Robert Paterson's Weblog

WETA - Bringing the heart to Radio - Future of Public Radio

Many who read my blog know that my core belief about the future health of public radio is tied into the idea of a Copernican shift in the relationship between the station and the listener.

A shift from Content to Contact - from Transaction to Personal. Sounds nifty but many have also asked me what this means in practice.

So I called Dan De Vany at WETA last week to find out how this might be working in Washington post WETA's shift to all Classical. What did it mean to transform the relationship from a transactional one to a personal one?

First of all some numbers.

As context, remember that WGMS had been the classical leader in DC but had changed formats - this shift had given WETA the opportunity to end the "News Arms Race". WETA took over the WGMS library and three key WGMS people who had important relationships with the audience.  - the program director, Jim Allison, who had the pulse of the audience, two on-air hosts, John Chester and Chip Brienza, who had their hearts.

In the first book, WETA's share jumped from 2.1 to a 4.9 share. In the DC station rankings its rank jumped from 17th to 5th. This happened all but overnight. The money followed immediately. In the first pledge drive WETA raised almost $600,000 - its most successful drive ever.

What did this mean? Part of this shift was that there was an established audience that had lost its station, WGMS, that had snapped to WETA in gratitude. But the deeper question for Dan and I as we talked was to explore what was it about classical music in DC that made it such a compelling format.

Dan's research has told him that the classical music audience is more attached than perhaps any other. The average listener to the new WETA listens 8 1/2 hours a week. But the core listeners listen almost 15 hours. There are signs of a different listening pattern here - a pattern of attachment. As Dan went deeper, he found that what these listeners wanted more than anything was a "Refuge".  They wanted a refuge from the pace and turbulence of the other parts of their lives.

Think of this for a minute. This is not "Content". This is an "Experience". This is a "Space" this is a "World". This is an opportunity for the person to get connected to the universe. (If you think that this an exaggerated claim I dare you to spend time with Dr Jill Bolte Taylor here giving her stunning lecture at TED).

As I listened to Dr Taylor, I had a huge aha. We live in a world that is largely left brain. It is all about how separate we are. In this world everything is a transaction. But, starved and waiting is our right brain. This other person who is also us is connected to the universe. Tamped down by modern life, like the prisoners in Fidelio, this other part of us yearns to set free and to be connected.

Great music is I have found a doorway to this freedom.

There are times when listening to great music that we open to the full potential of being human. Surely you have had those moments when you have had to stop all else and have felt the hairs on your neck rise as something happens to you? Here is my all time favorite - the final moments of Mahler's 8th Symphony with Simon Rattle. Please take a few minutes and watch/listen to this and tell me that you are not moved. When the children stand I gasp.

Time stops.

Or have you had hard work to do, like write up an interview like this, and you do as I am doing now call on the power of great music (Listening to Sibelius 5th Symphony) to open up the creative part of you? Or surely, you have had a long day and you curl up in your chair with your dog by your side, a good book in your lap, a single malt by your hand and listen to great music?

This is not Content - this is Contact.

Back to Dan.

You can imagine the tension at WETA after the change. Had they made the right call? The emotional price had been very high. Had they done the right thing? Well it looked as if they had from the numbers. But then they started the second pledge drive....

Three days in and it was not going well at all. Dan and the team had been running the typical scripted drive. You know what he means by that. They were dying on air – little money was coming in. Few calls – Not much money. Been there yourself?

What was wrong?

What was wrong was that they were treating the whole thing as they had in the past. They were trying to make transactions with listeners – you give us this and we’ll give you that – a premium for a pledge. They were treating the audience as consumers of a thing. They were not connecting to where the listener was.

On day 4 of the drive they threw all the scripts out and talked for the first time from the heart about their own passion for music and what it meant to them. For the first time they found the energetic frequency of their new audience. They tuned in. The calls picked up as did the money.

I think we call this a learning experience don't we?

Having rescued the drive in a moment of sheer terror, Dan and the team now had to take what they learned and develop a deliberate plan for the future. They had to develop a plan for Contact. Fortunately WETA had hired a new VP of Individual Giving Mary Kay Phelps.  Apart from being smart, warm and thoughtful, Mary had a special attribute. She had not come from a pub radio background. She was not embedded in how "we have always done this."

Nor was she was she over attached to having to invent it all here. So WETA looked out at who might be able to teach them about having a new relationship with the listener and they found KUSC. KUSC also was an all Classical Station in a major market. KUSC had a strategy for Contact:

They knew at the core that the relationship was based not on logic or on a deal but on emotion and that emotion was based on an experience - a singular and a shared experience that classical music could give people. Many have said that if humans were to be judged by some alien and wise species, this kind of music might be the one thing that saves us from being condemned as barbarians.

So they gave up on the tired and maybe fake idea of "Membership" but sought instead a commitment - a commitment from someone who believed in the same things as the station did - that classical music was a public good. They know that Commitments are not one offs but are long term. KUSC looks for people who will give over time. KUSC looks for people who wish to share their experience with others - who wish to build this space for as many who care to enter it. It is not all about them and what they get but all about us and what we can give to each other.

This is not a subtle difference. Look deep into the idea of Membership and you will find it is usually about if you do this we will do that. Or it may be if you don't do this we will go off the air. The word Tawdry comes to my mind. There is something not a little sad and dirty about such a relationship.

KUSC look to a philanthropic aspect of people. The benefits are not a premium but what you have done for the community.

Most importantly "Pledge Speak" is a no no.

The corporate and the scripted voice is banned. For this is the voice of separation and the voice of transaction. Using the "Pledge Voice" is dissonance for a committed listener. If you have not done so - please go back and listen to Dr Taylor. As she reaches the peroration of her talk I defy you not to be moved. She is the very embodiment of what I am trying to tell you about. At the end of her talk, she is utterly transcendent.

So with trepidation, Dan and the team recast the next pledge drive using some of these principles. The goal was to raise $480,000 and to cut the time of the drive from 11 days to 8. No pressure! How did it go?

They averaged $50,000 a day and raised over $130,000 on the last day. No scripts. No traditional premiums. But a new kind of premium. Today we often share music with someone we love. It is an act of intimacy. When I share my mix with you, I open up part of my soul to you. I show you an inner art of me. This was the premium. Some of the announcers hosted discreet hours of music featuring special selections and offered out a more contemplative side of their lives in an adagio mix. Total monetary value of the mix - nothing. Total emotional value of the mix - everything.

Now what?

WETA have a comprehensive off air process. Direct mail and so on. Now they are working to align this to Contact. All the language and the message has to be changed to align with Contact.

A critical shift in values is to decisively reject the "Burning Platform" idea and to got to the Build the City on the Hill. People want to be connected to something that will grow and where they can be part of the growth. We all tire quickly of the crisis.

Dan and the gang are learning that it not enough to say that classical music is great - they have to live it themselves. They like Dr Taylor have to embody this. 90.9 in DC has to become a place. Living this means that they understand and act upon the knowledge that they do not offer a steam of content, though they do. They now know that what they offer is a Place. They offer a Refuge. They offer a Refuge in a world that is overwhelming. A world that is usually loud and crass. A world that often isolates us from others and more importantly from our very selves.

They are learning that they are the keepers of a Haven. A Haven where the age old customs of hospitality still apply.

They are learning that most of the world is disposable. Content is disposable. People are disposable.

In this context, they are struggling to find out how to make what they do non disposable. How to make you non disposable. What might this be worth? Can you see hwy this may be different?

Is this idea just applicable for a classical music station?

Dan and WETA are not there yet. But they are on their way. It feels real to them. It feels real to those that love classical music in DC too. And surely the voyage is taken together and maybe it never ends either.

Chris Anderson on the Future of Public Radio

I keep banging on - so I bet that many of you either switch off or say to yourself - "Oh that's Rob on his soapbox again"

So today here is another voice - Chris Anderson - Mr Wired - Mr Long Tail on his views of where is attachment and his wallet are going. I quote him in full:

Around these parts it's NPR pledge week, which used to mean that I'd spend even more time in the car on the cellphone to avoid having to listen to my local affiliate's endless fundraising guilt trip.

But now that I've switched to an iPhone, I've noticed a different behavior. I'm listening to more and more of my favorite NPR shows (This American Life, Terry Gross's Fresh Air, Science Friday, etc) as podcasts, something that finally suits me thanks to having a phone that automatically loads the latest shows. I don't have to avoid the NPR pledge drive anymore. (My emphasis)

At the beginning of each podcast Terry Gross tips her hat to the local broadcast affilates, which is nice but otherwise pretty pointless. But every now and then Ira Glass (pictured), the host of This American Life, reminds us that the bandwidth bill for these free podcasts is more than $100,000 a year, and encourages us to go to the show's website to donate something to offset that. And I just did that, donating $50 in a week when I'm ignoring my local NPR affiliate's plea to do the same.

Why? Well, in thinking about it, I realized that I don't really support my local affiliate. I love some of the shows it broadcasts and hate others (have you heard the California Report? Dreadful). My attachments are to individual shows, not to a broadcast station. My engagement with public radio is at a more granular level than the affiliate. I just don't care that much about KQED, and now that I've got another way to get the shows I like, I don't really feel much of a connection to it.

Now that I get my radio via podcast, I don't have to take the bad shows with the good. I've got an a la carte menu, and I assemble my own schedule with what I want and when I want it. My feelings about radio stations are mixed, but my feelings about individual shows are crystal clear.

What if everyone did what I do? Well, both radio-via-airwaves and radio-via-podcast are free, and both can appeal directly to contributors to help pay their bills. Of course most of This American's Life's costs are covered by affiliate syndication fees, and if the affiliates couldn't pay those, it would take more than an online tip jar to pay the costs of making the show. And obviously those who don't have access to podcasts would be hurt if public radio broadcasters shut down.

But look at the arc of history here. The podcast model is getting cheaper and more ubiquitously available (who doesn't have a cellphone?), and it serves individual needs and taste better. Meanwhile the broadcast model, which is all about one-size-fits-all taste, is based on human labor costs and costly transmission equipment and is only getting more expensive. You can see how this story ends.

My shifting of funding from the general (radio station) to the specific (show) tells me that radio is going to get microchunked, just like the rest of media. The more granular, the better. We're about to find out where people's loyalties really lie.

I see only 2 ways that local radio will survive this trend.

1. You have to do things locally that will attach your local people to you - you have no hold over them any more as the sole provider of good content - This means that you have to create the local "Trusted Space" (Here is Kit Jensen with her ideas of how Cleveland is building such a space) where people who live in your area can address important issues that concern them such as Ideastream does in Cleveland - you have to become a social agency. You could start with emergency services (KPBS)- You could tackle education, health care - become part of the community
2. You have to also make the national content into a local social object - you have to bring in the voice and the energy of your local people to add to the national content - WOSU is doing this in Columbus as they bring in the local bloggers on topics such as food or OPB is bringing in local experts

Finally - what will people pay for when content is free? Here is Kevin Kelly with the answers as linked to by Seth Godin 

      

Election 2008 - Gore sets the manifesto for Public Media

Here is Al Gore at his best setting out the democratic challenge for America and I think the manifesto for all in Public Radio and TV who want to make a difference

Here is Jevon's best part:

Public Radio has been one of the few defenders of discourse in America, and the burden has been tough. The failure of PBS and it’s implosion (and hopeful resurrection) is an example of what TV cannot do. Much like the printed word, Radio is a Hot Medium.

While the obsession with sounding good and having great production are worthy distractions, Public Radio needs to instead focus itself fully on aiding the recovery of the american democratic conversation.

How can this happen?

Public Radio has to stop being embarrassed every time it is attacked politically by conservatives, but it must also liberate itself from it’s image as a lefty hippie camp. Down the center of American politics is a void, and in that void sits millions and millions of teenagers, senior citizens, new immigrants, workers, entrepreneurs, mothers and everyone you can imagine.

It’s that space, the discourse with the disenfranchised rather than the punditry, that will bring reason back to America.

Public Radio/TV - The Young or the Holy Grail

Every meeting I go to that discusses the future of Public Radio and TV, has getting a foothold among the young as the Holy Grail. The implication is that somehow, a new kind of programming that uses the air will find this elusive market.

The core idea is that somehow the Grail will come to us. What if we went instead out to the Grail?

Go to Facebook and check the following out.

• Are there large networks that support public radio and TV? There are 2 that are in the thousands
• How big is your local regional network and how does it compare to your current membership? In St Louis there are more than 71,000.
• What kind of penetration does Facebook have in your community? In Charlottetown, pop 35,000, there are 13,000

Who is in Facebook? If you join your local network - you can use powerful search tools to understand the  local market better. You can get a sense of the political color of the place - in St Louis 61% claim not to be closely affiliated with a strong view - feels like public radio/TV types to me. 

How would Facebook stack up versus other networks such as MySpace? My bet is that they fit the profile - well educated and aware. Young but not all young.

What about YouTube?

I am working on how best to support the upcoming Ken Burns documentary on "The War" in September of this year. I looked at how Wisconsin has put on its very well produced pieces on stories of its vets. They are very polished - but you cannot see them easily, they load very slowly on Real, you cannot comment or talk about them, you cannot form a group around them and you cannot add your story to them.

They look polished but they have no group forming power.

Now go to YouTube and search for Bill Moyers - you will see that PBS and others are putting his work up regularly. Check out his recent interview with Jon Stewart. See the interaction and the group forming power of this. Now imagine if PBS used this channel to build community. What if your local PBS station and Radio station had a YouTube Channel?

Oh we would lose our brand you may reply. But I then ask - do you want a younger audience or not? A recent poll of the kids of staff in Public radio told us that almost none of their kids had a radio.

If you polled your kids and asked if they used Facebook and Youtube - what do you think the answer would be?

We talked last weekend about the need to build audience. We heard in Boston, that if you really want a jump in size of market - you have to find a new audience. Well folks, our new audience is there just waiting for us to have the courage to meet them on their terms

Public Radio - Getting together

I am in Washington for a few days at a large meeting of the folks in Public Radio. It was almost a year ago that we all met after the New Realities process to hopefully find a way of working together to go to that new place that we know that we have to go to.

Well the journey is harder than any of us knew. I don't think that any of us are happy - there has been I think good progress within some organizations - at some stations and inside NPR and some other producers - but we have not found the way to easily work with each other.

Alan Deutschman is here to give us some insight. Here is my interview with Alan shortly after he published his book Change or Die

I will be mainly a participant this week and plan to speak as openly as I can. I suspect that Alan's observations about change will apply:

• Knowing that you will die if you do not change is not enough to make change - 90% of people who have a diagnosis of heart disease do not follow their doctor's orders
• Having the expert tell you what to do creates resistance
• Only a peer supported process, like AA for Drinkers, has any chance "Relate"
• This means that we don't all have to play - we don't all have to agree to help each other do something - we only need the early adopters
• That we need a framework or supporting process - a project team? - to support the cooperation - that this does NOT LEAD OR DIRECT the work - it supports the group
• That the work must have a long life to it so that the experience of working with each other becomes normal "Repeat"
• That there have to be early successes and prestige for the new
• That the new has to be kept away from the old - needs protection
• That as the new works, the rest will start to join in

I am hoping that we can find some work that may fit this - maybe election 2008? - that has an emotional appeal and the scope to help us learn all we need to.

Imagine a democratic and a republican radio convention with a national lead up of meetings and shows before this where the people can have a real say in how the agenda is formed? Imagine what we would have to do to pull this off and how such work would inform the system as to what we have to do in all fields?

Best wishes to us all.

Hope is not lost - Radio and TV and Everything

Hope is not lost - I felt a huge movement yesterday afternoon.

The CEO part of the IMA 2007 conference closed last evening with a remarkably frank discussion of what we all have to do to make progress. I am now much more hopeful that the "System" will organize to do the work.

There was solid agreement in the room that progress was too slow and that only if a group of people were taken off their day job and given the task of leading the work, would Public Media keep its relevance, survive and most importantly - thrive.

I felt an implicit contract being signed in public as all the key leaders in the system in effect made a promise in public to change up the gears and to organize for success.

I was especially moved by a some who spoke who talked about their own personal motives. Their hope that their children could live in a free, democratic and healthy place. Their commitment to civic society and to democracy. Their commitment to having their people's story told.

For me, motive and hope is the key to change. As Alan Deutschman shows us in Change or Die, being told you are going to die - the substance of much of what we heard in the last 2 days - is not the great activator for change that we think it may be. 90% of seriously at risk patients do not act on their doctor's advice.

So why don't we change, even if we know that if we don't we will die? To make a big change - to think web versus terrestrial, to think collaboration versus me alone -  often means to change our identity. If our identity and our personal story is attached to these things, then in 90% of the time we would rather die than change the identity that we had come to rely on.  We martyr ourselves for this identity. This is what is the real barrier.

What Alan reminds us, is that to make deep change - to acknowledge that the web will supplant all the work of our lives - that we are not under attack from our peers that we have to work with each other in public media - we have to have Hope.

We have to have a process that works with this fear of changing our identity. Such a process has to have the following elements. We have to have a mission that pulls us forward. We have to to have peers that believe in us - even when at first we don't believe ourselves. Think AA. We have to experience the early wins so that we can feel that the new is better than the old. Not read about why it should be better but feel why it is and early. We have to keep experiencing the new way of experiencing the world for years. For at least 3 years. Only then can we re frame our identity.

Ideas do not change us. Only experience changes us. Changing experience has to be deep and repetitive to change the habits of a career.

This is what I see as the mission of the group when it is formed. It will have to provide

• A compelling mission - hope and a call that activates our hearts and our courage and that calls millions of Americans to help not just of us in the system. My sense is that we know what this  and I will post later on what I think it must be
• Changing positive action - people is the system have to see parts of the new that are better and then they have to experience this for themselves
• Support - people have to have the support of their peers - constant and loving support of others who have made and are making the same struggle
• The process has to take time - we are changing habits. Only a new habit can change an old one. It will take about 3 years to ingrain the new
• Only then can we inhabit a new word.

More later on the mission and the pull

Public Media 2007 - Some Context

There is a  sense of urgency and even frustration - that is the background feeling that I am picking up. Henry Becton (WGBH) opened the conference with a straightforward agenda for action.

I saw at least three elephants in the room both of which are being cleverly dealt with by Mark's agenda and speakers.

• That with over 50% broadband penetration, that the web has changed. It is now the most important tool in how people live their lives. Some are almost always connected now and soon most will be in this place. Time is running out for any enterprise that does not understand and act upon this new reality. There has been great supporting information to support this from Lee Rainier at Pew and Pam Horan from Online Publishers Association. I will post material later.
• That time is all but run out for those that hope that they can remain the same. David Sifry, David Weinberger and Doc helped the room see that the entire business model for Public Radio and TV will end shortly. Scarce bandwidth, scarce and expensive content, license protection and secure listening spaces such as the car will go away in the next few years. With so little time to find a new way of doing business, the risks are to be paralyzed by the fear of being wrong or not perfect or to try a mega project. Sifry made the case for finding your way into the future by the rule of 2 plus 2. 2 engineers given 2 weeks to do a project. This idea of starting small and working fast will be a recurring theme.
• That the direction of the future can be seen. It is in facilitating community. It is in acting sensibly to the demand for participation and creation. Again Doc, David S and David W in conversation with he room helped us see this as clearly as possible. Of course this clarity is not confined to this conference. Here is today's Mason's minute that throws down the gauntlet.
  

My hope is that by the end of the week, there will be some key work agreed on that will start to make real progress.

An important piece of advice came during an outstanding presentation by Scott Anthony of Innosight (A consulting child of the work of Clayton Christensen) - "More Kites less Death" (He showed a film clip of how the Wright Brothers tested out their ideas of flight using a kite and not a full scale plane in which the pilot would have died.)

What he meant by that was don't try to arrange mega projects to get you into the future, you will get them wrong. Go for smaller learning expeditions. I think that the greatest barrier for progress has been the idea that we all had to get together in big projects. There is just too much friction for that.

He also cautioned the room from allowing the latent power of the traditional to suck the life out of the new. Build a ring fence around the new and protect it was his mantra.

Later in the day we saw examples of people who were already good at "kites" that could help us all learn a  lot. Susan Howarth at WCET showed us how Cincinnati is building a much deeper relationship with her local community using video.  Al Bartholet  at WKSU showed us how Folk Alley is building a community of interest in Folk.

I think that this is the right way to go - lots of small projects that can be showcased and linked up so that we can all learn how to get to the future in time and at scale.

More later today.

IMA Conference Boston 2007

I am brain dead and I will post properly tomorrow BUT Mark has done a stellar job. Quite the best speakers I have heard on any topic at any conference.

I am a huge fan of participation but there is a place for witnessing mastery and we saw a lot of it today

Details tomorrow at dawn - the bar calls me

Hyper Local Radio on the Web - BBC Manchester

An excellent part of last week's discussions at NPR was what can local stations do. Here are Jeff  and Zadi talking more about this.

I brought up the example of the BBC in Manchester, Robin Hamman (An American at the BBC), where the BEEB has emlisted the help of a number of local bloggers - who RSS feed into an editor who writes a very local column.

The bloggers do not have to make BBC posts, they are feeds. The BBC safeguard their brand, the local coverage is very extensive, the bloggers get exposure and lots of help from the BBC.

Here is the Blog - have a look and see if you could do this. Here is my interview with Robin that sheds light on his thinking

Public Radio - IMA - A Tipping Point?

I am off to Boston tomorrow to the IMA conference. Many thanks to Mark Fuerst who has labored so long and so hard.

Mark has a very well thought through starting point that I would like to share.