EP and senior director of content
Nashville Public Television
Age: 35
In three words: “Data-driven, optimistic, compassionate”
What colleagues say: Megan worked with the team that developed NPT’s three-year strategic plan, which champions a digital-first/broadcast-too content strategy. Since then, she has leaned into the concept, working with team members to reimagine and optimize thumbnails for digital platforms, create vertical videos for NPT’s most popular local content, budget to boost select videos on social platforms and work with local influencers to launch Jaunts: Tennessee Crossroads, a new digital-first sub-brand for new audiences.
To make content more accessible to diverse audiences, she also created original Spanish-language content with English subtitles as well as in English with subtitles in the native language of the person featured. This latter work began with The Little Things, a new digital-first series featuring Nashvillians who moved to the city from other countries.
Under her leadership, within three years NPT’s content team has launched five new local series, from public affairs to nostalgia and health literacy: A Slice of the Community, Clean Slate with Becky Magura, Retro Tennessee Crossroads, For Your Good Health, and The Little Things.
With her own personal YouTube channel audience of 86,000 subscribers and 20 million views, Megan was asked to present on YouTube best practices at the virtual PBS Annual Meeting in October 2023. She also spoke about optimizing local content for digital platforms at the 2023 annual meeting of Indiana Public Broadcasting Stations. She co-leads the Major Market Group’s revenue strategy and analytics peer group. And this year Megan participated in Public Media Women in Leadership CEO/COO Boot Camp.
What Megan says
Decision to work in public media: I started volunteering for WCTE Central Tennessee PBS’s Great TV Auction in college. After that, they pretty much couldn’t get rid of me. I took on more responsibilities as a volunteer and began working for WCTE part-time after graduation. After business school, I came back to the idea of using what I’d learned to support public media.
Key accomplishments: I worked closely with Shane Burkeen, NPT’s senior director of brand, digital and marketing, to spearhead a digital-first/broadcast-too strategy that optimizes local content for digital platforms while creating standard broadcast-length versions for television. This strategy included creating the first short vertical videos cut from segments of Nashville PBS’s most watched local series, Tennessee Crossroads. Taking this a step further, we have been working with local influencers to launch a new digital-first sub-brand, Jaunts: Tennessee Crossroads. It is the station’s first weekly series optimized for Instagram/Facebook reels and YouTube shorts.
Advice for other young public media professionals: Don’t wait around for solutions you know are needed; propose them. Then ask for what you need to implement.
Advice for public media leaders: As my former supervisor at Nine PBS, the late Jack Galmiche, used to say when reflecting on viewership trends, “Pay attention to kids: They’re the canary in the coal mine.” The most useful advice I have for content creators is just to ask themselves, “Would you click on that?”
Funniest thing that’s happened on the job: In a concerted team effort to create local content that’s less in line with public media’s characteristically earnest tone, I’ve been able to work with a talented designer to make some of my wildest animation dreams come true, like a happy talking falafel that appears on screen while I’m interviewing a local Egyptian chef.
Profile photo: Erica Francescon
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