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?

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.

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

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.

How do you cover your community with no or little money? At Planet Money they ask for help and they “listen” to Twitter.

Here are a couples of examples that Laura used to show how you can do this

The “Clown” Tweets Us – PM has a deep and keen Twitter fan club – I call it the PM Tribe – So here a PM Twitter Fan Tweets the Show – The Listening part of Twitter.

@planetmoney #economy I am Children’s entertainer #clown. Work was way dwn jan-april. (-%87 for me.) now better, but #swineflu panic a prob

PM calls her and uses her story in part of their podcast. The Deepening Phase

Morning Edition like the story and bump it up and put in on the main show – The harvest phase

People ask all the time – “How do we bring the voice of the citizen into the station – well this is one way that you can do this.

By the way – for us PM Twitter fans/Tribe the pay off is when our bit goes on the show. Like Golf, the tiny chance that it might is the massive incentive.

The result is that you not only deepen the engagement that you have with your community, but you get ahead of the story. You get the story before it is a story. You have an intelligence system like no other.

Here is another of these Pyramids or ladders:

Terri Weiss tweets her employer’s demise – First, they stop the coffe:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2009/01/first_they_stop_the_coffee.html

Terri Weiss tells her story on podcast

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2009/01/hear_can_i_borrow_20.html

Terri Weiss, with a little more production, on Morning Edition

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99790809

So this spring when I got a call from Howard Blumenthal CEO of MiND, in Philadelphia, my instincts told me that this was a very very important call.

No TV operation is more unique than MiND (or, properly, MiND: Media Independence).

MiND is not a PBS affiliate. It broadcasts a stream of 5-minute programs, many made by MiND’s staff producers, some made by members of the public who attend MiND’s production Boot Camps. MiND is both on air and on the web. The staff have their own voice in a way that I have never seen anywhere before in media or ANY other place of work. It was not only a novel TV operation – it was a novel organization. It was what a 2.0 organization would be like- inside and outside. As an independent community licensee, MiND makes the most of its freedom–and engages everyone who walks through the door.

So I booked my flight and flew down to see Howard and his team.

So what did I find? How to make TV, the Gutenberg of our time.

You don’t believe me? Please invest 5 minutes in this film.

Did you get it? I found it compelling. A beautifully crafted story. Here is a heartfelt comment on IMDB. Made by a real pro – right? No – made by a regular citizen, Leontyne Anglin, whose passion is the topic but who had never made a film before.

The impact of Gutenberg’s technology in the 1500’s was to give people a voice. If video and TV are the main means of communication today, then the “New TV” must give people a voice. This is surely more than uploading to YouTube or adding comments to a web video. Merely pointing and shooting does not make you a filmmaker. When you have the ability to tell a story well – then you need a place where your early work reaches an audience with an already-established relationship with a trusted brand.

This is what happens at MiND. Day-in and day-out. It’s the reason why the system was built. And it’s working.

The key to MiND is found in its willingness to help the public learn how to be real video storytellers. MiND’s core members have joined a tribe of filmmakers with something to say. MiND’s eagerness to provide every storyteller access to its Trusted Space makes all the difference—MiND is a branded space that adds real depth and texture to the word “public” in the term “public television.”

How does MiND do this?

First of all, MiND employs a production staff drawn from the public and not from the priesthood. It has attracted such a staff by its culture and by its remarkable intern-and-volunteer system. While many stations regard interns as more trouble than they are worth, MiND has transformed coping with, and training, more than 200 interns into common practice. As such, the keen are fed into the system and the cream rise to the top. Nearly a third of MiND’s current staff members started as either volunteers or interns.

Secondly, MiND has built a transformational training system modeled on and called ‘Boot Camp.’ It is transformational in that a citizen comes in with all sorts of wild expectations about television and media; after six hours of intensive training, she is on the path to making a real MiND program that will go on the air and become part of MiND’s extensive internet library of 5-minute programs. In time, she becomes an enabled storyteller.

Leontyne went to a MiND Boot Camp. She was a doubter – MiND’s promise seemed too good to be true. But Leontyne and two others at the Boot Camp took up the challenge. They developed an idea, checked back with MiND to make sure they were on the right track, and made a terrific MiND program.

As a result, Leontyne is a new person–and now, one of MiND’s most vocal advocates. On her own terms, she has become video- and story- literate. She possesses new power in the most powerful medium of our age.

She is not an anomaly.

Here is a short documentary film made by another MiND intern. It’s broadcast quality in every way – a strong story line and intricate editing combine old and new footage. The person who made this film has become an accomplished filmmaker–and is now a teacher at a small college in New England.

MiND is creating a core of accomplished story/film makers who can help their community as storytellers. In time, with MiND’s support, Philly (and in time, other cities that may carry a local version of MiND as their own service) can develop a cadre of the new, media-literate creative workers engaged in the betterment of their home, their neighborhood, their city. It does not take much to imagine what they could do.

The incentive that MiND offers its “students” and interns is that not only will they gain the skills that they will need for our time, but that the work will be showcased on TV and the web–by a Trusted Brand.

All artists want their work to have an audience. TV is 1.0 but it offers a reward like no other. “Hey Mom my work is on TV!” So MiND is expanding its reach to other markets. It is building a national alliance in most of the key markets of the US – details here. The bigger the audience, the greater the impact.

So what next?

It is no secret that all the public stations in Pennsylvania are under pressure because their Governor plans to cut all state funding. MiND’s low cost approach makes it especially vulnerable–just completing its first year, MiND has focused on operational efficiency, programming and community; MiND’s first revenue programs are just beginning, and are insufficient to cover a 40% cut in the total budget. MiND will not stop–but it will slow down as resources disappear.

This is the reason for my post today–to encourage the public television community to consider what MiND has done in its first year, and how its ideas might be used to reinvigorate a tired system. MiND is not the full answer but it contains most of the DNA for the full answer and so I felt compelled to tell its story now.

What can we all learn from this?

Set up a new organization to do this – The station culture is key. MiND is a 2.0 Culture. Here is how it sees itself. These are not simply words on a page. With 30 plus years in the field of culture – I observed first hand that this is no bull – what they say is how they are. So you cannot change all your station culture to be like this. I also know that to be true. So what can you do? Clay Christenson is clear – set up a separate organization to house this aspect of the new - your transformational organization. I know of several stations that are thinking along these lines. You cannot make this shift inside the old–but you can make the shift if the new is allowed to grow alongside the old.

The Goal Is Self Reliance – The goal is to transform your community to be self-reliant – to do that you have to be able to tell the collective story of how people are bringing about change in your community. To do that you need to develop real storytellers by teaching them how to tell stories– and you have to imbue their stories with the added value of your brand. Create a “school” for the new literacy. Bring in the people as interns and volunteers. Bring in the young. Use your digital channels and the web as the “channel.” Or, let MiND show you how; they are willing and capable guides. And, please, don’t get caught up in the validity of five-minute programs–not before watching MiND or considering the sheer number of unique five-minute programs that can be produced in a year.

Gain strength and power by connecting. Connect to the institutions organizations in your community who need this kind of help – use your storytellers to give them a voice. How might non-profits be involved? How about schools (K-12 and higher education)? What if everyone really did have a voice–and what if that voice defined the future of public media? Imagine connecting with other stations across America and the world–perhaps create a national network with MiND at the core – and jointly build MiND as an initiative that engages people at the local, regional, national, even global level. It’s clear that MiND was built with precisely that strategy at its core. Increase the power of the collective story by comparing what’s happening in Philadelphia with what’s happening in Chicago or Denver, and ultimately, with Mumbai or Warsaw.

MiND benefits from a wonderful gift–it is one of the few truly independent agents within public media–in fact, the company’s official name is (you guessed it) Independence Media. From that independence has grown true innovation. Make no mistake–this is not a play by a tiny public TV station operating at the edge of reality. Instead, it is likely the center of a new solar system with increasingly powerful gravitational pull.

We will not get through the turbulence of our times by relying on the status quo in any part of our lives. So I do my bit to tell the story of Howard and his band of sisters and brothers at MiND.

Bless them all. And for my American friends, about to celebrate their annual holiday, do consider the value, opportunity and responsibilities associated with independence.

What will happen in your town when there is no more “Official News”?

Of course I don’t know but it may be fun to speculate. A good way to speculate I think is to think of nature. What does nature do when an over mature system crashes? When say a big tree falls or there is a forest fire?

Nature has a iron-clad set of rules for the death of an over mature system. The rule seems to be – the small and the fast growing fills in the space. In phase 2, the trees that can get height fast and shade out the rest come next. In phase 3 the slow growing larger trees push by aggregate and then dominate. And then the cycle continues.

So if this pattern is reliable then this is what will happen when your community loses its Big News.

• The Fast Growing New Growth  the “Poplars” – The best of the local bloggers will rise in prominence. Some of the personal brands in the old will also join the local blogging scene. These bloggers will not only write about what interests them but some will pull in and filter news from around the world. They will act as much as taste makers and editors as contributors. But many will also wish to focus on what interests them – “Beats” in effect. Food, politics, books, whatever. The new system is largely here but it has low structure and hence low value.

• Aggregation – Very quickly some of these will form an affiliation. We have seen an early variant of this in St Louis with the establishment of the Beacon. The Beacon is an online “News” service made up of many of the best journalists that used to work for the main Paper the Post Dispatch. The Beacon has moved into the offices of KETC, the PBS local TV station. (Postscipt – Here is a major article by The Current – the Trade Magazine of Pub Media on this work) There are plans for KWMU, the local NPR radio station and the local University to move in too. A great addition will be to find a way to pull in the best of the bloggers. This has not yet been done but is surely possible and desirable. Also on the cards will be the power of this local system to pull in great national and international coverage. CPB, NPR and PBS are working on how best to create and offer a combined feed of the best of their News in one easy to use complete forum. As this aggregation phase builds so does the overall value to all parties in it. The Network Effect benefits all. Costs fall, ROI rises. It becomes central to the economic, social and political health of the community. Being so widespread it excludes competitors. You either have to join or die. It is also hugely valuable to the global producers and to the global aggregators. At some point, NPR and PBS and maybe the BBC also have to form their own aggregated system that lives on top of the local system?

• Climax – I think that the climax or mature and stable phase will emerge from the Aggregation process. This is surely what Sloan did for GM? GM in its heyday was built on the aggregation of a number of brands.  But this time, there is a different economic model. This was not the result of a traditional use of financial capital. Now we have a global system that is truly PUBLIC. It has strong economic roots and is sustainable but it is no longer controlled by a few men with access to credit. It would be very hard to attack by any political force as well.

If I am right and that nature does offer us a model, then the Aggregation phase is where the future lies. The people that can lead the aggregation will “win”. If we can do this in the Public sector then the Public will win.

So where will this happen in your community?

In the US I think that St Louis offers us a strong hint. Journalists, Public TV and Radio can get together to offer a home for the rest of the local blogging ecosystem. They can also pull in national and global content and offer up stories from their own place. I think that the current talks between CPB, NPR and PBS are also very encouraging.

But what about Canada? Would the local music station be the aggregator? How easy/hard would it be for a few bloggers to do this – hard I think. We don’t have the emergent local system that the US has. This tells me that the urgency in the US to “see” their total public system for what it is – the future – is extreme.

It’s all there to win or lose.

What kind of media if any will we have left by 2011?

I think that Vivian Schiller, (Here is a short video that has her views in a nutshell) the new CEO of NPR is offering a realistic vision for what can emerge.  I want to take the key ideas that she has been talking about in a number of public venues and add more flesh and supporting ideas from others in the system that I respect

Here are what I have heard as her key points starting with two areas to avoid:

• That there is no silver bullet – such as get a big grant to support us as we are – she can see that as we are, we are not viable

• That finding the new minority niche is the holy grail – instead improve access for she feels that if we serve properly then all will be served by our content and by our connection – that the young, that minorities will find us and be involved if we are truly engaging and offer the access that meets their needs

Her big idea is a really really big tent that is a true network that uses all the power of a true network.

• The Uber News Network – The future of public media is to be found in a true network that comprises NPR, the Stations, PBS, The Citizens who live in the local communities and others who wish to serve the local community that may include the newspaper or the journalists who used to work at the local newspaper such as The Beacon in St Louis.

• That all involved have to see themselves as being more than broadcasters and to see themselves as widely serving the community – that we move beyond content to connection.

• That NPR goes out and works to help the stations.

• That we build all of this on the deep foundation of good will that exists.

I want to expand on this idea with supporting ideas from other people that have the respect of the system – for part of Vivian Schiller’s brilliance is that she is an exceptional listener and has been ingesting the thoughts and the mood of the system.

The Uber News Network

The Opportunity – By 2011, it is likely that much of the media of today will be gone. Many communities will be without a paper or a local TV station. If things continue the way that they are, the economy may be far worse and much of the effort to save us all will be seen as having failed. The nation will be starved for meaning.

Today, only a few parts of the media are offering Meaning to America and indeed to the world. It is a remarkable achievement that Planet Money is cited by both the Senate and by the Secretary of the Treasury as the ideal place to find language and an approach that makes the crisis possible to understand. The NewsHour is doing the same kind of work as is Bill Moyers.

This is not gotcha journalism. This is meaning making and it is almost exclusively available on Public Radio, TV and now the web.Now all the key content is available at at any time on the web. It would be a simple matter to curate a local page that would have every news source in one easy to find place.

More. Public Insight journalism is growing and the expertise of the community is being brought into the mix. More, on Planet Money, that had learned to connect to an audience in its proto version, BPP, a huge amount of material comes in from a passionate group of supporters.

Imagine then a system that had it all. Global, National, Regional and Hyper Local – Pro Journalist and expert blogger – all working together to give us the help is finding meaning in these mysterious and frightening times?

Vivian Schiller’s big idea is to fill this void of meaning by bringing all of this power to make meaning together.  Her big idea is to create so much value that the system gets supported for this.

Moving beyond content to connection – from Audience to Tribe

As the institutions that we all took for granted die, so many of us then will risk losing our identity. Identity is all about our “Tribe”. Our Tribe is often our job and workplace. It can be a sports team. It can be our family. Our identity comes from these connections. In our true tribal past, expulsion from the tribe is the extreme punishment. It is still so today.

As people lose jobs and roles, the search for identity will become the most powerful force in society.

In these terrible times many want to belong and find identity in helping make their community and America well again. These longings are already held in the existing Public Radio and TV “Tribe” For Public radio is itself a huge tribe. Here is how Schiller sees this “Tribe”:

It was the beginning of November and it got a bit of coverage on NPR obviously, and the New York Times and several other places. And I heard from just about everybody I’ve ever known and I got a lot of voice mails and over a thousand e-mails from people I’ve known through various stages of my career because I’ve moved around a little bit. And first of all, it was very nice of course, and I spent my month off in December answering every one of those e-mails.

But as I read through them, something really profound struck me. Which is they were all the same. In the sense that, the first sentence of every e-mail would be something like “Oh congratulations, we’re happy for you and blah blah blah…” and from the second sentence and through the rest of every single e-mail, was an expression of what NPR (and when they say NPR they could be listening to a show from PRI, APM, from their local broadcaster – they really mean public radio, so please understand that I interpret it that way) but what NPR means to them. And it was always very, very personal. It was a show they plan their commute around, or it was a story that touched them and actually motivated them to action, or it was a reporter or anchor that they feel a natural obsession with… but whatever it was, it was very intimate. And there was almost a sense for each one that NPR is MINE. For each of these e-mailers, NPR is mine. It belongs to me.

And I realized that what we have that is so extraordinary is a relationship with our audience – (and it’s a huge audience – I’ll mention that in a minute) that has a relationship with us that’s not just on an intellectual level (as it certainly is) but also on a very emotional level. And that is a powerful thing. I know of no other media company that has that connection in the head and the heart that public radio does. And by the way – in huge numbers. 26 million people tune in to some NPR program – through of course their local station – on a weekly level. That is more than the circulation of the top 50 US newspapers combined. That’s a lot of people.

Just to give you a couple more statistics about what an impact we have – and this is where that carnival barker thing comes in, so forgive me – Morning Edition has a larger audience than any of the network morning shows. The next biggest one is The Today Show and our audience is 45% bigger than Today viewing. Car Talk (and we’re not just serious stuff so I’m going to compare Car Talk to less serious stuff) is twice as big as The Daily Show and The Colbert Report combined. That’s pretty powerful and it’s growing. So there’s audience. Brand is the second thing. With the possible exception of the New York Times, I know of no other media company that evokes the same kind of loyalty that NPR does as an entity. There are certainly forms of other branded media that have larger audiences – Facebook has 175 million active users which is a mind-blowing number but I don’t think anybody goes “God, I love Facebook” they love their connection to other people. It’s not an affinity for the brand.

And in other broadcast media, it’s the shows. The most successful television show in the history of broadcast news is 60 Minutes. And there’s a lot of loyalty to 60 Minutes, but that’s not helped CBS with their other shows necessarily. People don’t think about CBS they think about 60 Minutes. NBC’s successful morning and evening shows have loyal audiences – smaller as I’ve already mentioned – but that hasn’t been much help to their primetime lineup, which has been in fourth place for years. So the loyalty there is to shows. With us, the loyalty is to the brand, which is very powerful.

There is huge potential power here – not just for more pledges but for something bigger. It is in this Tribe that the value resides that can take public radio and TV to the next level.

This tribe can be expanded way beyond the current Tribe – all the groups that Public radio have wanted to serve, the young, minorities etc can find their place in the Tribe that wants to work to make America and their community well again.

We can see this expansion and deepening of the tribe in the CPB sponsored work in St Louis – where KETC is acting as the connector between the helping agencies and the people who need help. Many of the people involved had not been part of the tribe before but are now. CPB are now funding a 30 station expansion of this work where TV and Radio stations will work to help their communities help themselves.

The person who I think gets this better than anyone I know is John Proffitt who works in Anchorage. Here is his current view on the shift to seeing our work as supporting Tribe and Identity.  Here are 2 key slides that I hope make his ideas more clear:

I think that Vivian Schiller, and people like John Proffitt, intuitively see the power of Public Media to give people an identity when all might seem too confusing or lost.

As a Facilitator of Tribes – Public Media truly serves the public and gives the community back its power. What greater act of public service could there be?

This is what Jessica Clark means when she looks to go beyond broadcasting and what Lee Rainie sees as the power of social media.

Building the Network

Vivian Schiller is clear – she knows that most stations are hanging on by their fingernails. To make any of this happen demands that there is catalytic help. She suggests that NPR staff can and should offer this help.

Without help – I fear that this will remain just a few good ideas. The stations are getting locked down in fear and have to be helped.

But I think we can do more than offer help from a few NPR folks.

In the 1930’s Roosevelt set up great public works to give people a wage and their dignity back. The backbone of the nation’s infrastructure was built then.

I think that the New Public Media system can be the Hoover Dam of our time!

Already the unemployed and the under employed geeks are mobilizing and looking for work and identity. Here is a link to Laid Off Camp – a nation wide effort to make connections in the Geek Community.

It is not only citizen journalists that the new network can rely on. It is not only citizen groups that we can rely on. My bet is that the right call will mobilize the Geeks of America to help build the new network.

If we called, the people would come. They would come and they would become us. The separation of audience and station would melt away.

What Next?

How to get started? Public Radio and TV are not a monolith. Like Republican Rome, the culture and structure make it hard to take action. In fact it is almost impossible to get collective action. In the last few weeks I have talk with several friends – all long for someone to take the lead.

In my reading of the runes, along with Tom Thomas of SRG and Mark Fuerst of IMA I think that enough people are ready. I think that Vivian Schiller has correctly sensed the vision and the plan.

If you also listen to Pat Harrison of CPB and to Paula Kerger of PBS – you feel an alignment. They too have been saying many of these things.

All are reluctant to step forward. After all in the past, such leadership would be punished. This was not herding cats this was herding lions! But I think that this will not be the case today.

I think that the lead has to come from the top. I feel that if NPR, PBS and CPB got together and announced that they were behind an approach like this, that enough would say yes to form the core group and to get the work begun.

When Rome was confronted with a major crisis – they gave up their complex system of checks and balances and accepted direct leadership. I think that the system is ready for this and that it trusts the leaders of NPR, PBS and CPB to do what is best.

If not this – then what?

A Wisdom of Crowds tactic being adopted by the new administration … interesting idea, we’ll see how it plays out.

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Obama Crowdsources Daily Ideas with Citizen’s Briefing Book

I just learned from Leverage’s Mike Walsh that Obama will receive a briefing from the top voted ideas that were submitted by the American people each evening see Change.Force.com (a play off) . This method of keeping in direct communication by ‘listening’ to the citizens leans on voting style technology similar to Dell’s Ideastorm. My colleague Josh Bernoff will be pleased, as he requested this feature a few months ago.

You’ll need to login and register (I suspect they can use IP addresses to determine point of origin within US) in order to confirm location but that’s not completely accurate. How can Obama extend this further? Make a similar site for all other nations to submit ideas for foreign policy. This doesn’t come without challenges of course, the system could be gamed, and there’s no promise he’ll make changes based on our feedback, we’ll see.

I talk to the executives of the world’s largest brands, after Obama won the election, I get a lot less push back –it’s rare I have to have discussions now about the validity of social technologies.

Of course, social technologies still come with risk, but for some reason this feels really good, we’re all a bit more connected and the internet helps to bring us together.

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I’m not surprised.  if I were the leader of an organisation, I would just get on with it, as it seems clear to me that the permanent and ubiquitous presence of the Web in our lives is creating what is effectively a new sociology of expectation, namely of at least having a voice and to some degree being "heard" by hierarchical leaders in our societies’ institutions.

A culture continues to grow, informed by a "two-way flow of power and authority, based on knowledge, trust, credibility and a focus on results"

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I’m (still) all for Web 2.0 and listening to the voices of the great unwashed, but there are key aspects of using this approach that leave me skeptical or cold.  He and his colleagues get to pick which items they want to use add emphasis or colour an issue.

Nevertheless, I applaud CNN for actually paying attention to what is happening on the Web.

Mashable has more.

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