Carnegie Reporter, Vol. 3, No. 3 | The Digital Future Initiative: PBS Envisions Tomorrow

Pat Mitchell brings the perspective and experience of a distinguished three-decade career as a journalist, producer, and teacher to her leadership as president and CEO of PBS. During her five year tenure, PBS has strengthened the public service media mission to become the #1 most trusted source of news and information, #1 choice of America's teachers for multimedia content, #1 among parents of preschoolers for programs that focus on reading and school readiness, and in a recent Roper Poll, named the most trusted national institution in the country.

On the day he signed the Public Broadcasting Act that would eventually lead to the creation of PBS and NPR, President Lyndon Johnson looked across a media landscape that had been described as a "vast wasteland" just a few years before, and issued a challenge. Pointing to what he called the "miracles of communication," the challenge, the president said, "Was not making miracles . . . but whether those miracles could be managed for the public good."

While it was an important challenge for the three-network, just-gone-color broadcasting world of 1968, Johnson's question is even more relevant today.

As we move through the fast evolving technological changes that will ultimately move us away from a linear network, analog broadcasting world to the anywhere, anytime digital world of the future, the question remains: is the point of all this merely to find better and flashier ways to entertain, amuse, and distract ourselves? Is the promise just to be able to watch American Idol on our cell phones, download the latest episode of SUV Riders from Hell and catch up on the latest O'Reilly Factor on our Blackberries? Or is there a wider purpose to the media miracles of the digital age?

At PBS, we believe that the promises of the digital future are too powerful not to be used or managed to realize their fullest potential for the public good. It is a vision of broadcast media that has always been shared by Carnegie Corporation of New York. After all, it was Carnegie Corporation President John Gardner who created the Carnegie Commission on Educational Television back in the early 1960s to conduct a landmark study of how to improve public broadcasting, eventually proposing the creation of the Corporation for Public Television to expand federal funding of public television.

Based on Gardner's vision and Carnegie Corporation's work, PBS was created not to be a media business, but a not-for-profit media service--a public/private partnership, unique in this country's media landscape, supported in large part by the volunteer contributions of citizens writing checks. Our purpose is not to sell to the public. Our mission and purpose is to serve the public--in Lyndon Johnson's words, to manage miracles for the public good.

That original vision has been realized in ways beyond anything John Gardner or Lyndon Johnson imagined. PBS and its 348 member stations touch the lives of citizens in countless ways. Seventy percent of American households tune in to watch our award-winning programs at some point every week, with an audience on any given night--even in this 500 channel universe--that is twice as large as our nearest cable competitors, including HBO. Our programming is complemented by PBS.org, which is the third most visited .org web site in the world, with learners of all ages visiting more than one million times a day to view 175,000 pages of content. And, as a result of 35 years of putting children and education first, PBS is also the top choice of American teachers for video in the classroom and a leading source of online lesson plans--not to mention the source through which more than two million Americans have received their GEDs.

Little wonder that when the American people were recently asked which institutions they trust by the Roper Public Affairs and Media Survey, Americans named PBS as their most trusted national institution--for the second year in a row.

Like every other media enterprise and every consumer of media, our imaginations race when we consider the possibilities for creativity and innovation that new digital technologies offer for our broadcasting. But our imaginations also race at the possibilities of extending these new technologies to serve the public good.

Why Not?

For instance, we wonder: why not use digital technology to help meet the growing educational needs in this country, such as the need to strengthen early childhood literacy and school readiness; the need to close learning gaps in math and science; and the need to train teachers in the use of new technologies so they can make full use of these innovative tools to better engage today's students who are multi-tasking and text-messaging their way through classes? Why not use the new digital technology to create a massive content library with educational value for learners of all ages, accessible to them anytime, anywhere and in the format most useful to them?

Who is in a better position to be the curators and creators of that library than PBS--with our long history in education, and with a national network of stations serving every community in every state?

We also wonder: why not use this technology to create a trusted public health information network that can be accessed anywhere and anytime, that will answer questions an aging America has on issues like diabetes, Alzheimer's, or the medication that has just been prescribed to us? And who is in a better position to create such a network than PBS--which already has the widest partnership among health professionals in America--thanks, in large part, to programs like The Forgetting, about Alzheimer's disease, in which we asked local PBS stations to partner with health professionals in their community, resulting in a program with an impact exponentially greater than the broadcast alone, touching nearly 100 million Americans.

We also wonder: in this post-9/11 world of uncertainty in every community, why not develop that same technology to serve as a national emergency information network for officials and citizens that can provide first-responder instructions, evacuation routes and direct links to emergency care institutions in the event of natural or terrorist disaster? Who is capable of providing more reliable information than the organization already seen as the most trusted public institution in America?

We also wonder: has there ever been a greater need for a more informed and engaged citizenry to understand how complex global issues affect us all than there is today? Why not use the digital, mobile, virtual, personal world of the media of the future to also build highly engaged communities around the important work of strengthening the democratic values of this country as we attempt to export such values abroad? Is there any institution more respected as a balanced voice of public opinion than PBS? Every year, Corporation for Public Broadcasting surveys find that an overwhelming majority of Americans from all political affiliations perceive PBS as balanced, welcoming to liberal viewpoints, conservative viewpoints and everything in-between welcome. Who better to use digital media to boost civil society than the organization America trusts to moderate presidential debates?

For every commercial media company in America today, the obvious answer to the question, Why not? is because it doesn't pay, because the business model of commercial media demands that the programs they fund get ratings and make a profit. But with our unique mission, our decades of experience and accomplishment, our leadership position both on the air and online, our vital presence in communities across America and our longstanding relationships with national and local institutions of all kinds--in addition to the trust we enjoy among the American people--PBS is uniquely poised today, not only to harness the power of these new media technologies to serve more people, but to act, in many ways, as the digital heart of America.

It is going to take a larger sense of our own vision to reconstitute ourselves from public broadcasting to public service media. But I believe so much in the potential of PBS and its member stations to use the transformative potential of digital technology to create positive change for the future that I have committed my last year as president of PBS to spreading this message and building this platform. The Digital Future Initiative

To help us envision this future and create a blueprint for new services, PBS has put together a small group of business and policy leaders called the Digital Future Initiative (DFI). Funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the DFI is led by former Netscape Chairman Jim Barksdale and former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt, and includes colleagues from member stations, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Public Radio and the Association of Public Television Stations.

By the spring of 2006, the panel will issue a report that will be the beginning of a national dialogue about how the assets of public broadcasting can be fully optimized to connect with the needs of citizens of all ages in every community. The real strength of the Digital Future Initiative is that it is not the start of a whole new future for PBS, but rather a continuation of the kind of work we have underway in communities across America today and the unique contributions and skills for which PBS is most valued and known.

A Need for New Resources

But if PBS and its member stations are going to be able to pursue this innovative vision for the future, we are going to need to find new resources, which is the greatest challenge to public television in America today. To put it in stark terms, PBS has about the same amount to invest in our entire national program service, from Frontline to Nova to Mystery! to Nature and 2,000 other hours, as HBO spends to promote--not produce, but promote--The Sopranos.

In the United Kingdom, British citizens pay an annual license fee on their televisions of more than $200 to support the BBC. In Japan, it's $240 per household. In America, we pay $1 per person, per year for public television. All together, federal dollars account for about 15 percent of the funding for the public television system. The rest comes from significant support from foundations, corporations and "viewers like you." For every dollar of public money PBS invests, we leverage another three or four times that amount in private money.

So, the question remains, as we face this digital future: are we, as a democracy, dependent upon informed and engaged communities, willing to commit additional resources to ensure a vibrant and viable independent public service media enterprise now and in the future? The American people have already spoken on the issue: 82 percent of Americans who were asked rank PBS as the best value for their tax dollars, second only to national defense, and most agreed we need more funding, not less.

With public funding, PBS and its member stations are the best-positioned media enterprise to not only succeed in the digital future, but to lead it. Eighty-nine percent of our stations have already converted at least their transmission facilities to digital, in anticipation of the federal mandate for conversion by 2007. But we need help to convert the rest. When the DFI report is released, it will also include alternative models for public funding that could ensure PBS' future for years to come.

The Meaning of Democracy

When Lyndon Johnson issued his challenge in 1968, public broadcasting found its reason for being in the so-called "scarcity rationale." Simply put, that means there is only so much of the analog spectrum, and since the airwaves belong to the public in the first place, some of the spectrum should be set aside for the public--which is how public media was born. But now that we're moving away from the finite analog spectrum to a seemingly infinite digital universe, the scarcity argument is gone. But if scarcity no longer applies, here is something that still does: democracy. The basic idea of democracy is that the public should rule. In a neighborhood, we might debate and decide issues in a meeting, but often we'll also use a newsletter. In a country of nearly 300 million people, we need that "newsletter"--in the form of media that can reach, and be used, by a far-flung people. In a democracy, the public needs its own media, media it can use to get reliable information, media it can use to consider and shape its own identity.

It's not just about using media to sell something or promote something. It's about using the power of our public airwaves to educate, to inform and to inspire, while giving all of our citizens the opportunity to know more, to achieve more and be more. There is no better use for the modern miracles of communication than that.