History of public media

Stewards for the media future

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What public broadcasting can do to plan for its own future and for federal policies that serve the public interest

In the first part of this commentary in Current Oct. 4 [2010], Wick Rowland, an early PBS planner and now a station leader in Colorado, said that public broadcasting’s failure to put time and money into formal research and planning has left it “adrift, mute and helpless” on the periphery of federal policymaking about media and spectrum. Pubcasting was slow to respond to the journalism crisis, aloof from the Obama administration’s big commitment to give the public universal access to broadband Internet service.In Part 2 he suggests how the system could equip itself to develop a more coherent, visionary agenda for its own future and the nation’s media policies. The commentary is available as two PDFs: Part 1 and Part 2. At this extraordinary moment, when so many outside observers and critics are simultaneously trying to define a national agenda for public media — when we should be confidently helping to guide those debates — we seem unprepared for the task.

Programs/Content

New CPB chair sees watershed for public media

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Maybe we’re at a 1967 moment again,” says Ernest Wilson III, shortly after his election as chair of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting on Sept. 16 [2009]. He’s making a hopeful comparison with the year when a Carnegie Commission report slid into President Johnson’s in-box in January and  returned for his signature as the Public Broadcasting Act in November. Wilson, who is dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California, admires the way the stars are aligning for an advance of federal policy on public media:

Foundations are examining the plight of journalism and reengaging with public media. Congressional leaders are supportive.

Programs/Content

NPR and PBS plan national PublicMedia Camp

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Even though school will have started by then, about 300 public-media folks will get to go to camp on the weekend of Oct. 17-18 [2009] — NPR and PBS’s first national PublicMediaCamp. Plans will be announced this week, says Andy Carvin, NPR senior strategist, social media desk.