KPBS - How a small Public TV/Radio Station served its public - Part 2 - The Culture

Why is the power of Social Media not more widely used? After all most of the software is either free or very inexpensive. After all, it is very easy to use - if you can send an email, you can use most of the applications in Social Software. In a time when emergencies seem to be commonplace, why are not most Stations, Governments, Universities and School systems using these tools to enable them to cope well when bad things happen?

The answer can only be - Culture.

I called Deanna MacKey at KPBS to find out how it was that at KPBS, the station overcame the hesitancy to not only assess the potential but also was able to move so quickly in adopting it and in using it so creatively.

Deanna replied immediately to my question of what was the critical issue was culture. "Our GM is very supportive of granting autonomy. If you are a manager, you are expected to do the right thing. This is the fertile ground that enabled us to cope so well with so many unknowns. It is in our culture to take charge and to do the right thing."

I asked how they had got ready to act on an emergency. How did they know how to use this set of technology so well and so quickly?

"If this had happened 2 years ago, we could not have done this. Like most stations, we had little money and tiny resources allocated to the web. I had one full time "Web Person" and a bit of part time help from a few colleagues. Just like most stations! But it felt so strange that the web was becoming so important and we had so few resources allocated to it. So, in the budget period, we all worked hard at the senior team to re-allocate resources to add to our web capacity.

We moved people around and we added a new person and we put someone in charge. We could not afford a full time IT person nor could we afford a programmer. So we outsourced this to an excellent company."

Here is the KPBS team that rose to the challenge of the fire.

(From Left going clockwise - Susan Murphy - Coordinates Online News, Heather Despol - Education Outreach, Jennifer Robinson Online Production Manager, Joe Spurr -Online Content Producer , Nathan Gibbs - Online Content Producer & Blogs Editor, Ross Ching - Online Video Video Coordinator PT, Susan Tsutsumi - Online Graphics Coordinator & Leng Caloh - Senior Online Managing Editor)

I asked whether this was enough. Was it enough to have a small team?

"No not really. What was vital was that the team had a year to get to know each other, to gain the trust of the Senior Management and to "play" with some of these tools in their own time. If the fire had happened just after the team had been assembled, I don't think they would have had the cohesion, the confidence and the knowledge to act as they did."

I asked what she meant by "Play".

"Well we did not have Twitter or Google Maps in our inventory, but the team had been playing with these tools on their own time. They all had their own blogs. Twitter had been discussed and in the week of the fire, we had planned a brown bag lunch to talk about Twitter. Leng, our manager, had played a lot with Google Maps and had been fascinated by their power. You can't train for this - you have to hire for it."

I asked whether Deanna had been preparing an emergency strategy in advance.

"Yes, we had a general emergency plan but of course, we had never put the plan into action. We knew though that the web team was going to be key. But I think that in maybe another way, we were also prepared to think differently. While the group reported to me - I gave them a lot of room to have their own ideas. The team was used to thinking for itself and had had a year to prove that they could be trusted to act like this. They were culturally ready to act on their own initiative and to act fast. So there was a general plan and a team that had got used to each other and to using their own initiative.

So then I asked Deanna to give me a blow by blow account.

"The fire started of course on a Sunday! Leng came into the station and soon called in the team. It was not clear that something really bad would happen - but she had a nose for trouble. Pizza was ordered. As the hours progressed, it became clear that we were facing a major crisis.

Our web site began to creak under the strain. Traffic was huge. This was when Leng made the big call - to pare down our site so that all we carried were things that were germane to the fire - the fire was the ONLY STORY that counted. We decided to carry only The Headlines, Twitter and the Map. It was not business as usual and the site had to focus on the job at hand. With a slimmer site, we could keep up."

I asked Deanna to tell me more about the Google Map as it had become later the epicenter of the communications exercise being used by all concerned and having millions of hits.

"As I said before, Leng had played around a lot with Google Maps before. But as the pressure built, she knew that she needed help and called me to see if I knew someone. I called my good friend from IMA and KQED, Tim Olson who knows the Google people well.

 Visualization Labs, who have been working on a mapping project, live next door to us on the campus at SDSU! Leng called her friends at Google as well. Soon all of us had got together behind the map. It became a major project for Google who have learned a lot from this and are much better prepared now themselves to offer maps that work well under pressure. The map gave everyone the ability to see accurately what was happening in all but real time."

So what about Twitter I asked?

"Twitter became very important. Again we were lucky. Just Leng had been playing a lot with the Google Map, so Joe Spurr had been playing a lot with Twitter. The inquisitive nature of our staff was to pay off for everyone.

"Twitter enabled us to go beyond "air" and to become a two way station. It suddenly became very important as we went off the air. We lost access to our tower to the fire (The power lines burned up) - and so for 24 hours, we lost our ability to reach our audience conventionally. Very graciously, a commercial station (Channel 94.9 ) later lent us their frequency so that they could carry our news as they thought that news was more important than music. In the interim, we had to rely on streaming and on Twitter.

Without the web channels, we would have gone silent. As it was, we could be in instant two way communication with thousand of people - getting updates and sending updates to people's computers and to their cell phones. We never were not in the centre of the communications mission."

So it's over now. What has been the reaction of your members? Have you seen any change in their support? (Here is a neat report by a resident)

"Well there is no science attached to this but I see a bump. General Membership is was up 6% year over year in December and is up 10% in January. We are getting much more support>"

So what about the future?

" Well I think that we have just scratched the surface. A worry that I have is that people will think that we at KPBS have done it - that we are now equipped to meet the challenge that all media will shift to the web. We have done well but I think that we are far away from that now."

What is going on now that you feel good about?

"We have a very simple addition to our world that we have set up for the election. Called Citizen Voices, it is a shared blog of 6 people, 6 citizens, that are talking about their experience of the election. It is getting great traction and will be going on air today as well. So we are inching our way into a more participative and web based world - but there is so much more to do and to learn and I hope that we can all help each other more to find out what works best."

What a story! I hope that it can help you with your station or your community.

Comments

[gg]

This, the sense of (and reality of) community involving broadcasters and their audiences, is the future of TV and radio, IF station managers have the courage to provide it and citizens have the will to support it.

When citizens have accurate detailed information in emergencies, they are more likely to act in ways that protect life, liberty, and property, than when only government officials have good data and citizens get delayed or watered-down information.

Local control and operational capabiity is critical: downlink stations that play national programming in local markets won't cut it, and stations that are controlled from far away won't cut it.

A dedication to service first, rather than financial outcomes first, is critical: advertisers, investors, and so on must take the back seat in emergencies, and station management needs to have the ability to override commercial concerns when needed.

Cooperation between local stations is critical: for example to share transmitters and other facilities and provide simulcasts of vital information.

Two-way communication is the key to making the rest of this work: a station that is seen as a real community resource can create a strong online community with its audience. This kind of community can also strengthen the station in the conventional ways; "doing good" and "doing well" are mutually reinforcing.

[Robert Paterson]

GG Thanks so much for these 2 excellent comments - you have really added a lot to this
Rob