Future of Public Media

Social Media Week's panel on Women, Tech and Democracy illustrated the different ways that media, specifically information and communication technologies (ICT’s), are serving as tools for civic engagement among women in developing countries.

The Women's Learning Partnership (WLP) launched its first course on blogging in Indonesia this week, demonstrating the global call for empowerment fostered by social media. Read more...

PBS stations need to know whether viewers actually want to watch high-quality documentaries, and now there’s an easy way to tell them. ITVS, the creator of premiere documentary series Independent Lens (“a festival in your living room”), has launched the #standwithme campaign.Read more...

Responding to an outpouring of filmmaker and viewer enthusiasm for Independent Lens and POV, PBS has reinstated the two programs on its core schedule. The two programs will now take the 10pm EST spot on Monday nights, prime TV programming real estate. Read more...

The Center for Social Media’s latest research report, Public Television Viewers and Public-Purpose Programming, provides new hope for public media’s future.

The study, authored by Center director Pat Aufderheide and graduate fellow Echo Xie, analyzes the responses of hundreds of public television viewers who answered an open letter  published by Kartemquin Films. Kartemquin had been alerted by a Current article on the consequences of a scheduling switch when PBS kicked two series featuring independent documentary work off the core prime-time schedule.  The article showed that Independent Lens had drastically lost viewership when its time slot was shifted to a no-man’s land on Thursday nights (when public TV stations usually program non-PBS material). Read more...

After hundreds of independent producers flocked to sign an open letter to PBS by Kartemquin Films, and the Independent Documentary Association endorsed the campaign, the public TV programmer has agreed to find a home on the core schedule for Independent Lens and POV. These are the two series that showcase the work of independent producers who raise issues typically under-reported in the media, reach audiences underserved by commercial media, and who experiment, innovate and take leadership in the digital transformation. Read more...