The Public Media Innovation (PMI) Fund provides risk capital to test promising ideas in digital media. Like the ideas it underwrites, the PMI Fund itself is experimental in both design and outlook. The grant process is telescoped from the traditional 12 to 18 months to three to four months, and the overall project marks a sharp departure from the risk-averse culture of public broadcasting. Not all the investments will produce winners, but each will produce knowledge that can be applied to the PMI process and throughout public broadcasting.
In 2007, two rounds of PMI Fund grants (totaling $225,000) went to small-scale experimental projects that use the Internet to replace or supplement broadcast activities; provide services not possible through broadcasting; encourage the development of social networking and user-generated content, or provide podcasts, online audio/video streaming, DTV or HD Radio multicasting, or other nontraditional audio and video services. In 2008, CPB renewed PMI funding with $450,000 to support two additional rounds: The first focused on projects testing revenue-generating strategies, applications, or products for new media; and the second—in 2009—targeted new media projects designed to improve financial and economic literacy, as a way of helping students (both adults and children), teachers, and parents cope with the current economic crisis.
In 2007, two rounds of PMI Fund grants (totaling $225,000) went to small-scale experimental projects that use the Internet to replace or supplement broadcast activities; provide services not possible through broadcasting; encourage the development of social networking and user-generated content, or provide podcasts, online audio/video streaming, DTV or HD Radio multicasting, or other nontraditional audio and video services. In 2008, CPB renewed PMI funding with $450,000 to support two additional rounds: The first focused on projects testing revenue-generating strategies, applications, or products for new media; and the second—in 2009—targeted new media projects designed to improve financial and economic literacy, as a way of helping students (both adults and children), teachers, and parents cope with the current economic crisis.
Our Non-Licensee Partner(s)
Innovation4Media (formerly Public Radio Management), Rhinebeck, New York—Mark Fuerst’s consulting firm Innovation4Media manages the Public Media Innovation Fund, a small risk-capital fund CPB established to support station-based online service experiments, accelerate the use of new media in the changing world of public media, and produce knowledge that can be applied to subsequent efforts throughout public broadcasting. It marks a sharp departure from public broadcasting’s traditional risk-averse culture. In 1998, Fuerst organized the Public Radio Internet Service Alliance, which was later reorganized into the Integrated Media Association, today the leading new media advisory group in public broadcasting. IMA now includes 35 major radio and television stations and all of the principal public broadcasting networks (PBS, NPR, PRI, APM). CPB has engaged Fuerst for a variety of projects related to online streaming of music programming and other online services. Most recently, he helped to organize Public Media Metrics, the first system to provide comparative performance data on public broadcasting Web sites and services.