Happy New Year!

None of us can believe how fast this past year has flown by! We've seen a lot of changes here at PBS in 2011: We bid sad farewells to wonderful SPI team members Sara Terpeny, Meaghan Zimmerman, and Thomas Kennedy but we've said "HELLO!" to Jen Carter and Kelsey Savage.

We helped over 90 stations take advantage of Merlin and launched a new and improved COVE. We continue to incubate and collaborate with stations, launched many a mobile app, re-launched our blog and just passed 700 followers on our Twitter page.

As we bid adieu to 2011 and look forward to what excitement 2012 will bring, we celebrate with some online festivities from across the PBS system:

Listen to Classical WETA on January 1st for music from the The Vienna Philharmonic.

PBS Parents helps you talk about resolutions with your kids.

WKNO and other stations will be airing Live! Beale Street on New Years Eve - check local listings and visit the Beale Street on New Years Eve Facebook page.

OPB's Ken Tucker takes a look back at the Year's Best Music.

PBS Food features 11 Things we Liked in 2011.

Watch WPBT2's Star Gazers Ring In 2012 With Special New Year’s Eve Star.

How are you celebrating the new year? Let us know in the comments below.

Photo courtesy of PBS Food.

FYI Corner: Station Bento, Thinking Outside the Box

A few months ago we introduced you to Station Bento, since that time we’ve shared updates and showcased the product at NETA, the @PBS Interactive Summit, and via a systemwide webinar earlier this month. An archive of the webinar is available here.

As we move forward with Station Bento, our six Alpha Test Stations have been helping us develop the product by testing site templates, page creation, and plug-ins/modules. They’ve also been reading through a lot of documentation and participating in numerous demonstrations. But Station Bento is a new kind of PBS Interactive product – this one has something for all stations and we want all stations to help us build it.

We’ve released a survey that we want everyone at every PBS station to fill out. See, Station Bento isn’t just for the Web gurus, it’s got something for everyone and is built to encourage collaboration across local stations and across the system. To help us build a better product to serve all station professionals, we hope you will take the time to take the survey and tell us what you want and what you need from your station’s local web site.

Click here to take our survey

To make sure you are with us every step of the way, we’ve also planned a few online events in January to give you information about Station Bento that is relevant to you and to your station. These webinars are your opportunity to learn more about Station Bento and how it will help YOU.

Web and IT Professionals – Tuesday, January 17, 2012
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/173668178

Communication and Development Professionals - Wednesday, January 18, 2012
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/248264498

General Managers and Station Executives – Thursday, January 19, 2012
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/112478306

Human Resources and Finance Professionals – Friday, January 20, 2012
https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/931674442

If you have any thoughts or plans about Station Bento, please leave a comment below or contact us at pbsi_stationservices@pbs.org.

Happy Kwanzaa!

To recognize the cultural celebration of Kwanzaa, we wanted to share some highlights brought to you by the local and national PBS family.

Tavis Smiley's wonderful Kwanzaa: The Documentary is a great resource for learning more about this yearly celebration of family, community and culture for people of African Heritage.

UNC-TV's Black Issues Forum introduces us to A Celebration of Kwanzaa.

Mama Mirabelle Explores Kwanzaa on PBS KIDS.

And we leave you with some Kwanzaa dancing with Elmo!



Do you have other public media holiday links to share? If so, please share them in the comments below.

Merry Christmas!

This weekend, Santa and his elves will be working overtime. Since the PBS offices will be closed Friday, December 23 - Monday, December, 26, we wanted to spread some holiday joy a little early and highlight some of the things our local stations and producers are doing to celebrate.

Mississippi Public Broadcasting's Holiday Card Contest and the winners!

KQED's Bay Area Bites shares a recipe for homemade candy canes.

The Nine Network of Public Media celebrates US Air Force Band of Mid-America with Holiday in Blue.

PBS Parents discusses the Santa Situation.

PBS Presents Christmas at St. Olaf 2011.

To celebrate the season Native American Public Telecommunications created this fun holiday jingle featuring their whole crew to spread some cheer and let them all share in a couple laughs. Since everyone at NAPT would like to wish #localpbs a very happy holidays and a wonderful new year, we thought we'd share their video!



Do you have other public media holiday links to share? If so, please share them in the comments below.

Happy Hanukkah!

Tonight is the first night of Hanukkah so we would like to highlight some of the things our local stations and producers are doing to celebrate.

Here are just a few links that showcase how some are celebrating the Festival of Lights:

The Ultimate Hanukkah Guide from PBS Food
http://www.pbs.org/food/features/ultimate-hanukkah-guide-2011/

The Art of the Dreidel from WNYC
http://culture.wnyc.org/articles/features/2010/dec/01/art-dreidel/

Lights Celebrate Hanukkah Live in Concert – check local listings
http://www.craignco.com/lights/airdates.html

Arthur tells us about Hanukkah from PBS KIDS
http://pbskids.org/arthur/holiday/scrapbook/hanukkah.html




Do you have other public media holiday links to share? If so, please share them in the comments below.

Photo attribution:

Photo © American Friends of Lubavitch and http://dc.about.com/

FYI Corner: Google Analytics Dashboards

By Amy Sample, PBS Interactive

If you didn’t know, there’s a new version of Google Analytics with lots of great new features, including real-time analytics, visitor flow visualization, multi-channel attribution, and custom dashboards. Beginning in January, Google Analytics will transition exclusively to the new interface, so it’s worth learning it sooner rather than later. One of the most interesting features available for local stations in the new Google Analytics is custom dashboards.

What is a dashboard?
A dashboard is a special type of Google Analytics report that aggregates a collection of statistics on a single page. It is a way to view data that would otherwise be found in separate reports all at once on a single report. You can create dashboards...

• For a particular role in the organization (e.g. manager, webmaster, or editor)
• For a content area (e.g. news, schedules, or programs)
• For a certain type of user (e.g. new user, return user, video user)
• For a particular conversion event (e.g. sales or donations).

A dashboard should be an at-a-glance look at a few key metrics that tells you how you’re doing. Little tip: Resist the temptation to put too much information on your dashboard. Make sure it only contains the things you want to look at every week or every month. Google helps with this by limiting you to 12 modules.

What’s great about the new dashboards?
As you know, the dashboard in the old Google Analytics was a single fixed dashboard. You could add modules to it, but they really just linked to the underlying reports. In the new Google Analytics, you can have up to 20 dashboards per profile. So now you can make them very customized to a specific role or scenario.

You also now have more display options for the actual modules on the dashboard:

• Metric: Shows the value of a metric and a sparkline of that metric over the selected time period
• Pie Chart: Best suited for displaying breakdowns of a metric by a certain dimension. E.g., Visits by Browser Type.
• Timeline: A graph of any metric over time. You can also compare two metrics in the same graph.
• Table: Think of this as a mini-custom report. You can show one dimension with two metrics and up to 10 rows of data in a table.

You can mix and match these module types to display the information that is most important to you. You can also apply filters to these modules. This lets you display data for a segment of your traffic. For instance, you can display unique visitors to your homepage on your dashboard by selecting a Metric module, selecting Unique Visitors in the metric dropdown, and selecting to filter by the Page matching / (or whatever your homepage is).

Once you create your dashboard, you can look at the data over any time period you would like and make comparisons to previous date periods. The dashboard uses the same date control as every other Google Analytics report

Some Caveats about Dashboards as of December 2011:

1. Dashboards are specific to your login. If you create a great dashboard, you are the only one who can see it. Other users will need to rebuild the dashboard under their own login.
2. You can’t share dashboards - yet. There is no ability to e-mail dashboards or export them directly from Google. If you want to share your dashboard, you can paste a screenshot into your e-mail. Google says this functionality is coming soon.
3. You are limited to the visualizations available in the editor. There are pie charts and line graphs, but no bar charts. For instance, it would be great to show visits by city in a bar chart, but for now you need to use a table to do that. You also can’t divide two metrics (e.g. visits/visitor). For now, you have to show the absolute number on your dashboard.

You will find the dashboards under the Home tab. Click +New Dashboard from the navigation to start a new dashboard. You have a choice of a starter dashboard or you can start with a blank canvas.

We here at PBS Interactive have created a step-by-step guide to show you how to create some common dashboards. Once you get the steps down, creating more dashboards is a cinch.

• Management Dashboard
• Site Search Tracking Dashboard
• Social Media Dashboard
• News
• Visitor Technology

Click here to download a PDF of the guide and feel free to contact the SPI Team any time for more information.

The Weekly SPI Debrief - December 16 , 2011

By Marla Krueger, Station Products & Innovation 


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

This past week we held a system-wide webinar on Station Bento. Thank you to everyone who attended and for the excellent questions we've received.  If you were unable to attend the event, an archive of the webinar is available here https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/490580386.

Also, please visit the newly updated Merlin/Station Bento Resource Center in Station Remote Control for FAQs, a Bento Glossary, and other Station Bento news. (url: http://to.pbs.org/sqphmt)

This week's Station Spotlight shines on Maryland Public Television and their "Afternoon Tea." With everyone clamoring to return to the Crawley estate for Season 2 of “Downton Abbey,” we thought we would highlight how Maryland Public Television has capitalized on our love of all things British.  Follow the URL below to keep reading. 


For our SPI Files this week we visited Phoenix, Arizona to interview Eight, Arizona PBS's Nancy Southgate. Nancy is the associate general manager of content for Eight, Arizona PBS and has been working closely with Eight Life, the station’s new lifestyle channel. What is ahead for Nancy and Eight, Arizona PBS? Keep reading to learn more.  

Finally, please note that PBS offices will be closed December 23 – 26. In addition, PBS Interactive will have a moratorium on any new product releases or updates during the week of December 26. Work will continue on existing projects, as well as any emergencies if they come up.   
If you have any questions, please contact us at pbsi_stationservices@pbs.org.


Follow the link below to continue reading the week's entries...

• Station Spotlight: Time for Tea with MPT

• The SPI Files: Nancy Southgate, Eight, Arizona PBS

 

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

Station Spotlight: Time for Tea with MPT

By Kelsey Savage, PBS Interactive
With everyone clamoring  to return to the Crawley estate for Season 2 of Downton Abbey (see here, here and here), we thought we’d showcase how one stateside station has capitalized on our love of all things British.

Maryland Public Television started airing a block of British programming every weekday afternoon in 2000 when the Program Director, Zvi Shoubin, wanted to adjust the daytime schedule to be more adult centric. 
By 2005, the Chief Content Officer decided to grow this initiative by adding a complimentary online feature and cleverly branding the experience as Afternoon Tea. 

Bob Wilson of MPT's Creative Services team explains that viewers can log into the Afternoon Tea website and participate in a “very popular weekly trivia contest where winners receive a special Afternoon Tea mug” or learn about “general interest stories with a British theme, such as the recent royal wedding of William and Catherine.” Wilson also notes that, with an almost cult-like obsession, “Tea viewers have a HUGE interest in the actors in the shows, especially where they are now and how their acting careers began and evolved.”

Given that most of programming is focused on old British comedies that are no longer producing new content, Wilson says the Afternoon Tea team has to “get creative” in how they keep the shows topical and relevant. The series Creative Service Director, in particular, serves “as a solid source and sounding board of ideas and initiatives.” 

Wordless Wednesdays: Sneaky Flamingo

Max Duke

The SPI Files: Nancy Southgate, Eight, Arizona PBS

by Amy Baroch, Station Products & Innovation

Last week we got creative with KLRU's web developer Jesse Overright and learned more about KLRU Collective. This week we continue to escape the cold here in Arlington and visit Phoenix, Arizona to live some Life with Eight, Arizona PBS's Nancy Southgate. Nancy is pictured here with her son, Owen.

Who are you and what do you do at Eight, Arizona PBS?
My name is Nancy Southgate and I’m the associate general manager of content for Eight, Arizona PBS (KAET). I get to work with everything “content” – programming, production and promotion, primarily.

How long have you been at Eight?
This coming February will be six years here.

Before Eight, what did you do?
Prior to Eight, I worked at WPBA in Atlanta for nearly 20 years (I started there as a college intern). During that time, I also worked briefly for GPB.

If you didn't work in public media, what would you be doing?
That’s a tough question because I can’t imagine doing anything else, but if I got to choose anything, I would hope it would involve dogs in some way.

Explain Eight in Twitter-style, 140 characters or less:
Arizonans trust 50-year-old #Eight for educating kids, in-depth reporting & celebrating the arts. One of America’s most-viewed PBS stations!

We are excited about Eight Life, the new lifestyle channel from Eight, Arizona PBS. What can you tell us about it?
Starting January 1, we’re rebranding one of our multicast channels as Eight Life with even more of the lifestyle programs that our viewers love. We have a great staff and are finally able to locally schedule the channel (previously, it was Create) to better meet the needs of our viewers. By scheduling it locally, we’ll also be able to make better use of the interstitial time for station promotions and underwriting.

You've been using Facebook to get the word out about Eight Life – have you had any good feedback you'd like to share?
We’ve had viewers respond to our posts on Facebook about Eight Life, but we’ve also had viewers go directly to Facebook to ask questions after seeing on-air promos about the new channel. Most of the questions have asked about the new format or specific show requests for the channel.

What is the next big thing for Eight?
January is a busy month for us as we also alter our primetime lineup. We’re moving our public affairs series, Horizon (now in its 30th year) to 5:30pm and 10pm from 7pm, which allows us to kick off primetime at 7pm to match the rest of the stations in the market. This is big for us and our audience, but it’s a change we anticipate viewers will welcome.

What do you see as the future for public media and how does Eight fit into that vision?
Public media is constantly evolving and our viewers want to see (and use) content on their own terms. Eight continues to adapt and embrace new technology and ultimately our goal is to do our best to make sure Eight’s content is the best it can be and available to as many people as possible.

And – just for fun – a few quick-fire questions:

iPhone or Android? iPhone, hands down
Dogs or cats? Dogs, by far, but cats are tolerable :-)
Elmo or Grover? Grover
I am currently listening to… my playlist of favorites tunes or XM channels, but nothing new right now
I am currently reading… I just finished “The Housekeeper and the Professor” by Yoko Ogawa for our book club here at the station and am now reading “The Paris Wife” by Paula McLain.
I’m currently watching… I love “Glee”, but watch too much tv to list (personally and professionally)
Most overused phrase: It annoys me when anyone says “thinking outside the box” or “change/shift the paradigm”. I’ve been guilty of saying them myself, but they are WAY overused and make me cringe when I hear them.

Wordless Wednesday: @PBS Summit Prep

The SPI Files: Jesse Overright, KLRU

By Amy Baroch, Station Products & Innovation
Revised 12/5/11 at 11:55am

Last week we got social with OETA's Ashley Barcum. This week we don our cowboy hats and dust off our boots for a trip to KLRU in Austin, TX, to meet with Web Developer Jesse Overright.

Who are you and what do you do at KLRU?
My name is Jesse Overright and I am the web developer at KLRU. I work on KLRU's website as well as the websites for our local productions: Austin City Limits, Central Texas Gardener, Overheard, Arts in Context and more. I try to make it as easy as possible for our viewers to engage with KLRU and enjoy and discover all of the content we have to offer. I write the code.

How long have you been at KLRU?
3 years and 1 month. I add the month because my laptop died today and it was one month out of warranty.

Editor's note: we hate it when that happens.

Before KLRU, what did you do?
I worked in IT support for the School of Social Work at the University of Kansas, and before that I was a dweeb in the Best Buy Geek Squad.

If you didn't work in public media, what would you be doing?
Our new Director of Education recently suggested I go to clown college, so I'm really giving that some thought.

Explain KLRU in Twitter-style, 140 characters or less.
Totally free programming that goes beyond television to educate, inform, and entertain Central Texas.

KLRU just redesigned and relaunched the KLRU Collective web site that launched last year. In addition, the initiative's social media has done very well. Did you have anything to do with that?
KLRU Collective is a really cool web-based arts initiative that's intended to highlight arts in Austin. Each week we release a short video with a focus on different art projects or people in Austin. We've featured everything from public art, fashion design, and yard art to drum circles, children's theater, and poetry slams. KLRU also partnered with the East Austin Studio Tour to interview over 100 artists about their art and inspiration.

The Weekly SPI Debrief - December 2, 2011

By Marla Krueger, Station Products & Innovation

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

This week KERA is celebrating 50 years in public broadcasting. Deborah Johnson, Executive Vice President for Development and Marketing and Alan Melson, Director of Interactive, sat down with the SPI team to answer some questions about the event.

In the Station Spotlight this week, we highlight KCTS 9's success with KCTS 9 Cooks. This program is a live show featuring local home cooks surrounding a specific theme.

This week on The SPI Files, we interview Ashley Barcum, Director of Communications at OETA to discuss OETA's recent web and communications outreach strategy.

Does your station have holiday content? PBS Interactive is looking for holiday-related content from your station to share across PBS.org during the holiday season. Contact the SPI Team with all your holiday themed content and ideas.

Finally, don't forget to register for the webinar, "What is this thing called Station Bento?" Station Bento is a tool for creating station web sites, managing online content, and leveraging Merlin and COVE in ways that can benefit all stations.

The webinar will be Tuesday, December 13, 3:00 PM - 4:00 PM EST

More information and registration can be found at https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/490580386

Follow the links below to continue reading this week's entries...

• KERA Celebrates 50 Years
• Station Spotlight: KCTS9 Cooks
• The SPI Files: Ashley Barcum, OETA

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

Station Spotlight: KCTS 9 Cooks Up a Winner

By Kelsey Savage, PBS Interactive

Around this time each year many of us are emerging from a tryptophan induced food coma and swearing off all the turkey leftovers. This year, you can turn to the Seattle-based KCTS 9 Cooks program to provided a wealth of delicious (and hopefully somewhat fool proof) recipes that will pull you out of a post-Thanksgiving lull.

The KCTS 9 Cooks program is a live, bi-annual show that features about sixteen local home cooks demonstrating their best recipes on a specific food theme. Originally, the KCTS team simply set out to mimic a show that the Pittsburgh PBS station produced, yet after 34 episodes and dozens of published cook books, the program has developed quite a bit.

“Our first show, in May 1996, was S is for Salads,” said Executive Producer Paula Nemzek. “We didn’t have a set and salads didn’t require cooking! It did so well that we got a set donated, and have been cooking for 15 years since.” In addition to the set, KCTS also added a restaurant recipe special into the mix and even lengthened the program—making each episode clock in at a total of four hours! Now, the KCTS 9 Cooks program is the most popular part of the station’s website and their cookbooks, which feature 300 recipes each, are their largest fundraiser.