ideastream: The New Public Media

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Yet, Grossman’s vision in the 1980s remains vital today. Explains Liroff,“What Grossman saw more clearly than the rest of us is that public broadcasters and universities and libraries and all the rest are all in the same business and the old business model that makes them look so different is being compromised—in the best sense of that word—in terms of their separate identities by digital technologies, which they all share. So it is just as likely...that digital technologies allow these heritage institutions, among others, to begin to extend their services...on the Internet in ways, which at least in form, will be indistinguishable one from the other.”

Or, put another way, Internet consumers tend to be agnostic about the sources of data; they don’t necessarily know or care which museum or library provided the recording of, say, Robert Frost reading “The Road Not Taken”—just that they can access it. Add to that the current steep declines in the cost of digital storage and you have “extraordinary consequences for any individual’s ability to call up what they want when they want it,” says Liroff.

What all this means is that broadcasters and journalists, who have been trained by competition and regulators, most notably the FCC, to fiercely protect and keep tight reign over their turf, to serve as gatekeepers, must learn to loosen the controls, become more interactive and accepting of “pull” technologies.

But that raises an important question: if traditional broadcasters are expanding their roles to serve as content developers and data distributors on platforms other than broadcast, does the mean that five or ten years from now their primary function could be something other than delivering programming by radio and television?

That seems a distinct possibility, say many observers, including Liroff, Grossman and Somerset-Ward. Yet industry leaders, including Wareham, Kerger and others, are quick to disagree.

“Everyone is quick to write off traditional broadcasting, but it’s been around a long time and survived all sorts of predictions of early demise,” says Ken Stern, former CEO of NPR. “So I don’t think that’s going to change.”

Stern resigned his post as CEO this March after only 18 months, reportedly in a dispute with his board over NPR’s digital future, which he saw combining a strong video presence on the web with Public Radio’s traditional radio journalism. “I absolutely agree that the audience is being fragmented and it’s important for public broadcasters to meet the audience where it is, so things like podcasting and moving to multiple platforms is the reality,” he says. “But the need is to meet the audience across many platforms and not to give up the broadcast platform.”

Creating ideastream
Wareham and Jensen are absolutely sure that they can’t recall the first time they discussed merging WCPN and WVIZ. That’s probably because they tried dating for a while before contemplating marriage—that is, the broadcast operations, not Wareham and Jensen.

In 1997, the stations joined forces to do a series of stories on “urban sprawl,” and despite a rough start it pointed the way towards greater cooperation. “It was a really miserable experience,” says Wareham, laughing. “The computer systems didn’t talk to one another. The radio people thought the TV people were shallow. The TV people thought the radio people were weird. But a funny thing happened. We started getting these phone calls from viewers and listeners: ‘Didn’t I see or hear something about how to get involved in my community?’ And, in spite of ourselves, we had made an impact and that got the attention of our boards.” They continued to look for joint projects and, with Wareham and Jensen in the lead, by the fall of 1999 the planning committees of the two boards were in meetings discussing merger.

While Cleveland’s economy was and continues to be distressed, the financial motivations for merger related to increased efficiencies realized in staffing, marketing, fundraising and grant seeking. Both were also desperate to replace dilapidated facilities.

“But this did not start out with something being broken. Both broadcast stations were in good shape. Except for their physical location,” says Susan Eagan, then with the Cleveland Foundation, which served as a neutral moderator to the discussions. “It was mostly Kit and Jerry looking out ahead and seeing a lot of unrealized opportunities...and knowing that if public broadcasting was not repositioned and aligned with what was going on in the larger marketplace, at some point down the road there could be some significant issues.”

Wareham and Jensen argued that the emerging reality, the shift in the marketplace, meant, “Access to programming through broadcast distribution is becoming relatively less valuable than content creation, packaging, marketing and control of intellectual property.” In other words, having control of the media delivery system is no longer sufficient to remain a player in the community; content development is of greater importance.

While much of this may seem self-evident today, it wasn’t all so clear in 1999 to members of the two boards. To make their case, Wareham and Jensen turned first to Chicago and then to Cinderella.

Network Chicago, a multiple media public service organization operated by Chicago’s WTTW was a model very similar to what Wareham and Jensen wanted to create in Cleveland. A 1999 promotional video, which they brought to a meeting of the Cleveland boards, explains, “We can create alliances with cultural, educational and business institutions...We can leap beyond the television screen and carry our quality content to radio, print, and the Internet...[create] strategic alliances...driven by our values.” (Unfortunately for WTTW, Network Chicago’s business model relied heavily on advertising in a print publication, which did not succeed.)

But the “Aha!” moment in the negotiations, the inspiration that enabled people to understand how this worked, they say, came when Jensen posed the question, What is Cinderella? To illustrate the point, she passed around several props including a Disney DVD, an illustrated story book, a Cinderella Barbie, and a volume of the original French fairy tale. Which one of these various media forms is Cinderella? “The right answer was really intellectual property,” she says. “We needed an object to illustrate that platforms do not define content, content just exists. Cinderella had presented itself in all these different media in all these periods of time. And now we were facing the need to re-invent how we present our stories. This really worked for people.”

From that point forward, parties to the talks say, there was only one essential sticking point: who’s in charge? And this provided a defining moment in ideastream’s reinvention of public broadcasting.

“When it came to the CEO question it all fell apart because people had their loyalties,” says Eagan. The WVIZ board pressed for Wareham; the radio side wanted Jensen. But what happened next was iconic in terms of the ideastream partnership model: Wareham and Jensen wrote a memo saying, if the boards agreed, they would resolve the leadership issue on their own. But until the discussions moved off this point neither of them would have anything further to do with the proposed merger. They took their egos off the table.

“That was a very, very critical moment,” says Eagan. “And it set a standard that said, this is not about us, this is what the community is entrusting to us.”

The boards bought it. Weeks later, on a Sunday, Wareham and Jensen met over coffee. Each made a long list of what they liked most and least about their jobs. They exchanged documents. They agreed he would be CEO and she COO. The same procedure was followed with other managers at the two stations.

Somerset-Ward and others credit this enduring, almost stubborn, spirit of cooperation as the primary reason for ideastream’s success, stemming from the Wareham-Jensen leadership model. “They don’t take credit for anything and that, of course, is one of the main reasons why it works,” he says. “Everywhere else, public broadcasting stations that I know of, would leap at the opportunity to grab credit. Jerry and Kit understood from the beginning that you couldn’t do that, not if you want to be a partner. That is why they have been successful.”

On July 1, 2001 ideastream became a reality.

Next page: 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.

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