be centred and offered out to members. Reduce overhead systemically not piece meal.

I will post more soon on a number of practical steps that flow out of these principles.

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Time for Public Media to think about building a web distribution alternative

September 1, 2009 at 9:26 am · Filed under PBS, Public Media, Public Radio, Public TV, Web 2.0

The largest costs for newspapers is of course the paper itself – the paper, the printing and the distribution PLUS all the entrenched union issues. Many are advocating that the only way the “Papers” will make it will be to drop the paper or at least most of the paper as say the Christian Science Monitor has done.

So here is my heresy for the day – maybe this is what Pub radio and TV needs to consider – dropping the reliance on the Air or Cable!

Before you think I am mad, here are three bits of news that you can knit together into a pattern to support this view.

• KCRW – is now going global and is offering a a 24/7 web based radio show – a Curated site! It starts Labor Day! They have the brand and they have the beginnings. of a global audience
  “Santa Monica-based public radio station KCRW today announced the launch of Electic24, a new Web-based music station that promises to “encompass the whole scope of the public radio station’s musical footprint over the last 30 years.” The station will run 24 hours a day and feature picks from the station’s music library, selection of live in-studio performances, and interviews.

  The station, curated by KCRW music director Chris Douridas, is set to premier on Labor Day at 9 AM PST. After launch, users can access the stream by visiting KCRW’s site.”

• KCET is covering the big fire in CA – its transmitter is at risk so it is going full tilt to offers news to its LOCAL audience via the web. (The Current) Back in the day KPBS lost its transmitter during the San Diego fire and had to use one donated by another station. The point here is that everybody in California can access the site via the web

• There are signs that the cable companies have it in for Public TV and are pulling Pub TV channels off the offering – far be it for me to wonder why (maybe pub TV tells the truth?) but there is no doubt that this is a trend and with the shift to digital – Pub TV is vulnerable.

(NYT)“Cable television systems across the country, wielding their new power to pick and choose the programs they carry, are dropping public television stations or switching them to less desirable positions on the cable dial.

Public television officials, who have been protesting this trend, assert that some three million viewers have been lost as a result of the cable-system actions, which have involved more than 200 stations. They also contend that the loss of audience has damaged the fund-raising efforts of the stations. The protests have in some instances spurred cable companies to reverse their decisions.”

Part of the key to the future for pub media is not to get web revenue to match their old Air revenue – that. is the same faint hope that newspapers had. It is surely to transform their costs. Air – like print – is the killer cost.

“Oh we could never do that” – but that is what the news papers are saying. As we can see above there are signs!

There are a number of other events that can help.

• Nearly all the best programs on the PBS system will be available on the web as of next week. NPR has its API and its Mobile platform

Why not take a few stations as an experiment and put as much of the schedule on the web locally as possible and see what happens. The components are there both in terms of content and distribution.

Plus the audience is there – video online is well past the Tipping Point.

Try it – please

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NPR – At a Tipping Point?

August 18, 2009 at 1:50 pm · Filed under New Realities, Public Media, Public Radio, Public TV

With the launch this weekend of the new NPR Mobile App, I can look back over the last 4 years and see a pattern emerge that tells me that NPR is poised to be the first major new organization to break through into the new Media Reality.

That’s a bold statement so let me try and back it up.

First of all, NPR and the public radio system have got something that no other media has in America – Growth in audience.

Why? I suspect that a large part of the answer is to be found in one word – “Trust”. As our world becomes more uncertain, it is also clear that much of the media was either complicit in hiding the truth about what was going on or that they just missed it. The non profit aspect of NPR and its system, I suspect helps keep it more trusted. The second point is just good journalism. As all other sources of media have retrenched on their staff, NPR and its stations have continued to invest in great staff.

But there is more going on here than the core journalism – NPR – like no other organizations except the BBC – is there a pattern here too? – Has made a decisive push to make the web work for it, for the stations and for the audience.

Here is the “Story” as revealed in a “Power Curve”.

This suggests that NPR is at the Tipping Point. Why? Because we can see both the acceleration and also the growth of the supporting system that will facilitate the growth.

We see a long gestation period from 2005 – 2007. Podcasting began then – greatly facilitated by iTunes.

It is in 2008 that we see progress begin to accelerate. In 2009, NPR is positively rocking.

How did this happen when so many other media organizations are merely hiding behind the castle walls?

I think the answer is in the New Realities Process that NPR undertook at the end of 2005 – May 2006. Over 800 people were involved in “Exploring” what the web might mean to NPR and the system of stations.

This was the basic problem presented to all.

Please let me explain. Remember this was done in early 2006. The core assumption was that by 2009, the web would be ubiquitous. NPR’s relative position versus the web at the time was that tiny black line.

The question was this – How did we get to scale on the web in time AND still not piss off the audience AND the Stations?

Looking back, the time line we posed was correct and it seems that we have solved the key question.

So how did this process of mutual exploration help NPR and the stations do this? My answer is this – It gave everyone a real voice. ALL the issues were on the table. A real common view emerged.

In every meeting, groups came up with the same big idea. That we had to be able to offer the audience what we did “Their Way”. This appears to have been an underlying idea that has been realized by the Mobile App – many groups even envisaged a device like the iPhone that would enable this.

Surely this is no small thing? Most media organizations still insist controlling everything.

The underlying constraint was what would be the role of NPR and of each station? At the time, many believed that NPR had a “secret plan” to go it alone. In truth many at NPR also did not know what to do. They talked about working with the stations but were uncertain.

A major result of the process is that the senior NPR folks realized that they HAD to work with the stations. It has taken years for much of the fear that NPR would go it alone to dissipate but it is. NPR have proved by their actions that they are in this together.

For another common theme that kept coming up again and again was this. That the end game would look like this – a REAL NETWORK based on Natural Systems. This was the systems’ great hidden strength.

This idea of a large natural system is now even bigger than anyone envisaged in 2006. For the CPB has been making major investments in creating a Public Radio AND TV system. The Facing the Mortgage Crisis project is one of these investments where radio and Tv stations in 32 markets are working together. NPR and the NewsHour are working together to offer the best news service in the nation. Key local stations are creating local news hubs.

All this is going to come together in late 2009 early 2010.

2010 will be I think THE year. The product will be unparalleled. The Web approach will be ideal. The resources will be all that such a network can supply.

With the audience, with the engagement and with the web fully supporting the air all that is left is this..

I think that with the underlying audience, engagement and a network – it should be possible to make the money and the system work – don’t you?

So in closing I return to the question of our time. How do large organizations make the changes that they have to? How do they do this when the New is often the opposite of what they are and what they do today?

I think that the answer for NPR and Public radio is that they overcame the huge natural resistance by investing in a shared and deep exploration of what confronted them. What they have done since has come from the genuine emergence of ideas and of a language that they created for themselves.

It has not been easy. I admit to being in despair in 2007 when I could see no visible progress. But in retrospect I was naive. The laws of nature demand a period of gestation. 2007 was that time.

What is remarkable now is that NPR and the system has fully met the challenge set out in the starting question of the process. They have kept their audience, kept the system together AND become a leader in the web.

Now they have to turn this into revenue. I think that they are up to this.

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Mining Twitter – Citizen Journalism in a New Form

July 30, 2009 at 12:25 pm · Filed under NPR, Public Media, Public Radio, Twitter

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