ideastream:
the New "Public Media"

The Listening Project
Wareham is fond of noting how clearly the current mission and approach of ideastream mirrors a key statement of the 1967 Carnegie Commission report, which contends that the underlying purpose of public media is not about technology or distribution: “It is not the location of the studio or transmitter that is most relevant. Rather, what is critical is the degree to which those operating the facilities relate to those they seek to serve.”

Toward that goal, Jensen created The Listening Project, which has informed ideastream’s programming, content and partnerships since its inception. Every year since 2001, ideastream goes out into the communities it serves, drawing leaders and citizens into a discussion of what matters most to them, how they see their lives, what assets they see in their communities and what public services they see a need for. Ideastream was overwhelmed when nearly 10,000 people took part in 2001. Since then, the number has been held to a more manageable level—1,410 in 2007—who respond to on-air, in-print and online solicitations to fill out a questionnaire. There are also live town meeting discussions open to the public.

This is not the usual market research approach: what do you think of our product and how can we make you use it more? Instead, the key proposition is how to connect to communities in ways that are deemed useful by those in the communities.

Four standard questions are asked each year are: 1) What are the most important assets of the community? 2) What are the most important challenges? 3) Who strengthens those assets and challenges? 4) What could multi-media do to strengthen those assets and [address those] challenges?

What they have heard clearly is that citizens want public media to look into problems and then stay on the topic long enough to lead the way towards some resolution. That means, unlike the normal modus operandi of media, not merely shining a bright light on an issue. Such an approach, The Listening Project finds, only serves to increase public anxiety.

“What the community was really asking us to do was to do the partnership, but then hang in there and be consistent about addressing these challenges and assets,” says Wareham. “They wanted us to create community connection and participation. They wanted us to facilitate the process of community members talking with one another.” That has given rise to a community advisory board and two new programs, Sound of Ideas a daily radio show and Ideas a weekly television program, which extend the community dialogue.

In 2001, Doug Clifton, the editor of The Cleveland Plain Dealer, asked ideastream to join the newspaper in a project ideal for the new organization. Clifton wanted to do a series of stories, editorials, town meetings and panel discussions examining the departure from Cleveland and the surrounding area of Fortune 500 companies. Wareham and Jensen jumped at the opportunity.

During the next few years, the organizations shared resources and promoted one another’s efforts in what was called “the Quiet Crisis,” which rapidly became the shorthand by which everyone in the region referred to the economic downturn affecting northeastern Ohio. “It was an effort to document the depth of the decline, assess what the future might hold and look at some solutions,” says Clifton. “Although the Plain Dealer penetrated the home market very deeply some people would turn to public radio and public TV and that was the audience we were looking for.”

Both organizations saw the effort as a success. “The sum of it was greater than its individual parts because it brought together three of the serious institutions in the region who were speaking with one voice,” Clifton says.

In addition to anecdotal evidence of success, ideastream can point to:

Combined 2007 radio and television fund raising campaigns that brought in $1,999,653, up from $1,419,530 in FY 2006, $1,425,575 in FY 2005, $1,632,609 in FY 2004 and $1,490,434 in FY 2003.
Weekly cumulative audience for the spring Arbitron ratings found WCPN audience increased 32 percent between 2001 and 2005. During the same period, the national audience increased 11.5 percent.
Weekly cumulative audience for the February Nielsen ratings period found the WVIZ audience declined 6.25 percent between 2001 and 2005 compared with a 13.5 percent downturn regionally.
In the past five years, public radio and public television stations throughout the U.S. have sought guidance from ideastream; they have taken their story on the road to public broadcast operations in at least nine states.

Partnerships: Inside ideastream
Playhouse Square Foundation Provides a Home Among the partnerships fostered by ideastream, the most evident is The Idea Center, at 1375 Euclid Avenue, from which all else emanates.

One of Wareham’s and Jensen’s earliest ambitions for the WVIZ-WCPN merger was to combine their infrastructure operations and develop a new headquarters. After contemplating a number of locations and partnerships, they became enamored with a proposal from Art Falco, Executive Director of Cleveland’s Playhouse Square Foundation, which, with 10,000 seats, is the second largest center for the performing arts in the U.S., after New York’s Lincoln Center.

Over the past 20 years, Playhouse Square has invested $55 million to obtain and renovate almost one million square feet of commercial real estate in downtown Cleveland in an effort to restore the once-thriving theater district, says Falco. According to one economic impact study, the commercial and theatrical programs enabled by Playhouse Square generate $43 million a year for the local economy.

The building on Euclid Avenue was seedy, run down, and only about 10 percent occupied when the mortgage holder agreed to donate it to the foundation, which hoped to turn it into auxiliary work space for its performing arts operations. “We needed to create an arts education space,” says Falco. “We had these wonderful theaters but we didn’t have classrooms and we didn’t have a dance studio, we didn’t have a...theater, we didn’t have gallery space.”

Knowing that ideastream was in the market, he approached Wareham and Jensen and after some design work the two organizations realized they could realize some big savings by sharing their most costly facility needs: Falco wanted a “black box theater” (unadorned performance space) and ideastream needed a second television studio, but neither needed to have access to it on a daily basis. “We knew that we could build a great education and arts center and they could built a great tech and broadcast facility, but we knew it wouldn’t be as good as it would be if we did it together,” says Falco.

By sharing their space needs, the two groups reduced their total footprint from 120,000 square feet down to 90,000, and saved $7 million. It also meant that a greater portion of the four upper floors would be available to rent, creating revenue flow to defray their annual operating costs. “It has turned out to be a building that not only served our purposes, but has been characterized as a ‘cool’ building, where other commercial tenants who have connections with technology and architecture and design want to be located,” says Falco. “It’s surpassed my expectations.”

As has proven true with many of its partnerships, the ideastream-Playhouse Square partnership is a wondrous symbiosis. Their combined capital campaign exceeded its goal, bringing in $30 million. They began moving into the facility in fall of 2005 with the last wave in February 2006. The upper floors are 90 percent occupied, well ahead of schedule.