National Public Media

While in graduate school, one of my peers was researching the positive impacts of national public media and her findings have stayed with me.

Public not-for-profit media (like NHK in Japan, or BBC in the UK) create competitive market pressure on all media, pushing the for-profit companies to invest more into their products.

Public media also help create a shared national identity with priorities above the consumption of goods/services.

They can also produce better-informed citizenry more capable of making good choices when participating in the political process.

These all sound pretty good … and not just for college professors or socialists.

But can we achieve outcomes like these in America with PBS and NPR?

Unlike in Japan and the UK, public media in the US are supported largely by individuals and foundations.

There is little direct investment from the federal government beyond grants from the Department of Commerce and Department of Education that make up less than 5% of operating budgets.

So in comparison with other countries, considering the potential, public media here are underfunded.

Despite fighting from the back foot, PBS and NPR are producing great content directly and through partnerships.

Nationally produced news content like PBS Newshour and NPR News are broadcast in all 50 states and available digitally anywhere in the world.

Local programming and audiences from member stations (PBS has something like 350, NPR has over 1,000) bring variety and diversity.

Audience and economic data on American public media are not easy to come by, but PBS has something like $400 million in annual revenue and NPR something like $200 million. (Very small in comparison with Disney's $70 billion or Netflix's $20 billion.)

PBS and NPR are great opportunities for America, if we invest in them.

Although both have been broadcasting digitally for years, digital transformation is still the opportunity ahead of them via mobile apps, the web, smart speakers and whatever comes next.

Yes we can!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBS