I have been thinking all week about the NPR and PI deal - it's taken me this long to process it all.
Implicit in the press release is the idea that technology, the back end, training and standards will drive the transition in public radio to public media.
The existing service will evolve to further help public media strengthen and grow its digital distribution capabilities. It will manage the utility and support functions for distribution on diverse media platforms; support the infrastructure; reinforce digital cooperation across public media; help define technical and operating standards; provide increased station support and staff development, including training on digital tools; and develop new products and services to enrich stations' and content producers' digital activities. As a result, stations will have the resources to introduce greater functionality, engage in new community partnerships, and generate more value in the digital space while leveraging limited resources.
In my 2 years of work with stations it is now clear to me that technology is not the barrier to the New Media Reality that we have to reach. There are a number of barriers - none of which are mentioned in the release.
A very high barrier is cultural - a 2.0 world cannot be trained for - it has to be lived. There has to be enough people on staff who are digital natives. It is people that will make the difference not technology.
The goal is not "digital distribution" - these words imply that the web is only another channel. The web is a place and it is the only future for the system. It is not a nice to have - it is life or death.
What is left out entirely in the release is the most important issue of all - it is the business model.
The new business model for the web is the goal here.
The current business model, based on a local monopoly and "on air" being the primary activity is no longer valid. If we all hope that it is, then seeing it as being the central truth will will kill everyone.
Look at how this idea of the old one-way physical delivery model is killing newspapers. It is the attachment to the paper that keeps the costs so high that the new cannot live. It is the attachment to the old one way relationship with the reader that holds back progress. It is the attachment to the paper that forces the owners who become desperate for cash flow, to cut the best people and the best content.
I think that public radio and TV is on the same path now as newspapers. The attachment to the one way on air model is strangling the new and carries death with it as the only outcome. Soon the drop in revenue and the need to pay for the legacy will squeeze the life out of public radio and TV as it is doing to newspapers.
When this point is reached they will be forced to cut staff to the bone and then to cut content. With even fewer staff, of course they cannot make the transition. The future will be lost to them. The ship is bound to sink: it is only a matter of time. They can only keep bailing until the boat sinks.
What content will they cut? Their first choice has to be ATC. Newspapers cut the afternoon edition. Of course their listener base shrinks even further - but they can only focus on cash flow now - they are in bailing mode. Cash flow and surviving another day has to pre-empt a future view. The future become meeting next month's payroll.
As stations diet to death, what happens to NPR? They themselves also implode as their market shrinks, costs mount and underwriting and revenues shrink. They too go into bailing/survival mode. All now depends on ME. What about the new building? Anything that does not pay today's bill, has to get cut. That includes the future!
But as Ford has found - you can't cut your way to the future.
“Everybody says cut and cut some more, but how are we going to sustain this company?” Mr. Mulally said in one meeting in his office on the 12th floor of Ford headquarters, according to people in attendance. “What does a sustainable Ford look like, gentlemen?”
Like the papers, many stations and NPR are locked into a legacy infrastructure that has to be paid for. This traps the system into paying for survival The legacy and the main business traps the system into never changing.
So death is certain. The New York times can only survive if it stops the presses - but culturally this is all but impossible - it is a form of identity death. This is why all of this is so hard.
This is the decision that Admiral Jackie Fisher had to make in 1906. If he launched Dreadnought, every ship in the Royal Navy would be obsolete. His only chance was to grow the new faster than the rest. But if he did not make this decisive move to the new, he could be sure that other nations would and that Britain would then have to lose.
This is the same moment for public radio and TV. We decide that the new is THE FUTURE and that the legacy is the past that we will have to deal with or we decide to die. I am not saying that we all drop the traditional tomorrow. I am saying that we have to see that if we hang onto to it too hard it will have to take us down. We have to see that developing the new model is our only hope. It is not part of our future. It is not a new distribution system. It is the future as direct is the past.
As newspapers and now network TV is being gutted by new model outsiders, so will we.
The PI deal is a great catalyst to have the conversation that may get us to this point.
Just as the newspapers have to give up the paper, the presses and the union arrangements, just as Ford has to give up Trucks and the US production system to live, so Public Radio and TV have to give up their legacy as well. The legacy costs of air have to go away.
For the revenues from air will soon not be enough to support the organizations. So long as all depends on air, there will never be the focus required to shift to the web and a costs structure that can allow for survival. So long as the organizational power in NPR and your station resides with the traditional and the new is a minor league piece, we are stuck.
To make all of this more pressing, we are going into a depression. Underwriting is and will shrink dramatically. It's a perfect storm. What is left will shift to the web where it is easier to know who you are reaching.
It is clear that this is no ordinary economic downturn. What we are seeing is the end of top down - high control - highly centralized systems that relied on a very expensive infrastructure as the competitive barrier. All enterprises that have used this model are failing. Also are enterprises that merely treat the consumer as a idiot such as financial services and ultimately politics!
Here are a few words from Dave Snowden that explain the predicament:
I find it fascinating that some people just can't get away from the top down paradigm. I'm not sure why people need it? It could be control, the conventional issue of authority. Equally there is a strong patronising theme to many of these approaches, a sort of mother(or rather father, this is patriarchal) knows best. Maybe its much simpler, people just don't have the imagination to do things differently? Shifting from hierarchical management, the tyranny of experts and stodgidity (yes I made that word up but I rather like it) of committees is hard for people who have spent most of their adult lives in those environments.
They need a mindset change fast not only for their own sake, but more so for those they govern.
The consequences of failing to realise that we are moving into a networked, distributed model of management in which control is an emergent property of interactions will be disastrous for society.
Network models use distributed cognition (a much better phrase than the wisdom of crowds) and reward original contributions and thinking, plus the ability to make a difference now rather than at some imagined point in the future.
Current models, and the proposal for centralisation that I referenced yesterday will instead reward those adept at manipulating the system.
Come to think of it, maybe that is the motivation?
What are seeing is the rise of enterprises that put the person and the community first.
This is where we are. The purchase of PI has to be seen in this context.
PRI and NPR will work together and with other industry leaders on several significant, immediate steps to further PI's growth and services, including conducting a station consultation process, supporting editorial collaboration, and establishing common standards and interoperability across public media.
Is this really the best agenda for these meetings? I implore NPR to think about the real reality facing the system and make this predicament their agenda. Can we find the new business model?
Can NPR be freed to go direct. If it does, it may well have a brilliant future. Millions of people all over the world want to have access to the NPR product but only on the terms of the New Reality of anytime, anywhere. How can they do this and enable the stations to transition?
What about the stations? Can they give up the fantasy that they have a local monopoly of NPR content? If they do give this up then what? Can they share in the direct model?
How do they make it in their local market? How do they use the network effect to generate and to curate content that they can afford and that has large appeal?
How can they become the trusted convener as KETC in TV is becoming in St Louis where it is acknowledged that the station is the keystone in the local community getting through their complex problems such as the credit crisis, the energy crisis etc?
This is what I would put on the agenda for the proposed consultation process that is attached to the deal.
New Realities told us that all would go to the web. We can see that as being true now. New Realities told us that the value in the web would be community attachment to things and issues that were important. We can see from others that this is true now. New Realities told us that what we did had to be available at any time and at any place. New Realities told us that we had to make room for the people to use our megaphone. All this has become a reality for others but not for us.
We have to do the hardest work of all - we have to die to be born again.
NPR has to be set free - NPR's content has to have a new relationship with the stations.
The stations have to come to terms that there is no future merely being a local on air repeater. They have to find their web 2.0 relationship with their community and they have to learn how to become the trusted local convener.
The word "Public" has to be redefined. It can no longer mean that a system is supported by the public because it brings a rare thing to its community - quality shows and news - for these things are no longer rare as Public TV found out. It brings a new rare thing to its community - it brings the very voice of that community to itself and it does something even more rare - it brings this community together to tackle their own intractable problems.
NPR in this context opens up its audience to the entire world and becomes a beacon of truth to all who seek freedom and to all who wish to inquire about what is really going on.
In this context - let all ask how can PI help. Let's use this deal to find out how we can all do this work.
There is no work that is harder. Who knows how to do this? No one! But we can find out - don't we have to.
Please use this deal as the catalyst to do what is needed.
