The Weekly SPI Debrief , May 27, 2011

Welcome to the Weekly PBS Interactive Station Products & Innovation Debrief, designed to give PBS stations a rundown of product updates and opportunities announced this week on our blog.

The SPI Headquarters is getting back into full swing with the conclusion of Annual Meeting 2011.  

This week, we added one last recap from the Meeting, highlighting all the talking points from Jason Seiken and David Pogue’s Innovation Hotspot Keynote. The SPI team welcomed Mike Smith as the newest intern for the blog and social media endeavors. Mike joins us from Penn State University, where he recently graduated with a BA in Communication Arts & Sciences. We have also added information on Google Analytics, as well as a link to a must-read breakdown of all the wonderful ways this enables stations to best serve their local communities.

Finally, be sure to check out the April Traffic Report and the Professional Development Calendar where we have added a few new webinar sessions! Continue reading to learn more on all these topics.

• PBS Annual Meeting - Innovation Hotspot with Jason Seiken & David Pogue
• FYI Corner: Google Analytics
• Getting to Know... Mike Smith
• From PBS.org to Your Station Site, April Traffic Report

As always, the SPI team appreciates all of your valuable comments and participation on our site this week and every week.

PBS Annual Meeting - Innovation Hotspot with Jason Seiken & David Pogue

The following is a summary of the Innovation Hotspot Keynote held at the PBS Annual Meeting on Wednesday, May 18th at 2:33pm. We're highlighting the PBS Interactive sessions on this blog. A complete run-down of sessions from the Annual Meeting is available in the Conferences Blog on PBS Connect under Attend | Learn >> Conference Blog.

The General Session opened with Jason Seiken, Senior Vice President, PBS Interactive, Product Development & Innovation sharing what PBS Interactive has up its sleeve to serve stations in the coming year.

Seiken emphasized the fact that everything PBS Interactive does has to serve stations, and he considers PBS Interactive’s Board of Directors to be the station General Managers.

PBS Interactive's top priorities will be:

1. Driving down station costs - For station leaders tired of paying for the development and design of local web sites, PBS Interactive will be launching Bento, a set of resources designed to take the burden of doing the set-up work for building a local web site off stations so you can focus on local content development. Similar to COVE, Bento will include several options:

• Bento Complete – Website templates and a content management system that will allow stations to easily create a complete local web presence.
• Bento+ – Goodies that can be used with or without Bento Basic to enhance or easily expand a station’s existing site.
• Open Bento – Access to COVE and Merlin APIs that will allow more experienced station web developers to create their own tools and applications that can be shared back to the larger station community.
• Incubation Lab – Station web developers are already starting to collaborate on projects leveraging Merlin and COVE.
  

2. PROSPER – PBS Interactive's plan to target the millions of pbs.org visitors, and get their names to stations so they can be cultivated into paying members. Beyond prospecting, PBS Interactive is envisioning a phase 2 of the project that will begin to make exclusive digital benefits available for members, such as access to a larger catalogue of PBS video on the web, HD video on your station site, or early access to programs on the iPad.

3. Local Video in Mobile Apps – Starting this summer, COVE Pro stations will be able to add their video content to the PBS iPhone and iPad apps simply by checking a box in the COVE admin tool. Local content will automatically surface to individuals using the apps in your broadcast area, and users will have the option to filter out national content, and just view local. Links to each station's local web site, Facebook page, Twitter feed, and donate page will also be easily accessible.

(Stay tuned to the PBS Interactive Station Products & Innovation Blog for more information and updates on these priorities over the coming year!)

Next it was time for the dynamic and funny David Pogue, host of NOVA’s Making Stuff, to take the stage.

David walked through the key forces he sees as playing an important role in technology and culture today:

1. The Rise of Simplicity – iPads are computers that your grandmother can use.
2. Kids Become Adults – ...and they demand content that is real time & on-demand. Teenagers don’t use email, or take the time to listen to voicemail.
3. New Business Models – He gave the example of Groupon, a company that tried something new to explosive success. They grew from $0 to $1.5 Billion in sales in 11 months.
4. Audience = Content Creators

David Pogue brought the session to a roaring end by singing a parody of today’s on-demand culture to the tunes of several pop classics while playing the grand piano on station. The performance reached its crescendo with a rip on the Recording Industry Association of America’s effort to clamp down on online music pirating to the tune of “YMCA” - “I Just Got Sued By The R-I-A-A….” The session ended to cheers and applause.

FYI Corner: Google Analytics

Computers = Cookies

Okay, so maybe that's a little too vague. The reference here is along the lines of that old children's book, "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie." The protagonist in this story learns throughout several beautifully illustrated pages that "if you give a mouse a cookie," you'll have to get him some milk as well. Then you'll have to get him a straw, a napkin, a mirror, and so on and so forth.

Computers are very much like the cookies in this classic tale. (Though if you give one to a mouse, he'd probably just gnaw on the cables and scurry away.) I say this because when intelligent and inquisitive minds are placed in front of a computer, they can’t help but ask for more.

When e-commerce became the norm and an optimized online user-experience became pivotal to success, businesses cried out for a way to efficiently track everything that was going on with their online presence. This need caused giants like Google to develop Google Analytics, a highly effective internet traffic tracking resource.

Like most businesses with a strong online presence, stations definitely need to understand what areas of their site are the most popular. This information helps you identify areas to devote resources to, where to strengthen your marketing initiatives and even how to create better user-to-member conversion online.

Many stations are already using Google Analytics, and some of you may not. Either way, Mashable has posted a great article about How to use Google Analytics that is a must-read for any station looking to figure out "the more" that your user needs through metrics.

The article contains information on how to use Google Analytics most efficiently and effectively, including What You Can Measure, Setting Up Your Dashboard, Data Tables and Visualizations, and Sharing Reports. It is a great 101 for any station just getting started with Google Analytics, or for those that might need a little refresher.

And for information on how to use Google Analytics to get the most out of your COVE portal, head over to the Incubation Lab and download documentation created by your station digital media colleagues.

The Weekly SPI Debrief , May 20, 2011

Welcome to the Weekly PBS Interactive Station Products & Innovation Debrief, designed to give PBS stations a rundown of product updates and opportunities announced this week on our blog.

We hope all who traveled to Annual Meeting made a safe return. We have recaps of the PBS Interactive Digital Strategy sessions for you on the SPI blog this week. Thank you to all of the panelists for these sessions!

We also made some updates to the Station Mobile Strategy Deck, stations contributed their Map strategies that supported out reach efforts in their communities, PBS Interactive has an Audience Insight webinar opportunity coming up - so be sure to register to learn more on digital analytics and audience growth. Finally, for the June pledge month, we added a collection of Pledge Videos on the COVE video portal. Make a quick stop on the sidebar of the blog to cast your vote for your favorite source for news. Continue reading to learn more on all these topics.

• PBS Annual Meeting - Engaging Local Families: Digital Strategies for ANY station
• PBS Annual Meeting - Digital Media Strategy, Part 1
• PBS Annual Meeting - Digital Media Strategy, Part 2
• UPDATED: Mobile Strategy Deck for Stations - Available for Download
• Mapmaker! Mapmaker! Make Me a Map...
• Webinar: Growing Opportunity with Audience Insight
• June Pledge Videos on Video Portal

As always, the SPI team appreciates all of your valuable comments and participation on our site this week and every week.

PBS Annual Meeting - Digital Media Strategy, Part 2

The following is a summary of the Digital Media Strategy, Part 2 session held at the PBS Annual Meeting on Wednesday, May 18th at 11:30am. We're highlighting the PBS Interactive sessions on this blog. A complete run-down of sessions from the Annual Meeting is available in the Conferences Blog on PBS Connect under Attend | Learn >> Conference Blog.

Interactivity was the name of the game at PBS Interactive’s Digital Strategy- Part 2 Concurrent Session Workshop. Moderator/host Shane Guiter (@shaneguiter) from KLRU Austin (http://www.klru.org) brought high energy to the proceedings. Joining him were panelists:

• Phil Meyer: Station Manager, WTIU, Bloomington, Indiana. http://indianapublicmedia.org/tv/ @wtiu
• Mike Bauhof: Director of Digital Engagement, Nine Network of Public Media/KETC, St. Louis, Missouri http://www.ketc.org/index.asp @KETCEconomy
• Alexis Rapo: Vice President for Broadband and Interactive Media, WGBH http://www.wgbh.org/ @WGBHboston

Read more about the panelists on PBS Connect (Attend/Learn>>Annual Meeting>>Conference Links>>Concurrent Sessions)

First up for participants was an exercise designed to get them thinking about their station’s digital strategy. Guiter had each attendee take five minutes to jot down answers to the following four questions:

• What are you goals/priorities?
• How will you measure success?
• Who is your audience? Where are they?
• What are your current resources and capabilities? This includes dollars, equipment & people

UPDATED: Mobile Strategy Deck for Stations - Available for Download

Are mobile products on your mind? The Mobile Strategy Deck for Stations has received a minor update to make sure stations looking to jump into the mobile space have the latest adoption statistics. This update will be followed by a much larger, more comprehensive update to the deck at the end of June.

Highlights of the minor update include:

- Updated Smartphone platform rankings
- Tablet device adoption
- iOS vs. Android information

In addition to the update to the deck, we have also added a quick guide to developing a Mobile Strategy for your station to our Station Best Practices site.

The PBS Interactive Station Products & Innovation team is also offering Mobile Strategy Development consultations. If you or your station would like a consultation, please email pbsi_stationservices@pbs.org, subject line: Mobile Consultation.

Click here to access the Mobile Strategy Deck for Stations (updates noted with version number 2.2)
(Note: you will need your Station Remote Control username and password to access. If you do not know your station's username and password, please send an email to pbsi_stationservices@pbs.org)

PBS Annual Meeting - Digital Strategy, Part 1

The following is a summary of the Digital Media Strategy, Part 1 session held at the PBS Annual Meeting on Tuesday, May 17th at 2:30pm. We're highlighting the PBS Interactive sessions on this blog. A complete run-down of sessions from the Annual Meeting is available in the Conferences Blog on PBS Connect under Attend | Learn >> Conference Blog.

PBS Interactive’s Digital Strategy - Part 1 Concurrent Session was the first of a two-part series on digital media strategy. This session laid the foundation on how to craft a digital strategy by answering the fundamental questions:

• Why is a Digital Plan key to your future survival?
• What four questions are essential to answer before designing your strategy?
• What can you learn from Analytics and Research?

Shane Guiter (@shaneguiter) from KLRU Austin moderated the discussion with panelists:

• Thomas Broadus (@tbroonline): Web Administrator, Mississippi Public Broadcasting, Jackson, Mississippi. @mpbonline

• Hugh Moore: Manager, Interactive Media, WPBT, Miami, Florida @WPBT2

Read more about the panelists on PBS Connect (Attend/Learn>>Annual Meeting>>Conference Links>>Concurrent Sessions)

Shane Guiter kicked things off with an introduction on why having a strong digital strategy is important. For example, did you know that for the first time in 20 years, the number of home in the United States with televisions has dropped? Scary stuff!

BUT he also talked about opportunities in the digital landscape, like the hunger for high-quality video content (which we're really good at!) from consumers of digital media. Plus, did you know that one satisfied customer's post on Reddit.com led to over 34,000 clicks on a pbs.org donation link?

Engaging Local Families: Digital Strategies for ANY station

Written by Jayme Swain, Senior Director, Strategic Growth, PBS Interactive

“Cultivate a family audience & donor base and position your station as a source for family experiences beyond TV and online.” –Nicki Granata Bosch, WNET, “Been There, Done That”

PBS KIDS GO! Online Community Manager, Abby Jenkins, hosted an interactive session this year at the PBS Annual Meeting that showcased the amazing reach the CPB funded PBS KIDS GO! Web Development Grants have had over the last three years. The star presenters, all grant recipients, represented a broad spectrum of member stations that are leading the way in developing innovative local interactive experiences for parents and kids. These leaders and innovators were:

JENNIFER STANCIL, Executive Director of Educational Partnerships, WQED
SCOTT WITZKE, Director of Promotions and Marketing, WTIU
TRISHA MOYNIHAN, Director of Internet Services, WFSU
JENNIFER MACARTHUR, National Center for Media Engagement, presented on behalf of grant recipient
NICKI GRANATA BOSCH, Director of Kids Interactive & Kids Club, WNET-Thirteen

The session kicked off with a mobile poll asking attendees to what extent they are engaging local kids and families online. Most votes were for none or minimal, which showed the opportunity that exists for stations to expand their efforts.

The projects presented by each station highlighted the opportunities for developing new community partnerships, engaging local families, growing membership, and collaborating across stations. WQED presented its “iQzoo” mobile app that leverages PBS KIDS GO! video assets to enhance on-site learning at local zoos. WNET presented a venue-based “check in” game for kids that builds on the station’s “Kids Club” and outreach efforts at events around New York City. Both WFSU and WTIU are reaching out to kids in schools and local families through the highly localizable curriculum areas of geography and weather, encouraging their audience to explore their local environment.

Supporting the goals of the grants project, the common threads in all these station initiatives are educational and outreach efforts through effective engagement strategies.

• support educational and outreach efforts
• increase station visibility in the community
• grow audience through effective engagement strategies

After the presentations the audience worked together in small groups to brainstorm how to their own stations can meet the need to create locally relevant educational content for families in a way that supports their station bottom line.

If you missed the session, here’s what you can look forward to! The station projects, designed to be replicable in any community, are launching in September 2011 on Station Remote Control. In the meantime, stations should take advantage of the many interactive tools to support kids’ content available on Station Remote Control.

These tools range from an online submission management tool to the PBS KIDS GO! video module as well as the customizable local games created by member stations.

Contact Tricia George, Production Associate, PBS KIDS, or the SPI Team with any questions about the grants or SRC resources.

June Pledge Videos on Video Portal

Written by Eric Freeland, Director of Online Programming & Promotion

As the June 2011 pledge-programming period quickly approaches, we want to alert you to some promotional videos in COVE.

The national and local station versions of the PBS Video portal now features a series of videos that promote upcoming pledge programs.  You can find these videos under “PBS Specials” in the program dropdown menu.

Here is a direct link to the page on the national portal:
http://video.pbs.org/program/1498555212/
(replace video.pbs.org with your station's COVE URL to view in your portal):

The page features previews and excerpts from the following shows: Opry Memories, Kickstart Your Health with Dr. Neal Barnard, 3 Steps to Incredible Health, Out in America, Younger Next Year: The New Science of Aging, Stop Back Pain with Vijay Vad, MD, and two programs from Great Performances - Jackie Evancho: Dream with Me in Concert and Eric Clapton Crossroads Guitar Festival 3.

Each video contains links for viewers to donate to local stations and check local listings.

We hope these videos will help draw interest in your station’s pledge efforts this June.  Feel free to promote these videos on your website and video portal throughout the pledge period.

Mapmaker! Mapmaker! Make Me a Map...

Maps of all kinds have been around for 1000s of years. Ancient Babylonians created maps on clay tablets; Medieval European maps were dominated by religious beliefs; and Renaissance explorers used maps to discover new worlds.

As people began moving around the world, world wars and revolutions altered empires, and technology opened up the World Wide Web, maps have evolved. With this evolution, we are all explorers and with the help of Google Maps, we all have the ability to create our own landscapes.

Public media stations have been at the forefront of multimedia mapping for several years now. Back in 2007, KPBS provided invaluable resources to stations during the wildfires that were sweeping through the region. The station provided a San Diego County Fires Google Map showing its community where to find emergency resources and avoid dangerous fire spots. Since then, maps have been used to show where the best restaurants can be found in the Bay Area, to celebrate the diversity of Columbus neighborhoods, and we’ve even used them here on the SPI team to show COVE adoption and Merlin On-boarding status.

Most recently, WETA has found mapping to be an efficient way to extend local productions online with their Area Attractions video tour map. "Maps are much more engaging than a simple list of the places featured in a given program,” says Jess Snyder, Web Systems Manager for WETA. “Through our WETA Around Town segments, we have connections to many regional venues and events and maps provide an interesting way to highlight those relationships while providing a valuable resource to our audience. As a bonus, by highlighting the Washington region in a very visual way, they help make the connection that we are a local station producing local programming.”

How does your local station use mapping to reach your audience? We’d like to know about it – contact us or leave your comments and links below.

The Weekly SPI Debrief , 5.13.11

Welcome to the Weekly PBS Interactive Station Products & Innovation Debrief, designed to give PBS stations a rundown of product updates and opportunities announced this week on our blog.

This week, we wish everyone who is traveling to Annual Meeting a safe trip. Be sure to look for the SPI's while you are there!  Thank you to everyone you joined us for the PROSPER webinars. The archived webinar and slides from the presentation are now available in Station Remote Control. We have an update on the TV schedule modules with explanation of  the module outage and the updates being made to the module next week. Finally, in our FYI Corner this week, learn how to Storify and share your community's stories.   

PBS Interactive at Annual Meeting
NEW PROSPER Webinar Resources now in Station Remote Control
TV Schedule Module  Update
FYI Corner: Storify Changes the Way We Tell Stories

As always, the SPI team appreciates all of your valuable comments and participation on our site this week and every week.

PBS Interactive at Annual Meeting

If you're getting ready to head to Orlando for next week's PBS Annual Meeting, we hope you'll join us at the sessions being produced by PBS Interactive! If you're not able to attend this year, there are still ways to follow along from home. We'll be posting summaries of the Interactive session right here on the SPI Blog. There will also be summaries of most other sessions at the meeting posted in the PBS Connect Conferences Blog (Login required. Look under Attend | Learn >> Conferences Blog). You can also follow the PBS Annual Meeting on Twitter @PBSAnnualMeeting, and, of course the SPI account @SPI_PBS.

Oh, and if you are attending Annual Meeting, keep an eye out for Kristin and me (Sara Terpeny). We want to say, "Hi," and have a top-secret SPI mission to share with you….

PBS Interactive Sessions:

Digital Media Strategy: Part 1
Tuesday, May 17th, 2:30pm Crystal A/B
This is the first session of PBS Interactive’s two-part series on digital media strategy. Using case studies, we will lay the foundation on how to craft a digital strategy by answering the fundamental questions: Why is a digital plan key to your future survival? What three questions are essential to answer before designing your strategy? What can you learn from analytics and research? Participants will leave with a framework on which to begin building local strategies.
Speakers:
Thomas Broadus, Web Administrator, Mississippi Public Broadcasting
Shane Guiter, Director of Development, KLRU/Austin
Hugh Moore, Manager, Interactive Media, WPBT2/Miami

Engaging Local Families: Digital Strategies for Any Station
Tuesday, May 17th, 4:15pm New York/New Orleans
Find out how to grow your online audience through engaging local families. Stations that have been awarded grants to create locally relevant, interactive content for kids and families will share their own projects and strategies for engaging their communities using mobile, video, and games.
Speakers:
Abby Jenkins, Online Community Manager, PBS KIDS Interactive
Jennifer MacArthur, Director of Television and Digital Media Engagement, NCME
Trisha Moynihan, Director of Internet Services, WFSU/Tallahassee
Jennifer Stancil, Executive Director of Educational Partnerships, WQED/Pittsburgh
Scott Witzke, Director of Promotions and Marketing, WTIU/Bloomington

Digital Media Strategy: Part 2
Wednesday, May 18th, 11:30am New York/New Orleans
In this second session of PBS Interactive’s series on digital media strategy, learn how to bring your digital strategy to life and measure results. Leave with tools and techniques to apply to your station’s strategy. Attendees who were not present for Part 1 on Tuesday are welcome.
Speakers:
Mike Bauhof, Director of Digital Engagement, Nine Network of Public Media, KETC/St. Louis
Shane Guiter, Director of Development, KLRU/Austin
Phil Meyer, Station Manager, WTIU/Bloomington
Alexis Fife Rapo, Vice President, Broadband and Interactive Media, WGBH/Boston

General Session: Innovation Hotspot
Wednesday, May 18th, 2:35pm Crystal Ballroom
Explore the instant connection found when engaging your audience with smart products that make our lives better. Come hear two PBS innovators who have a knack for making stuff. David Pogue, host of NOVA’s “Making Stuff” specials; and Jason Seiken, senior vice president, PBS Interactive, Product Development & Innovation, will host this fascinating session that will inspire, inform, and entertain.
Speakers:
David Pogue, Host, NOVA’s “Making Stuff”
Jason Seiken, Senior Vice President, PBS Interactive, Product Development & Innovation

PROSPER: PBS Online Prospecting Tool for Stations
Wednesday, May 18th, 4:10pm Crystal M/N
Throughout the past year, PBS has been building the infrastructure needed to leverage the millions of visitors to PBS.org and PBS mobile applications for the financial benefit of member stations. Now that the ground work has been laid and feedback from PBS stations has been integrated into the effort, come hear details about the project’s key areas of focus and how they present opportunities for your station to convert a visitor to a national online PBS platform into a contributor to your local station.
Speaker:
Jason Seiken, Senior Vice President, PBS Interactive, Product Development & Innovation

Finally, a note about our Digital Media Strategy Series:

PBS Interactive believes that some of the most important services we can provide to PBS stations are tactics and take-away tools for building your own digital media strategy. A strategy that’s measurable and custom built for the unique needs of your community and station. To that end, at this year’s PBS Annual Meeting we are launching a series of professional development opportunities that will give you the building blocks needed to learn and be successful. The audience for this series is *everyone* at a station who is responsible for outreach, increasing membership, your web presence and communications (so, everyone).

Annual Meeting is just the beginning. We're already planning a 3rd session we'll present via webinar in June around how to get the buy in needed from your team and leadership to move forward that will feature Jack Galmiche, the CEO of the Nine Network of Public Media in St. Louis, MO, and we're aiming to hold quarterly sessions moving forward. Stay tuned to the SPI Blog and follow @SPI_PBS for dates and details. Materials from all these sessions will be posted in the new Station Best Practices Wiki at http://stationbestpratices.pbs.org

TV Schedule Updates

On Tuesday, May 10th the PBS TV Schedule Modules were unavailable for several hours due to an error stemming from prep-work to make an update to the underlying code. Additional safeguards have been put in place to ensure similar unanticipated outages don’t occur in the future.

To lesson potential impact on stations, the PBS development team has scheduled time on Wednesday, May 18th between the hours of 2-5am EDT to continue work on needed updates to the TV Schedule Service. It is possible that TV Schedules will go offline or users may experience a higher than normal error rate during the window.

The needed updates include:

• Adding a new process and code to prevent outages like the one that occurred earlier this week.

• Removing automatic localization code from the station modules.

More on the removal of automatic localization:

Released in 2007, the current TV Schedule modules for station sites were designed to place a pbs.org localization cookie on users' computers IF that user had not already selected a preferred station on pbs.org.

With the launch of Merlin last year, we discovered that, in some cases, the TV Schedule modules are over-writing the previously selected preferences of pbs.org users.

Merlin elevates the priority of local content, both to users within the station's local area, and nationwide. Because of this increase of pbs.org traffic going to station sites, it is even more imperative not to automatically re-write a user's pbs.org preferences without that users' knowledge.

Now, with the approaching launch of PROSPER, we have heard loud and clear from several stations that they do not want any chance of users localized to their station on pbs.org to have their station preferences automatically re-written because they happened to click on a link to another station's content.

As such, we are removing the auto-localization feature from the TV Schedule Modules. No other changes are being made to the appearance or functionality of the modules at this time.

Please leave a comment or drop us a line if you have any questions or concerns!

FYI Corner: Storify changes the way we tell stories

Written by Daryl Johnson, Station Products & Innovation Intern

Multimedia stories are all the rage these days due to the 24-hour news cycle and the new ways Americans consume news, but here is a new take on the entire concept of multimedia storytelling. Storify, which launched beta testing of a new app last September, is now available for the public to use.

Storify allows users to tell compelling stories by congregating social media assets from Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube. The app has already become popular with journalists, especially those who see the importance of incorporating the opinions of others in their stories. In fact, PBS NewsHour Correspondent Hari Sreenivasan, experimented with Storify when covering the resignation of Michelle Rhee, Chancellor for D.C. Public Schools.

What makes Storify unique is the ability it gives users to preserve original links. Whenever a source is quoted, a social pingback is available that will send an @reply to the quoted source, which will allow the story to become more viral. Readers are also able to retweet or reply to a tweet directly from the story, making it a very interactive experience.

Stations could take advantage of Storify as a tool for reporting community stories by using posts from Twitter or Facebook and images from Flickr and YouTube to tell stories as local communities report them. Storify also compiles the social media assets of other media companies, which could also be used to provide more depth and viewpoints to any story.

With this new Web app, and many more which are sure to come, it is interesting to see how multimedia stories are changing the media landscape for the better and providing a whole new way to make news interactive. What do you think? Let us know in the comments below.

The Weekly SPI Debrief , 5.6.11

Welcome to the Weekly PBS Interactive Station Products & Innovation Debrief, designed to give PBS stations a rundown of product updates and opportunities announced this week on our blog.

On the blog this week, a reminder to register for one of  the PROSPER (online prospecting) webinars scheduled for next week . Also,  Mike Bauhof, Director of Digital Engagement for the Nine Network Of Public Media, joined us this week to define and inform us on  "Transmedia."  And for a PBS culinary delight,  Ashley Carufel, Contract Producer for PBS Interactive,  treats us to a taste of the new Food site for PBS.org and shares the potential opportunities for local station content and the power of Merlin.

• Prosper Webinar Schedule
• Presented by Incubation Lab: So, You Want to Be Transmedia, Huh?
• PBS Says Bon Appetite! with New Food Site
• Update for Station Localization on PBS.org - As mentioned a couple weeks ago, we have launched an update to the localization system on pbs.org that refines the list of stations associated with certain zip codes.  More details are available in the April 22 post on Refining Localization.

As always, the SPI team appreciates all of your valuable comments and participation on our site this week and every week.

PBS Says Bon Appetite! with New Food Site

Written by Ashley Carufel, Contract Producer, PBS Interactive

PBS.org users love food.

How do we know? We see that users consistently search for cooking-related terms, and "recipes" is routinely in the top 10 search terms. Cooking is the most popular sub-topic page on PBS.org often receiving more traffic than main topic pages.

So, if PBS users love to cook so much, then shouldn't we be doing more to better serve our audience's culinary interests? Good news! WE ARE!

Here is the drafted mission statement for our project:
From Julia Child to Jose Andres to your local market, the PBS food site will unite local and national content to explore food in America. The site will leverage PBS' iconic chefs and unique connection in our communities to explore rich culinary traditions and present a smart, deep look at the art of food.

But what exactly does that mean?

It means the site will be a centralized web location of PBS cooking content featuring PBS personalities and programs, local station content and select partners. It will feature:
• a recipe database from cooking programs across public media
• food blog(s) anchored by one or two established food bloggers
• featured cooking content and videos by program, personality, genre, etc.
• special packages and reports highlighting food content from across the country

But how can we benefit stations?

1. Give your local content national placement and exposure. This centralized site will give prominent national attention to local station content and allow users to find food and cooking content by region. Your local food content will be available to everyone, not just localized users. The PBS food site will always give attribution to the station (and content underwriters) and link back to the original content where applicable. The site will rely heavily on Merlin, which will provide hooks back to your site and drive traffic to your cooking content.



2. Drive traffic to your COVE portal. The site will rely on local COVE Pro portals to power all local video, providing a new opportunity to increase video views and pageviews for your COVE experience.

3. Participate in an innovative content partnership to serve PBS viewers. The food site will be an innovative experiment in uniting local and national content in a intuitive presentation. The biggest winner in this project will be the audience, who will have a much-improved experience for consuming food content.

The team developing the PBS Food site will be starting with a pilot group of stations to begin establishing workflows to ingest station content for the site. Our goal is to minimize the amount of effort on behalf of stations- we will take all recipes available and strongly encourage stations to ingest their related video content into COVE. 


The site is scheduled to launch sometime this Summer. In the meantime, the PBS food team will be in contact with potential pilot stations soon to begin discussions and evaluate station needs. Want to learn more? Contact us or make you comments below.

Bon Appetite!


Presented by Incubation Lab: So, You Want to Be Transmedia, Huh?

The Presented by Incubation Lab series shines the spotlight on what it really means to be "Transmedia." Mike Bauhof, Director of Digital Engagement for The Nine Network of Public Media weighs in:

So, you want to do a transmedia project, huh? Great! Transmedia is trendy, transmedia is now. Transmedia is where we are all heading.

Wait, what is transmedia? Are you kidding me? We all know what transmedia is! It’s….um….not just media….it’s transmedia. It’s media with “trans” in front of it.

Okay, I’m kidding. But once you get beyond the buzzword aspect, what really defines a transmedia project? For those of you Googling right now, I’ll save you the trouble. Our friends at Wikipedia define transmedia storytelling as “a technique of telling stories across multiple platforms and formats.” So there you go. Get to it.

Again, I’m kidding. In reality, many of us in Public Media have been doing versions of transmedia projects for years. We have the ability to tell stories and engage our communities through many platforms. We have our broadcast signals, our online spaces, and the opportunity to meet with our communities face-to-face. In many ways, Public Media is ideally positioned to succeed in the transmedia world.

Here at the Nine Network, our Homeland project—focusing on immigration in our community and our nation—is one example of the power and potential of transmedia: Homeland will have a broadcast series coming 2012, but has had an active Web site with original and community content, social media channels, and in-person community conversations since 2010.

At the 2011 NETA Conference I was lucky enough to be part of a panel discussing Public Media and transmedia. We talked about how Public Media organizations can take on transmedia projects and succeed. Here are a few of the key points we discussed in that session (a big thank you here to Matthew Meschery from ITVS, who facilitated the panel and pulled together these notes):

1. Make sure that a cross-disciplinary team (production, programming, web, community engagement) is at the table from the beginning.
2. Get buy-in from senior management.
3. Video isn’t one-size fits all. What you use online shouldn’t just be what you use on-air. Take advantage of freedom online video can provide.
4. Involve the community. Find those in your community with an interest in your topic and ask them to create content for you.
5. Try something new. Everything you try won’t work, but if you don’t try it, it can’t work.

So there you go. Is there more? You bet. I didn’t even mention mobile, or gaming, or going old school with a print tie-in. If it’s a content platform, it’s possible for transmedia.

But I’ve gone on too long already. What do you think? What are your favorite transmedia projects? I’m sure I’d love to “borrow” from them!



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