This ‘Adopt A Station’ tool shows how pubmedia can innovate in crisis
In Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises, lighthearted writer Bill Gorton asks Mike Campbell, a brusque Scot with a drinking habit, how he went bankrupt. “Two ways,” he tells Bill. “Gradually, then suddenly.”
The Senate dithered over the topic of whether to rescind public media’s federal funding over the past month, holding long committee meetings, publicly expressing doubts, even bringing in Vice President Vance to break a tie vote to send the bill to the floor. Then Wednesday, the Senate passed the appropriations package, and a day later, the House of Representatives followed suit. I think many of us working in or adjacent to public media felt the same way about losing federal funding that Mike Campbell felt about bankruptcy: It happened gradually, then suddenly.
After the rescissions package passed, people across the country began wondering what to do next. Public media fans asked stations where to send donations in order to have the most impact, while stations asked themselves how to best respond to these donors.
I pondered these questions Friday in a group chat with other former public media employees looking to make an impact. We had the data to tell donors which stations were most at risk, but we didn’t have an easy way to connect them to those stations. Then, an idea was struck: What if there were a website that provided an easy way for donors to “adopt” a vulnerable public media station?
Over the next 24 hours, I bought a domain name, created an account with the no-code website builder Bolt, prompted the platform’s LLM to create a site called “Adopt A Station,” and connected the site to my dataset of public media’s finances. In its final form, the website asked visitors to do two simple things: First, find and donate (or increase their donation) to their local station. Then, connect with a station that stood to lose 50% or more of its revenue and “adopt” it.
I published adoptastation.org Sunday morning along with a casual announcement on LinkedIn. For the first few hours, nothing much happened. Then, the site began to grow: Public media employees began posting the link to social media, then public media fans, and soon it was being shared and visited by people all over the country. Adopt A Station received over 6,000 unique visitors on its first day of life alone, and many of them posted about giving to a station in need after visiting.
One little donation-directing website dreamed up by a group of concerned former public media employees grew gradually, then suddenly.
One question that I’ve been asked several times, both before and after the launch of Adopt A Station, is about public media’s future — specifically, what, if any, positives there are for an industry that may no longer be reliant on federal funding. I tell them that public media has a long and difficult path ahead, but one of the few positives of losing federal funding is that public television and radio are now free to innovate. In fact, they have no choice but to innovate.
Having previously worked in public media, specifically in fundraising, I can tell you that Adopt A Station would have been difficult to launch at any point before the rescissions package passed. For starters, stations had no say over the site itself or the fundraising copy I wrote for it. Additionally, I show how much revenue each station stands to lose as a consequence of the rescissions package, information that was not widely discussed until a few months ago. Adopt A Station has been successful because I and my merry band of former public media employees were able to meet a distinct moment in the industry’s history and distill an idea — connecting donors to at-risk stations to “adopt” — into its simplest and most effective form using new technology. We innovated, even if by accident.
Public media has a proud history of innovation. From award-winning Independent Lens documentaries to programming partnerships, creators and managers alike have dreamt up new, creative ways to serve their audiences since before the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. But that innovation happened slowly. Now, public media is in a unique position to begin innovating quickly — moving fast to meet singular moments like these with new technology and ideas that aren’t bound by the hang-ups of the past — not just for the benefit of its audiences, but for the sake of its own survival.
In other words, the time of gradual innovation has ended. Let the sudden innovation begin.
Alex Curley is a product manager based out of Asheville, N.C., and the author of the Substack Semipublic. He spent a decade at NPR, where he worked on the Public Radio Satellite System, NPR’s SiriusXM channel, national fundraising materials and newsroom promotional strategies.
Love this idea and will pass it on! One idea for you – currently every station is listed in blue, whether they are TV or Radio. It might be helpful to use two different colors to help folks more easily find the station they’re looking for. Thanks for creating this!