Beyond Broadcast: Expanding Public Media in the Digital Age

Beyond Broadcast:

Expanding Public Media in the Digital Age

"Beyond Broadcast" represents the Center for Digital Democracy's latest effort to help realize the full potential of public media—including public broadcasting, but focusing especially on a range of new digital technologies—in the broadband era.

With the inability of the mainstream media, now dominated by a handful of multinational conglomerates, to serve the public interest, and the corresponding failure of the established institutions of public broadcasting to create a genuinely participatory system, CDD believes it is now time for more collaborative and community-based efforts. Just as desktop publishing and Internet communications forever changed the media ecology of the late twentieth century, so will the convergence of online and broadcast technologies (desktop audio and video) affect the early twenty-first century. The old rules of production and distribution have changed, and it is not too early to make sure that the new rules are applied in a more just and equitable manner. Technological convergence, in short, must not be allowed to become the latest victim of media consolidation.

This is not the first time that CDD has explored the contours of the new media landscape in search of opportunities for alternative voices to express themselves. Our initial efforts in this regard include New Media Solutions to Old Media Bottlenecks , the Community Cable Cookbook: A Citizen's Guide to Cable Franchise Negotiations, and a pilot Public Media Caucus (part of a series of meetings involving public media producers, distributors, and other programming-related constituencies, organized by CDD consultant Alyce Myatt).

The Beyond Broadcast report is divided into three parts, encompassing ten sections that examine a variety of traditions, technologies, and platforms for an expanded system of public media:

Part One: Expanding Public Media in the Digital Age (released 1 February 2006)

Introduction

I. Edgewise: The Media Landscape's New Geography

II. Back to the Future: Public Broadcasting in the Digital Age

III. "Do-it-Ourselves" Media: New Opportunities for Alternative Voices

Part Two: New Technologies and New Venues for Independent Media
(to be released 1 July 2006)

IV. Digital Town Squares: Community Bandwidth in the Broadband Era

V. Twenty-first Century PEG: The Future of Cable Access Channels

VI. Web 2.O'Reilly: The Future of Online Communications

Part Three: Building a More Democratic and Participatory Media System (to be released 1 September 2006)

VII. Rewriting the Rules: Public Policy in a Deregulatory Age

VIII. Paying the Piper: Funding Opportunities for New Media

IX. Beyond Borders: International Models of New Media Support