Proudly proclaiming its Silicon Valley locale in the masthead, you can always count on The Mercury News (registration required) to closely cover the tech sector, so I anticipate much of my reading about the Consumer Electronics Show
this week will come from this MediaNews Group owned paper/site and live blogging from the PMD.
Both sources have reported on a partnership of NPR, Harris Group and Towson University to use HD radio to deliver transcription of NPR radio broadcasts for the hearing and visually impaired. The PMD article (registration required) goes into more detail about this service and HD radio overall (unlike The Mercury News article which has to give equal time to talking BBQ thermometers and customized massage chairs). A post from PC Magazine yesterday also discussed the new development.
But I still feel like I'm missing something about this technology by not being at the CES. I mean, I understand that the technology renders NPR broadcasts "so that the hearing impaired can read them," but what does The Mercury News reporter mean when he writes that the HD radio device will also render NPR's content so that "the visually impaired can hear?" I thought we already had a technology that the visually impaired can hear, it's called "radio".
StoryCorps visits Orlando this month and the Orlando Sentinel's pop music critic covered David Islay's project in a recent article.
In an oversimplification that perhaps misses the point of public media, the critic Jim Abbott explained that "as a business model, StoryCorps is a loser—at least on paper. It costs $250 to do each of the 40-minute interviews offered for $10—or for free." He goes on to explain that, "from its beginnings with 7 employees and a $500,000 budget, StoryCorps has swelled to an 80-member staff and a budget of $6 million, largely funded by donations," which explains why StoryCorps is reviewing résumés for a Development Coordinator position (posted November 7th and apparently no longer open).
Everyone from CNN to bloggers like living read girl . . . from PBS itself to The New York Times (registration required) last month has been trumpeting Gillian Anderson as the new Masterpiece Theatre host (her debut was last night).
From a Creative Risks perspective, the more intriguing news is that the PBS icon series now comes in three distinct program packages: Masterpiece Classic (of which Gillian is the host), Masterpiece Mystery! (which shrewdly saves the similar PBS icon series, Mystery!, by absorbing it under the Masterpiece brand) and Masterpiece Contemporary which will "will show dramas set in modern times," according to PBS (White Teeth from the '02-'03 season is the best, most recent example that comes to my mind).
Far more creative than risky, here's a strategy that will allow for more specific national media buys and station promotion to drive viewers to the series (I imagine a—dare I say it—younger audience might thrill to Masterpiece Contemporary but would see Masterpiece Classic as too staid and stuffy). And the three way split would seem to open up more focused national underwriting opportunities, too (I hope so, anyway, since the series has not been underwritten nationally since ExxonMobil dropped out after decades of support in 2004). Similarly, stations will have local underwriting opportunities that didn't exist before. As the PBS local underwriting folks suggested in a conference call last month, stations can now seek corporate support for "(the)".
Easy enough to chant a mantra like "keep the best, reinvent the rest." A bit tougher row to hoe is to actually innovate for optimized potential without screwing up a well-established brand (or as Jim Collins put it in Good to Great, "preserve the core/stimulate progress").
Speaking of WGBH productions, Antiques Roadshow has just announced their summer tour which will result in new episodes for their 13th season airing in 2009. The ARS crew will visit Palm Springs and Dallas in June, Wichita and Chattanooga in July and Grand Rapids and Hartford in August.
And since I promised myself that I'd post this by half past noon (EST), I'll close by offering a link to a decent though not deep opinion piece from Beverly Kelley
in the Ventura County Star who fondly remembers Newton Minow, his
famous T.S. Eliot allusion and juxtaposes Minow's impact to that of current FCC chairman Kevin J.
Martin. Is Martin working hard to be nominated for the Kenneth Tomlinson Service to the American People award or what? Who knows? Perhaps the best answer is:
"You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water."
That's hardly adequate as anyone's daily recommended dose of good poetry, but it will have to do for now because I must get on with the rest of my day.
Thanks for your time and attention.
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