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 just 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 our 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
