Life after broadcast: What mission-driven media must become as audiences and funding move on

Tom Davidson | for E&P Magazine

What if the future of public media … doesn’t include a tower?

In the past several columns, I’ve been ruminating about the fundamental forces changing our industry. That includes the loss of federal funding, but that’s really just one example of the shift in audience and dollars from legacy broadcasting to on-demand digital channels.

Those changes are impacting the relationship between PBS and its member stations and how public radio organizations and NPR continue to morph into podcasting and on-demand listening.

Today, let’s go a step further. What if public media doesn’t include a broadcast component at all?

The brilliant Dick Tofel (founding president of ProPublica, and former assistant publisher at The Wall Street Journal) offered this provocative parenthetical in one of his recent Substack musings: “Without public funding, [public media] is really now just an important sector within the larger world of nonprofit news.” (If you don’t read Dick’s “Second Rough Draft” essays, you should.)

The nonprofit media ecosystem Dick writes about is mostly focused on traditional accountability journalism. Put another way, hard news.

But not entirely. In that universe are excellent organizations fostering arts and culture; covering food; the great outdoors and the lesser-told stories of life in a particular place — all of which have been staples of public broadcasting for decades.

And those are just the storytellers inside formal media organizations.

The numbers become almost limitless when you expand your definition of “media” to include the independent creators and newsletter publishers distributing on Instagram, TikTok, Beehiv and Substack (and, doubtlessly, other platforms I haven’t heard of yet). While many of us are obsessing over how to preserve what we’ve historically had, others are out there inventing the new.

Hence the question: If we were to launch a new local, mission-driven public-service media entity today, what would it look like?

What stories would we tell? What entertainment would we want to provide? Who in our community could help us tell those stories? How might we use the digital, social tools to distribute them, but also build deep, direct relationships with them and garner financial support for our work?

The great American philosopher Mel Brooks had a line in “History of the World Part 1”: “It’s good to be the king!” Well, it was until the forces of freedom and democracy toppled monarchies.

A whole array of forces is toppling our traditional “monarchy” of public broadcasting. The limitless array of consumer choice was first fostered by cable television and satellite radio, and now exploded via YouTube and social platforms, coupled with the ability of anyone to become their own producer (for good or ill) with inexpensive, easy-to-use production tools. The lines between consumer and creator are forever blurred. “Producer and distributor of content” can’t be our only calling card.

One of my early mentors in public media, Dennis Harsaager, used to say we should stop thinking of ourselves as the nonprofit arm of the media sector, and instead act as the media arm of the nonprofit sector. (It is a profound pity that his wonderful essays are no longer available online.) In a very real sense, those creators and nonprofit media organizations are acting on Dennis’ advice, and we should, too.

Note that I am not suggesting that stations should simply turn their licenses back to the FCC (or, a variation of that theme, hope for another spectrum auction to squeeze a few million dollars out of a slice of the license). Nor am I advocating that the towers should be dynamited in a spasm of maniacal laughter.

But it is worth noting the example of the People’s Media Fund. It’s a foundation funded (to the tune of more than $100 million) by the 2017 sale of all of the former WYBE’s spectrum, a non-PBS public television station in Philadelphia. To date, more than $50 million of that money has been directed to independent storytellers in and around Philadelphia — people telling the types of stories that fit our historical mission.

That earlier question about “What would we do if we were starting fresh?” is a little unfair. We do have existing licenses, towers and organizational missions to fulfill. We can’t truly start anew.

But those forces of audience change and economic pressure are inexorable. We do, as Dick Tofel recommends, need reinvention, and we do our communities a disservice if we don’t start thinking about life after broadcast.

So, I’ll amend my earlier line of questioning: If you were starting a brand-new mission-focused media organization in your community and you had access to the blowtorch of audience promotion a broadcaster could bring to you, what would you do with it?

That, perhaps, is the most intriguing “what if” question out there.

A personal note: I’m taking a pause and stepping away from these monthly essays. Some personal commitments and my teaching at Penn State are leaving me with too little time to be thoughtful in this space. (Like my students, I have been shocked and surprised to find that I am expected to show up in class every day. The nerve.)

These pieces have been wonderfully rewarding, in particular through the conversations and feedback from so many of you on the public media landscape. I give heartfelt thanks to Mike and Robin Blinder at E&P for giving me the space, and especially to all of you doing the vital work of non-commercial storytelling in challenging times.

Tom Davidson is the Bellisario professor of practice in media innovation at the Bellisario College of Communications, Penn State University. He previously was a reporter, content leader, general manager and product builder at Tribune, PBS, UNC-TV and Gannett. He can be contacted at tgd@tgdavidson.com.