Quick Takes

New Hampshire PTV, WGBH announce collaboration

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New Hampshire Public Television and WGBH in Boston announced today a collaboration in both programming and back-office tasks. The two said in a statement that each will remain independently owned and operated stations. They have posted a website to explain the upcoming changes to viewers in both states. NHPTV will contract for services in broadcast technologies, membership services and financial administration, which will allow for financial savings that may be redirected to programming, the announcement said. “The collaboration will provide operational economies, which are key to NHPTV’s continued success following the loss of its state funding and its transition from an entity of the University System of New Hampshire to an independent, community-licensed public media organization,” it said.

Development
Dick McPherson

Questions to ask before you collaborate

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For two decades, Dick McPherson has managed the McPherson Associates’ Public Media Co-op, through which 30-plus stations with more than 25 percent of pubTV members have shared fundraising materials, strategies and tests. Current asked McPherson to flesh out his heroically concise remarks at the Feb. 27 Public Media Futures forum about the powers and pitfalls of collaboration in fundraising. “Collaboration” sounds so good, even natural and certainly logical, especially among colleagues who share the same values and challenges. “Going in together” is not only efficient but today seems essential for public stations’ survival.

Development

Partner up, get local for best shot at funding, execs advise

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Grantmakers at foundations increasingly look for public radio and television stations to move beyond traditional broadcasting and serve their communities in new ways — as conveners of public dialogue, as innovators testing new approaches for producing and funding digital journalism, and as partners in helping their communities tackle social problems.

Station execs who are veterans at foundation fundraising say pubcasting projects that touch on these key themes have a good shot at capturing the attention of grantmakers:
Emphasis on community engagement
Nine Network/KETC in St. Louis received a three-year $450,000 foundation grant backing its participation in CPB’s American Graduate initiative. The JSM Charitable Trust, a private foundation in St. Louis, awarded the grant last month to help support a series of events, programs and community-engagement activities aimed at improving high-school graduation rates. The station will sponsor town-hall meetings for teachers and students, for example, and is working with a youth-literacy group on a poetry project for kids.

Programs/Content

Knight seeds investigative news channel on YouTube

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The nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting is launching an investigative news channel on YouTube to serve as a hub for investigative journalism. The Knight Foundation provided an $800,000 grant to start the channel. The center, based in Berkeley, Calif., announced on April 11 [2012] that the channel will feature videos from commercial and noncommercial broadcasters and independent producers, including NPR, ITVS, ABC News, the New York Times, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the Center for Public Integrity and American University’s Investigative Reporting Workshop. The center plans to add contributors and seek submissions from freelance journalists and independent filmmakers from around the world. “One of the goals of this partnership will be to raise the profile and visibility of high-impact storytelling through video,” said Robert Rosenthal, executive director of the center.

Collaboration

CPB will give guidelines to journalism hubs

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CPB is evaluating proposals from six regional journalism hubs for another year of operation and will furnish the centers with a shared set of best practices to follow if they receive additional funding. The guidelines will be designed to address challenges that the seven Local Journalism Centers have encountered during their two years of growth, such as negotiating editorial control and finding paths toward financial sustainability. Launched in 2010 with $10.5 million in CPB funding, the LJCs brought public broadcasters together in regional collaborations to report on focused areas of coverage, such as agriculture, border issues and health care. With the hubs entering their third year of operation, CPB hired a consultant to review which LJCs have succeeded, which have struggled and which factors have made the difference. At a meeting of the CPB Board March 26, interactive-media consultant Rusty Coats reported that four LJCs have established a clear voice and focus throughout their editorial products, while the rest have faced greater challenges.

Development

Cohesion: It helps when collaborators want the same things

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There’s a growing disparity between the haves and have-nots among public stations. Their abilities to expand services and revenues are diverging. And if they were to collaborate on fundraising, they’d want different results from it. That was the scene as described by 20 execs and consultants in the Public Media Futures forum held Feb. 16 in Washington, D.C., by the communication schools of the University of Southern California and American University in cooperation with Current.

Programs/Content

As NBC partners, pubmedia may expand reporting, visibility

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NBC will share stories, resources and content distribution with two public broadcasters, ProPublica and two local nonprofit newsrooms under the FCC agreement clearing Comcast’s 2011 takeover of NBC Universal. If the preexisting, five-year collaboration between NBC-owned KNSD in San Diego and the nonprofit Voice of San Diego news site is anything to go by, news consumers may see real benefits. Boosting NBC Universal stations’ local content through partnerships with nonprofit news organizations was one of the conditions placed on the network to complete its deal with Comcast. ProPublica, the Pulitzer-winning investigative enterprise that frequently partners with other top news outlets, will work with WNBC-TV in New York, as well as with all 10 NBC-owned stations in the country. In other metro areas, WCAU in Philadelphia will work with pubcaster WHYY, and KNBC in Los Angeles with team up with public radio station KPCC, operated by a sister organization to American Public Media.

Programs/Content

Life without CPB aid scary to LJC startups

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The seven Local Journalism Centers that launched with major support from CPB have suddenly found themselves on a short timeline to find ways to earn more of their keep. So far, CPB has committed only the two-year sums announced at the initiative’s launch last year and has told some grantees to expect smaller amounts for 2012. Uncertainties over future CPB aid — as well as problems with the diffuse management structures that cloud decision-making and fiscal accountability for at least one LJC — have complicated plans to keep the regional news collaborations going, according to news directors who participated in a June 24 panel at the Public Radio News Directors conference in Arlington, Va. Station execs behind Changing Gears, the LJC that staffed up last August to cover efforts to revive manufacturing in the Upper Midwest, have begun making contingency plans to continue the work if CPB aid ends, said Torey Malatia of Chicago’s WBEZ, one of three stations behind the center. “We’re committed to keeping it going in some form,” he said.

Programs/Content

Life without CPB aid scary to Local Journalism Center startups

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The seven Local Journalism Centers that launched with major support from CPB have suddenly found themselves on a short timeline to find ways to earn more of their keep. So far, CPB has committed only the two-year sums announced at the initiative’s launch last year and has told some grantees to expect smaller amounts for 2012. Uncertainties over future CPB aid — as well as problems with the diffuse management structures that cloud decision-making and fiscal accountability for at least one LJC — have complicated plans to keep the regional news collaborations going, according to news directors who participated in a June 24 panel at the Public Radio News Directors conference in Arlington, Va. Station execs behind Changing Gears, the LJC that staffed up last August to cover efforts to revive manufacturing in the Upper Midwest, have begun making contingency plans to continue the work if CPB aid ends, said Torey Malatia of Chicago’s WBEZ, one of three stations behind the center. “We’re committed to keeping it going in some form,” he said.

System/Policy

Other stations like the plan so much, they say it’s theirs

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A consultant’s study of public TV’s crowded Los Angeles market, commissioned by CPB, predicts a highly integrated collaboration among the area’s four stations would provide hefty financial savings and grow revenues for all four. The eight-week study by Booz & Co. — a major consulting firm spun off by Booz Allen Hamilton — said the present structure of the market has stunted the four stations. They’ve suffered a 10 percent revenue decline since 2005 and a 26 percent drop in net assets since 2007. All have average audiences below the PBS national average rating of 1.1 percent.

Collaboration

Shared reporting planned for Ohio Basin ecosystem

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If any news subject lends itself to coverage by multistation collaborations, it’s the environment of places like the Ohio River Valley, a region of 25 million people who share the river’s assets and liabilities.
Louisville Public Media’s WFPL is leading plans to build a pubradio reporting consortium for the region, starting with a public conference this month.