Image courtesy of PMP Partners

NEW YORK — The country’s five silos of public radio and television are spilling into each other with a joint program that will allow them – and eventually the public itself — to build apps, stations, websites and other media services combining audio, text and video content from every public radio and television outlet in the country.

NPR president and CEO Vivian Schiller appeared at Wired’s Disruptive by Design conference Monday morning to announce the new Public Media Platform, a partnership between American Public Media, National Public Radio, Public Broadcasting Services (PBS), Public Radio International and the Public Radio Exchange distribution network.

Over the next six months, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will spend about $1 million to develop a working prototype of the platform, with NPR leading the charge

The Public Media Platform is “a series of platforms that will allow all of the content from all of those entities — whether news or cultural products — to flow freely among the partners and member stations, and ultimately, also to other publishers, other not-for-profits and software developers who will invent wonderful new products that we can’t even imagine,” said Schiller.

The Public Media Platform will cross-pollinate news across those five networks, and will provide data analysis to help reporters inside and outside those organizations present complex information more effectively. Both will be subject to various licensing rules, but the idea is to allow member stations and eventually third parties to distribute this information however they see fit.

“We’re going to spend the next six months figuring out exactly [the] rights [and metadata] issues, but the ultimate goal of this is to make this content available,” said Schiller. “Say there’s a blogger who is particularly focused on the BP crisis in the Gulf — they will be able to pull out still photographs, national and international reporting, reporting from local stations, video from PBS, data, and mash that all up together.

This is THE project I think. Many of us who participated in New Realities saw this move. We looked back to the common satellite platform and wondered if a common web platform would be the new common platform. Well here it comes.

Maybe I am naive about how time works. That was back in 2005/6. The level of trust was not high enough and the certainty that the web would be utterly dominant was not all there yet either.

I also applaud the inclusion of TV into this. After all it's all digital.

But the harder work is ahead - changing the culture from Broadcast to Participation. This is brutal work. Even when you know you have to go there.

It is like giving up smoking or carbs or even drink. It means leaving what you know for something that you don't.

This kind of work cannot be done alone either.

Just as the work to build the platform goes ahead, I urge stations to experiment as a group so that they can support each other with what a participatory POV would be like.

At KETC during the Facing the Mortgage Crisis project we found out the hard way what some good rules for this might be. I will repost these soon.

Things are moving so fast! In a month the iPad will be here. The shift from traditional computers to Mobile will take off.

But Pub Media are still coming to terms with the web itself. There are still holdouts for Digital Radio. Many hope that Digital Stations for TV are the future. After all huge sums have been spent on them. Many still deny the web. We can see this in the resources applied to it – in most stations less than 20%.

But it is clear now. The Web is it. The web is where we will consume media.

The decisive shift will be 2011 after the iPad has taken hold.

And the part of the web that will be THE place will be Mobile and I include iPad in Mobile.

So is all lost? No!

The Public Radio Player is surely the place to use as a beach head? It has been very popular with 2.5 million downloads in the Apple Apps store (includes upgrades). It has great functionality. It ties nicely back to the stations.

Let’s get a project to build of this and to include TV!

The iPad is ideal for watching video – please please please – make it easy for me to watch the great content of the public system and to integrate it into radio too.

Here is my vision:

• Radio and TV content is integrated – I can search for say Jane Austen and find video and audio and text – I can find other Jane Austen fans in my city – we can get together – we can create a community around out topic
• I can do this for news and opinion – I can follow a topic and draw on all sources – AND from my local community
• I can do this for music, documentary, whatever

The key is to offer the place where the full resources of all the system comes together in one device and in one place and where the community is added too.

Schiller wrote a letter to TimesSelect members, announcing the end of the experiment in 2007:

Since we launched TimesSelect in 2005, the online landscape has altered significantly. Readers increasingly find news through search, as well as through social networks, blogs and other online sources. In light of this shift, we believe offering unfettered access to New York Times reporting and analysis best serves the interest of our readers, our brand and the long-term vitality of our journalism. We encourage everyone to read our news and opinion – as well as share it, link to it and comment on it.

Since Schiller left the Times, she reinvented NPR's digital presence. She also has been a strong advocate for keeping newspaper content free.

In an interview with Newsweek last July, Schiller said talk of charging for news online is "mass delusion."

I am a staunch believer that people will not in large numbers pay for news content online. It's almost like there's mass delusion going on in the industry—They're saying we really really need it, that we didn't put up a pay wall 15 years ago, so let's do it now. In other words, they think that wanting it so badly will automatically actually change the behavior of the audience. The world doesn't work that way. Frankly, if all the news organizations locked pinkies, and said we're all going to put up a big fat pay wall, you know what, more traffic for us. News is a commodity; I'm sorry to say.

Go NPR Go!

PBS stunned at volume of preschoolers' video streaming: 87.5 million streams in month

PBS was expecting online streaming of PBS Kids shows for the 2-5 set to be popular when it started late last year; the usage of shows for older kids, 6-plus, which went online earlier, had fluctuated around 2 million video streams a month.

They were not prepared for the tots’ appetite: 87.5 million streams in December. PBS kept mum about the number until the press tour and the NETA Conference this week. Station folk broke into applause Wednesday as PBS education chief Rob Lippincott announced the figure. Streaming of the little kids’ programs rises in the evening as the grownups’ NewsHour grabs the TV sets, he said.

This news item surely makes this point - that if you really want to grow your audience make it easy for them to find you on their terms.

A core idea that emerged from New Realities - a project to discover the future for pub radio back in 2005/6 was the idea of content being available anywhere, anytime. Of course the only way that is possible is when the web is the source.

These streaming numbers suggest that we were correct.

I offer these words in the context of the project Growing the Audience that is jus concluding. A lot of effort has been put into thinking about how to Grow the Audience in Pub Radio.

My sense is that this may be an illusory goal in this way - the kind of people that watch Pub TV and Listen to Pub Radio are not all people. There is a limit to the size of the audience. For they and our approach to the world are surely not a majority of people?

If you program to get more audience don't you in the end have mass audience? In so doing don't you lose your core audience?

If however you allow people to reach us on their terms we do in fact increase our audience for the barrier of the schedule goes away.

If you wish to increase the number of people that we have an impact on - then that is a separate question.

We have learned at KETC and at many of the 60 plus stations, Radio and TV, that participated in the Facing the Mortgage Crisis project, that if you act as a Public Service station, you will help millions of people that will never listen or watch our regular content.

Is not "Audience" tied to content and the Public to what we do?

If we really want to grow both, then the web allows the Audience to grow and public service allows our Public to grow.

That means that the focus for the local station is clear - to focus on the public service that its Trusted Brand can facilitate. More later

Ford is making its cars into mobile Wi-Fi hot spots.

The next generation of the Sync in-car entertainment and information system will use a USB mobile broadband modem to establish a secure wireless connection capable of supporting several devices simultaneously. The system will be available next year on selected models — no word yet which ones — and you won’t need a subscription or hardware beyond the modem.

“While you’re driving to grandma’s house, your spouse can be finishing the holiday shopping and the kids can be chatting with friends and updating their Facebook profiles,” said Mark Fields, Ford president of the Americas. “And you’re not paying for yet another mobile subscription or piece of hardware because Ford will let you use technology you already have.”

Several automakers already offer in-car internet access — Japanese drivers have been using it since 1997 — and many others are rushing to bring it to us. Ford’s announcement follows General Motors’ promise last week to make in-car connectivity available in seven models of trucks and SUVs. They’re the latest automakers to bring the infobahn to the autobahn.

Mercedes recently announced it has successfully tested in-vehicle internet applications — including web browsing, vehicle software updates and VOIP — on a prototype 4G network. It follows BMW’s internet-connected iDrive system and Chrysler’s Uconnect Web in-vehicle mobile hotspot. With so many automakers getting in on the action, there’s a push to introduce hardware standards.

Ford is taking a decidedly different approach, opting to allow consumers to plug in their own USB modem to get connected. General Motors, on the other hand, offers a dealer-installed system called Chevrolet Wi-Fi by Autonet Mobile. It creates a Wi-Fi hot spot 300 feet in diameter around the vehicle, and GM claims the 3G network achieves speeds of up to 1.5 mbps. The hardware costs $199 after the $200 mail-in rebate, and the service costs $29 a month.

Given how connected we are, it makes sense for automakers to put the internet in our cars. The number of iPhones and other mobile devices being used to connect to the internet jumped 75 percent in the third quarter of this year, according to JiWire Mobile Audiences Insights Report.

Letting people log on from the road will be a big selling point among 20-something buyers, the so-called Millennials who have propelled much of Sync’s success. Millennials will make up 28 percent of the driving population next year, a nine-point increase from 2004. Kids aside, Ford says interest in in-car connectivity is high among the general public, with one-third of people surveyed by the Consumer Electronics Association expressing interest in being able to check e-mail or surf the web from the car.

The Drive is a key element of public radio. This trapped population that gets its radio fix from the air.

This article is a warning - the car will be a Wifi sanctuary.

In a couple of years Wifi will be ubiquitous. Who will need a radio?

Now they will want good content - but no one will be listening to your air. And HD radio? Plueeeese!!!!