Public Media in the Digital Age - Part I: Public Television

First in a series.

With uncharacteristic brevity for a Washington official, FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps offered a one-word summation of the recent switchover from analog to digital television: “Whew!”

^[1] Originally scheduled for 17 February 2009 and then postponed until 12 June, the DTV transition occurred with relatively few casualties. Of course, the vast majority of U.S. households (over 80 percent) were shielded from the technological upheaval by their subscription to a cable or satellite system. And of the estimated 18.3 million households that once relied exclusively on terrestrial analog broadcast, by the end of June only 1.7 million remained “completely unprepared” for DTV.^[2]

The nation’s 355 public television stations were among those that made it through the transition unscathed, although in their general failure to share their digital largesse with other voices in their communities—and the new, digital incarnation of PTV looks remarkably like its analog predecessor—the reputation of the field for public service will surely suffer. It wasn’t so long ago, after all, that pubcasters spoke boldly of the impact of DTV on their ability to reach new audiences with more innovative and more inclusive programming. Digital broadcast, in the words of WGBH’s David Liroff, will provide “… an opportunity for us to re-calibrate our compasses on mission, and re-invent the how and the why of our business…. We now have the opportunity to create a digital public telecommunications system for the century which lies ahead. The technology has caught up with the mission.”^[3]

To be fair, commercial broadcasters haven’t exactly seized upon the new digital platform for innovative new services, either. Initially hailed as the single greatest change in the history of television, far surpassing the shift from black-and-white to color broadcast in the early 1950s, DTV today seems somewhat less than the sum of its once-vaunted parts: high-definition versions of the same formulaic programming that has led younger audiences especially to look elsewhere for their daily doses of entertainment, and additional standard-definition channels that to date, at least, have offered nothing new. (In the San Francisco Bay Area, for example, the five major networks have collectively added five new DTV channels to their main broadcast outlets: LATV, a music/entertainment channel that targets the “12- to 34-year-old Latino”; LivWell, an infomercial channel; Universal Sports, NBC’s compendium of cycling, skiing, track and field, and other minor sports; and two automated weather channels.) Ironically, the DTV revolution was televised, but so far the new system itself has turned out to be rather less than revolutionary. Nowhere is this disappointment more palpable than in public broadcasting, however, which at one point seemed poised to harness the new technology to become a much more inclusive and participatory system, but whose offerings today fall far short of that goal.

“Public television’s great second chance”

In DTV’s formative years, before the personal computer and the Internet conspired to offer a genuinely interactive mass medium, discussions of new broadcast technology were rife with democratic possibility. Here, finally, was the prospect of a TV that viewers could “talk back to,” as former FCC Commissioner Nicholas Johnson had demanded as early as 1970.^[4] For the first time, TV would become a two-way medium, with electronic town hall meetings that invited citizen participation, remote telecasts from various community venues, and other experiments in grassroots media. Stressing the educational benefits of DTV, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting commissioned demonstration projects in 1998, “patched together by producers at various levels of slickness,” according to Current, that “…showed how a future Great Performances viewer could opt to follow Shakespeare's text while hearing Zoe Wannamaker declaim the lines, or use a mouse to click on musicians in a jazz band and see pop-up bio notes, for example. Science Odyssey viewers could click on maps of the continents and push them around in an interactive demo of plate tectonics.”^[5]

Ten years later, no one is clicking on their TV screens. The early experiments at “datacasting” (i.e., incorporating digitally encoded signals in the broadcast stream, to deliver news, weather, or traffic updates, for example) proved fruitless, and we’re still waiting for meaningful implementations of the long-promised “interactive television” (ITV) that would marry broadcast and online technologies. As one enthusiastic report put it in 2001,

ITV will provide viewers with more programming-related options, ranging from being able to find out more information about a program, (such as sports statistics or soap opera character information), to enabling instant access for ordering products or getting more details about them. It will also provide access to the Web, as well as applications involving e-mail, instant messaging, and chat. Traditional Web use will be converged with television programming, and network operators and programmers will provide applications designed to encourage users to blend the two mediums still further.^[6]

As it turned out, it was far easier to bring television to the Web, in the form of streaming video, than it was to bring the Internet to the TV set. Web TV and AOL TV have both come and gone, and while there will doubtless be similar efforts in the future to bring online technologies into the living room, for the present TV remains largely a one-way medium, and a dominant one at that. “Even though people have the opportunity to watch video on their computers and cellphones,” observed Michael Bloxham, director of a new study on media usage undertaken by Ball State University’s Center for Media Design, “TV accounts for 99 percent of all video consumed in 2008. Even among the 18-to-24-year-olds, it was 98 percent.”^[7]

TV’s marriage with new technology has strictly been one of convenience, featuring digital video recorders, electronic program guides, and video-on-demand systems all designed to foster consumption rather than creation, and more aptly described as “interpassive” than interactive. Soon marketers will exploit such technologies for consumer profiling and targeted advertising, with the proverbial “word from our sponsor” directed at individual households rather than entire regions of the country. But nowhere is there any evidence of interactive technologies that will allow viewers to use their TVs for anything approaching the participatory media of the Internet. For a variety of reasons (including the predominance of commercial networks with little incentive to foster viewer creativity, and the need for backward compatibility with legacy equipment) the U.S. lags behind other countries in the deployment of ITV. But the results abroad, including the use of text messaging to shape the plot of Finland’s “Accidental Lovers,” and viewer participation via telephone in the Danish game “Hugo,” are hardly encouraging.^[8]

“Our digital future will be dim and unfocused”

Although PBS was among the first to explore “advanced television” (ATV) implementations (including a 1998 datacasting experiment in conjunction with the broadcast of Ken Burns’ Frank Lloyd Wright), public broadcasters have always tended to view the digital future through analog lenses.^[9] Burnill F. Clark, president of Seattle’s KCTS (which later became the first public station in the U.S. to broadcast digitally, in 1997), sounded an appropriately cautionary note in December 1995, in his closing remarks at an ATV workshop for public broadcasters. “I am fearful,” declared Clark, “that if we treat this as business as usual, or do not aggressively and resolutely come together as a group of stations and present a compelling plan which builds on our free, noncommercial, universally accessible services, our digital future will be dim and unfocused.”^[10]

Clark’s warning appeared all-too-prescient in 2005, when public broadcasters launched their first multicast channels, on the strength of a ten-year agreement with the National Cable and Telecommunications Association that guaranteed carriage of the pubcasters’ high-definition and multiplex channels to the roughly 70 percent of the public that subscribes to cable systems.^[11] In announcing the agreement, APTS President John Lawson cast DTV as “public television’s great second chance. If we do it right, public television can have an even greater impact on American society in the digital age than we’ve been able to achieve in the one-channel analog world....”^[12]

Measured by Columbia DuPont, Emmy, and Peabody Awards, certainly, public television’s analog impact has been profound. As a share of the overall TV marketplace, on the other hand, that impact is small—and growing smaller. “Lately the audience for public TV has been shrinking even faster than the audience for the commercial networks,” observed Charles McGrath of the New York Times. “The average PBS show on prime time now scores about a 1.4 Nielsen rating, or a little over half of what the wrestling show ‘Friday Night Smackdown’ gets.”^[13] As the TV universe expands, moreover—and cable and satellite systems now routinely offer 300 or more channels—pubcasting’s influence has contracted. According to Chris Schiavone, whose City Square Associates conducted research for the CPB-funded “Awareness, Attitudes and Usage Study” of 2008, “viewers are about half as likely now as in 2004 to name PBS among the channels they turn to first when looking for something to watch. This finding from the opening months of 2008 turns out to have been a leading indicator for what we now know about the primetime audience average for PBS during the whole of 2008, which is down 12 percent over last year and 36 percent over the past five years.”^[14]

In any case, if DTV is indeed public television’s “great second chance,” its current multicast schedule has done little to move the system any closer to fulfilling the basic goals of the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, for “public telecommunications services … responsive to the interests of people both in particular localities and throughout the United States, … an expression of diversity and excellence, and … a source of alternative telecommunications services for all the citizens of the Nation; … programming that involves creative risks and that addresses the needs of unserved and underserved audience…."^[15]

Rather than more responsive, more diverse, or more creative programming, PBS managed simply to come up with “more of the same,” bundling pubcasting’s existing children’s, public affairs, documentary, science, cultural, and “lifestyle” programming into separate streams. San Francisco's KQED, for example, typical of the major PBS affiliates, secured regional cable carriage of five new digital channels in addition to its flagship analog channel, but the new digital streams are little more than elaborationson existing PBS themes:

• KQED HD: "All high-definition and widescreen programs from public broadcasting and KQED."
• KQED Encore: "Primetime all the time—the very best of Public Broadcasting's primetime programs and KQED productions."
• KQED World: "Thought-provoking television—history, local and world events, nature, news and science."
• KQED Life: "Shows that educate, enrich and entertain—arts and entertainment, food, gardening, how-to, money management and travel."
• KQED Kids: "Quality children's programming that parents and caregivers can rely upon to help children learn and grow."

KQED eventually elected to combine the Encore and Life streams, adding V-Me to its multicast lineup, a Spanish-language TV channel offered by PBS affiliates in major markets nationally.^[16] Elsewhere, PTV stations have added a channel called Create to their DTV roster, a joint WGBH and WNET production that combines PBS lifestyle and how-to programs. A handful of stations, it is true, have managed to carve out space for full-time coverage of state and local concerns (including KTOO’s 360 North in Alaska, Twin City Public Television’s Minnesota Channel, Ohio Public Broadcasting’s Ohio Channel, and ETV’s South Carolina Channel). But these rare success stories stand in stark contrast to the failure of the vast majority of PBS’s 350 member stations to offer anything beyond pubcasting’s standard fare.

Public Square: The “next step into the digital future”

Of greater interest than what’s on public broadcasting these days, in fact, is what’s not on—neither the “forum for debate and controversy” nor the “voice for groups in the community that may otherwise be unheard,”which had long been promised by pubcasting’s founders, but which somehow continues to elude the system’s grasp, even with the additional broadcasting capacity that DTV provides.^[17] Such was the case with “Public Square,” certainly, a highly touted “Citizens Channel” whose long, fruitless odyssey through the corridors of CPB and PBS speaks volumes about public broadcasting’s “dim and unfocused” digital future.

Back in 2000, Public Square was a centerpiece in then-PBS President Pat Mitchell’s plan to “keep the best and reinvent the rest” as part of the system’s digital overhaul. The project drew its name from a broader CPB initiative “for television programs and web components that ‘help promote dialogue and civic discussions.’”^[18] At an early PBS brainstorming session in October 2000, participants were told that “the new magazine show would have a flexible format and an eclectic mix of elements: commentary, analysis, compelling storytelling, interviews, live performances and ‘organic’ Internet components.”^[19] The proposed two-hour show would originate from at least three locations across the country and promote “a current review of all that is newsworthy, from art to politics, from music to science, from drama to discourse—everything that makes us laugh, cry, contemplate anew, feel informed and connected.”^[20] PBS was nothing if not ambitious in its plans for the new series, even reaching across institutional boundaries to call on National Public Radio for both on-air talent and “cross-platform content sharing” in an effort to create an “All Things Considered” for television.^[21] Expected to make its debut early in 2002, Public Square promised both online and local components: “A major Internet site will accompany the television broadcast,” promised a 2001 press release, “and participating PBS member stations will offer complementary local initiatives as part of a nationwide community-based outreach effort.”^[22]

For a variety of reasons (including 9/11 and the hasty arrival of “Now with Bill Moyers” to address the aftermath of that tragedy), the original Public Square never progressed beyond the blueprint stage. But by 2004, on the strength of a $200,000 Knight Foundation planning grant, PBS was working on a new public affairs channel with the same name to take its place among the system’s new multicast lineup. “We don’t want a digital service that just talks at America for hours,” suggested Jacoba Atlas, PBS co-chief programming executive. “With the new technology, how do we bring in the voices of America so the service becomes a conversation?” One way to accomplish that goal, according to Atlas, was “to make sure our local stations are a huge component of this. We could take some of their local productions and show them to the whole country.”^[23]

According to then-Knight Foundation President Hodding Carter, the new channel would offer “sustained electronic journalism” in contrast to the commercial networks, where “sleaze repeatedly trumps substance.”^[24] The following year, Knight upped its original ante with a $2.5 million challenge grant (to be matched by PBS with $5 million in other funding) to help launch the new public affairs multicast service. "We are extremely pleased to help PBS take the next step into the digital future and launch this exciting 'citizen's channel,'" said the Knight Foundation’s new president, Alberto Ibargüen. “Communities need information from trusted sources in order to thrive. And an essential facet of news in the future is interactivity. Public Square will be both interactive and from the most trusted source of news and public affairs programming: PBS.”^[25]

Here, for the first time, was a vision for the future that embraced something more than a grand summation of public broadcasting’s past triumphs. To be sure, Public Square would have more than its share of PBS warhorses (including “Nova,” “American Experience,” “NewsHour,” “Frontline,” “Charlie Rose,” and “P.O.V.”), but it would also include a new documentary film series (“ITVS Presents”) and a nightly international news program (“Global Watch”).^[26] Even allowing for press-release hyperbole, PBS’s announcement of Knight’s $3 million infusion into Public Square (which included $500,000 for a “Global Watch” pilot) was encouraging:

A distinctive feature of Public Square will be its interactive elements. Interstitials will include "My Life," a series of video blogs from twenty-somethings, and "60 People in 60 Seconds," in which viewers of all ages and from all continents tell the world what's on their minds in one-minute segments. The service's Web component will be refreshed continually with reports and analyses from around the world. Viewers and online visitors will find stories of scientific advances, natural wonders, revelations of history and lives of the great and the unsung. In addition, daily and weekly news and public affairs programs provide insight and fresh perspectives on the day's and week's events.^[27]

Along with the participatory elements, Public Square would also offer another element traditionally lacking in PBS’s national schedule: localism. “Stations,” according to the Public Square announcement, “will have the opportunity to include local/regional programs as a part of the 24/7 broadcast service, and visitors to the Public Square Web site on pbs.org will have the option of ‘localizing’ the Internet experience.”^[28]

For better or worse, in late 2005 Public Square also received the endorsement of the Digital Future Initiative panel, the latest in a long line of blue-ribbon commissions whose calls for pubcasting reform have gone almost entirely unheeded. (The biggest challenge, suggested NPR’s Dennis Haarsager at the time, would be preventing the DFI report “… from joining the big library of 'shelfware' that our industry seems to be good at creating.")^[29] The DFI panel was accurate in its prescription, at least, if not in its presumption that the patient would actually accept such strong medicine: “As one-way, analog broadcasting is supplemented by a wide variety of digital media formats and platforms," the DFI panel advised, "the public broadcasting community needs to reconstitute itself as public service media …leaders of a much larger effort to create far more content and support its delivery in far more ways.”^[30] Among its many ambitious recommendations, which ranged from lifelong learning to homeland security, was one that drew on the well-established public square theme, as the panel called for public broadcasting to “create public squares—digital civic forums—in every state.”^[31]

Sadly, despite an additional $1 million for the project from the Ford Foundation, Public Square never became the “citizens’ channel” that its creators envisioned. By 2006, plans for Public Square (“still officially a working title,” according to Current) had withered to “…a hosted weeknight block, two to three hours long, that features national public affairs coverage and can incorporate stations’ coverage of local issues and local perspectives on national stories.”^[32] And by 2007, the Public Square concept was quietly folded back into the World multicast stream, which, if not exactly the dustbin of history, was hardly a launching pad for innovative programming.^[33]

PBS Engage: The Virtual Public Square

At some point in Public Square’s tortuous, six-year path through various planning sessions at CPB and PBS (perhaps when the latter’s development office discovered how difficult it was to attract other funders to follow Knight’s and Ford’s lead), PBS decided to transplant the public affairs initiative to the digital realm. The new website—PBS Engage—promised analyses of global affairs and forums for public discussion—“... our first significant effort in social networking,” claimed PBS Chief Content Officer John Boland.^[34] Scheduled to make its debut in early 2007 (and actually appearing as a prototype in October of that year), Engage would serve as a model, according to Sid Bedingfield, executive editor of the site, “for new multimedia projects—one that builds on the ‘immediacy, urgency and daily-ness of the Web’ to create a community and then crafts a television program out of that. ‘We want to see the TV show as natural component of what’s going on the Web,’” Bedingfield told Current. “‘…Media as a two-way conversation is what the public is demanding now, and we want to find innovative ways to respond to that.’”^[35]

As two-way conversations go, however, Engage often resembles a monolog, full or promotional pointers to content elsewhere on PBS.org, but with relatively little content of its own, and certainly not enough to generate a vibrant online community. Still labeled “beta” a year-and-a-half after its launch, Engage recently added the obligatory MySpace, YouTube, and Twitter outlets. But the site itself, with its so-called “Top 10” listings (“A sampling of what’s popular around PBS.org”), monthly live chats (featuring, not surprisingly, PBS programmers and others associated with the system), and a directory of various PBS blogs (which again are largely tied to PBS programming) remains sparse and self-centered. Even Engage’s own blog is fairly airtight in this respect. (“Crime’s the name of the game on PBS next week…,” reads one recent entry, which goes on to flog various upcoming PBS shows, eliciting exactly zero comments in the process.) Occasionally, however, the Engage blog shows signs of more intelligent life, such as the interviews with Engage advisory board members (e.g., online community theorist Howard Rheingold and video game scholar Alice Robison) or a discussion of its partnership with the Knight Commission on Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy. But even in these instances, the commentary is brief and the conversational traffic less than brisk: a grand total of nine responses to the five advisory board interviews thus far, and just a single comment to the Knight partnership’s request for “Public Input: How Do You Get Local Information?” The short answer to that question, of course, is “not from PBS.org,” which has long struggled to present local news and perspectives in any meaningful fashion.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Engage, ironically, is its PBS Innovation Showcase, a listing of some 30-odd social media projects undertaken elsewhere, by various PBS programs and member stations. These range widely over the new media and public broadcasting landscapes, from CETConnect (on-demand video on Cincinnati current events) and KLRU Docubloggers (user-generated videos chronicling life in Central Texas), to WGBH Lab (“a virtual and physical space for innovation and experimentation in the world of user-generated content”) and WPBT’s uVu (an online video site offering thousands of community videos).

In its follow-up to the 2005 Digital Future Initiative report in March 2007, the PBS Board of Director’s DFI Task Force reconfirmed the goal of having PBS Engage “become a magnet on the Web for insightful, intelligent communities of citizens, exploring and sharing their views…. PBS Engage is being designed to encourage branding by local stations, including the tools stations need to build their own locally-customized citizen engagement sites in conjunction with the national content.”^[36] That PBS Engage has yet to come even close to revealing this vision may be a product of economics: “Although the Knight and Ford Foundations have committed essential seed funding, PBS Engage expects to require more than $20 million in total funding during its first three years (through 2009),” according to the DFI Phase II Final Report. “Developing this core component for the amplified role that public broadcasting could have to expand community and civic engagement and will require substantial new commitments from civic-minded individual donors, corporations, and possibly state and local governments.”^[37] In today’s bleak economy, needless to say, the prospects for such funding are remote, and CPB has shown little evidence of any interest in devoting a larger portion of its budget to online projects.

Thus much like Public Square before it, Engage seems almost to exist in suspended animation, at best a work in progress, at worst a grim reminder of what pubic media could become with sufficient support and the requisite commitment to explore new conversations online. According to the website itself,

PBS Engage … is a laboratory for experiments with new kinds of media. We hope it helps you connect with us better. It’s part of a bigger program, funded by the Knight Foundation, to help PBS, member stations and programs use new technologies to serve the public better…. We think social media provides PBS with a great opportunity to let viewers and Web users get involved in new ways—commenting on programs, discussing the issues they raise, speaking directly to producers and stations, rating what’s on the air and online, forming fan groups, and doing other things we haven’t thought of yet.^[38]

Chief among the “other things” PBS hasn’t thought of yet are ways to break through the system’s institutional insularity, to reach out to other organizations in the nonprofit sector (including schools, museums, libraries, and community organizations) and to independent content producers (including “viewers like you”) to help create a more participatory media culture. The chances of such programming coming to our TV screens anytime soon are slim, but public broadcasters continue to ply their trade on the Internet, too, albeit with only a small fraction of the funds devoted to traditional broadcast. Part II of this report will examine the online efforts of public broadcasting, along with other plans for the digital future.

^[1] At the same time that he expressed satisfaction with the public-private partnership that made the transition a success, Copps also cautioned that “I don’t mean to imply that the transition is over. Far from it. As I’ve said many times, the transition did not end on June 12. It is a continuing process that will take place over coming weeks and months—and for our low power TV service, over the coming years. The great majority of our full-power stations—and their viewers—made it through June 12 without lingering problems. But, as with any transition of this magnitude, there are issues still to be worked through.” Federal Communications Commission, “Statement of FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps on the Digital Television Transition,” 2 July 2009, http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-291881A1.pdf (viewed 21 July 2009).

^[2] Deborah D. McAdams, “Pay TV Providers Benefit from DTV Transition,” TV Technology, 13 July 2009, http://www.tvtechnology.com/article/83644; Nielsen Company, “800,000 Homes Have Upgraded to DTV Since June 12 Transition,” Nielsen Wire, 1 July 2009, http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/media_entertainment/800000-homes-have-upgraded-to-dtv-since-june-12-transition/ (both viewed 21 July 2009).

^[3] David B. Liroff, “On the Eve of DTV, Public TV is Not Yet Ready to Cope,” Current, 3 Nov. 1997, 21.

^[4] Nicholas Johnson, How to Talk Back to Your Television Set (New York: Bantam Books, 1970).

^[5] Steve Behrens, “What Value Will Public TV’s Funders See in Digital Transition?” Current, 9 Nov. 1998, http://www.current.org/tech/tech820d.html (viewed 22 Apr. 2009).

^[6] Center for Digital Democracy, “TV That Watches You: The Prying Eyes of Interactive Television,” June 2001, URL.

^[7] Quoted in Brian Stelter, “8 Hours a Day Spent on Screens, Study Finds,” New York Times, 27 Mar. 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/27/business/media/27adco.html?_r=1 (viewed 27 Apr. 2009).

^[8] “Interactive Television,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactive_television (viewed 19 Apr. 2009).

^[9] PBS’s Frank Lloyd Wright datacast, undertaken in partnership with Intel, involved the simultaneous delivery of some 200 MB of related data to specially equipped PCs in six markets. Jim Davis, “Intel, PBS Team on ‘Datacast,’” CNET News, 26 Oct. 1998, http://news.cnet.com/Intel,-PBS-team-on-datacast/2100-1040_3-217108.html (viewed 18 Apr. 2009).

^[10] Burnill F. Clark, “In High-definition TV, Will Public Television be a Leader, Follower or Outsider? HDTV Magazine, 9 Dec. 1995, http://www.hdtvmagazine.com/archives/PublicTVanddigital.html (viewed 17 April 2009).

^[11] Association of Public Television Stations, “APTS and NCTA Announce Historic Cable Carriage Agreement: Agreement Provides Public Television with Digital Cable Carriage During and After the Digital TV Transition” press release, 30 Jan. 2005, http://www.apts.org/news/NCTA_Agreement.cfm (viewed 15 Apr. 2009). The more efficient handling of broadcast signals on digital cable systems, coupled with advances in data compression technologies, promised to be a windfall for public broadcasters, who would now have both high-definition and multiple streams of standard-definition broadcast at their disposal.

^[12] Quoted in Karen Everhart, “Proposed for Multicast: Viva Channel in Spanish,” Current, 17 Oct. 2005, http://www.current.org/dtv/dtv0519spanish.shtml (viewed 18 Apr. 2009).

^[13] Charles McGrath, “Is PBS Still Necessary?” New York Times, 17 Feb. 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/arts/television/17mcgr.html (viewed 22 Apr. 2009).

^[14] Chris Schiavone, “Findability: Helping Viewers Catch What They’d Like on PBS,” Current, 8 Dec. 2008, http://www.current.org/audience/aud0822findability-schiavone.shtml (viewed 22 Apr. 2009).

^[15] P.L. 90-129, 102 Stat. 3207, §396(c)(5)-(6), 7 Nov. 1967.

^[16] Available at no cost to public broadcasters and now reaching over 50 percent of the nation’s Hispanic households, V-Me offers a familiar blend of family-friendly fare:

• Kids —High-quality Spanish-language preschool programs, educational online resources for children and parents, and local activities;

• Lifestyle—Latino-focused food, travel, design, home and self improvement, parenting, health and well-being;

• Factual and current affairs—Intelligent entertainment and opinions: history, technology, nature, current affairs, news and biography

• Movies and special events—Contemporary Spanish-language films every night, plus international concerts and special events.

“V-me, First National Spanish TV Network to Partner with Public Television,” 7 Jan. 2007, http://www.vmetv.com/_files/_official_pr/PR_en_feb7_2007.pdf (viewed 22 Apr. 2009).

^[17] Carnegie Commission on Educational Television, Public Television: A Program for Action (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), 92, available at http://www.current.org/pbpb/carnegie/CarnegieISummary.html

^[18] Karen Everhart Bedford, “PBS Hatching Weekly Series, Public Square,” Current, 18 Dec. 2000, http://www.current.org/prog/prog023pubsq.html (viewed 25 Apr. 2009).

^[19] Bedford, “PBS Hatching Weekly Series, Public Square.”

^[20] Quoted in Bedford, “PBS Hatching Weekly Series, Public Square.”

^[21] Karen Everhart Bedford, “Public Square Producers Cite ATC as Inspiration,” Current, 2 July 2001, http://www.current.org/prog/prog023pubsq.html (viewed 25 Apr. 2009).

^[22] PBS, “‘Public Square,’ a Multi-Media Collaboration of PBS And CPB, to Create a ‘National Conversation’ on Topics Ranging from Politics to Popular Culture,” press release, 15 Jan. 2001, http://www.pbs.org/aboutpbs/news/20010115_publicsquare.html (viewed 25 Apr. 2009).

^[23] “Current Q&A: John Wilson and Jacoba Atlas,” Current, 3 May 2004, http://www.current.org/pbs/pbs0407atlaswilson.shtml (viewed 25 Apr. 2009).

^[24] Steve Behrens, “PBS to Develop Proposal for Public Affairs Channel,” Current, 19 Jan. 2004, http://www.current.org/news/news0401pubaffairs.shtml (viewed 25 Apr. 2009).

^[25] PBS, “Knight Foundation to Announce $3 M Grant for New PBS 'Citizen's Channel' Public Square,” press release, 14 Dec. 2005, http://www.pbs.org/aboutpbs/news/20051214_knightfoundation.html (viewed 26 Apr. 2009).

^[26] A pilot for a half-hour “Global Watch” aired in April 2008. Katy June-Friesen, “Global Watch Pilot Surfaces in April,” Current, 24 Mar. 2008, http://www.current.org/news/news0805globalwatch.shtml (viewed 26 Apr. 2009).

^[27] PBS, “Knight Foundation to Announce $3 M Grant for New PBS 'Citizen's Channel' Public Square.”

^[28] PBS, “Knight Foundation to Announce $3 M Grant for New PBS 'Citizen's Channel' Public Square.”

^[29] Dennis Haarsager, "Digital Future Initiative Summit," http://technology360.typepad.com/psp/2005/12/index.html (viewed 29 Apr. 2009).

^[30] Digital Future Initiative Panel, Digital Future Initiative: Challenges and Opportunities for Public Service Media in the Digital Age, (Washington, DC: New America Foundation, 2005), 6.

^[31] Digital Future Initiative, 10.

^[32] “The broadcast would be supplemented by a substantial Web-based component that includes streaming video, surveys, podcasts and audience-driven components such as online forums and video blogs.” Jeremy Egner, “World and Go! Streams Flow into PBS Plans,” Current, 3 Apr. 2006, http://www.current.org/dtv/dtv0606multicast.shtml (viewed 27 Apr. 2009).

^[33] Karen Everhart, “Multicast Channels Crowd Bitstream,” Current, 12 Feb. 2007, http://www.current.org/dtv/dtv0702choices.shtml (viewed 27 Apr. 2009).

^[34] “Q&A John Boland; Multiplatform: A Richer Experience for Viewers and for Media Pros, Too,” Current, 14 May 2007, http://www.current.org/pbs/pbs0708bolandQ&A.shtml (viewed 28 Apr. 2009).

^[35] Karen Everhart, “Engage Netizens, Then Go for TV Viewers,” Current, 20 Nov. 2006, http://www.current.org/news/news0621publicsquare.shtml (viewed 28 Apr. 2009).

^[36] PBS, “Digital Future Initiative: Phase II Final Report,” Mar. 2007, p. 12, http://www.pbs.org/aboutpbs/pbsfoundation/fundraising/Digital_Future_Initiative_Report_phase2.pdf.

^[37] PBS, “Digital Future Initiative: Phase II Final Report,” p. 12.

^[38] PBS, “About PBS Engage,” http://www.pbs.org/engage/about (viewed 28 Apr. 2009).