The CPB Board of Directors endorsed the FY 2011 Business Plan on November 16, 2010.
CPB's business plan is guided by the Goals and Objectives, the operating budget, various consultations with system leaders on the current state of public media, and interactions with CPB board members.
The Goals and Objectives set priorities for CPB's work at a very high and long-term strategic level. The operating budget outlines the statutory and contractual obligations over which CPB has limited discretion, and dictates the amount of discretionary funds CPB will have available. The business plan focuses primarily on CPB's use of its discretionary funds. It outlines our approach to applying these resources in an effort to preserve and enhance the quality of public broadcasting's service. Further, it addresses the challenges and opportunities facing both CPB and public broadcasting as a whole. The business plan is organized around a set of "strategic priorities" that are consistent with the Goals and Objectives but are based on a shorter time frame and a more tactical view.
For FY 2011, the strategic priorities are:
- Digital and Innovation
- Diversity
- Dialogue, Engagement and Awareness
- Education
- Journalism
- Core System Support
Under this framework of priorities, we will make major investments in new content for television, radio, and digital media platforms. We will leverage public media's assets to help close the academic achievement gap for disadvantaged children. We will help address the school dropout crisis by supporting station-led initiatives in communities with the highest dropout rates. We will continue to address the urgent need for informed communities through major new investments in local reporting capacity at the station level. And we will continue to work to reinvigorate the system, helping stations confront the challenges of an ailing economy, shifting demographics, and a changing technological environment.
Strategic Priority I: Digital and Innovation
The world of communications is changing around us. Digital technology is making it possible for anyone to reach an audience if they have content that is appealing. Media outlets are multiplying exponentially. Fortunes are being made and lost, as new schemes for generating revenue appear and established business models break down.
In all of this turmoil, public media should remain solid and stable as a mission driven media provider with core characteristics of coherence, context, substance, and reliability. While striving for that stability, though, public media should embrace technological developments that allow it to expand and better serve its users.
CPB plans to launch major efforts in two general areas related to digital technology and innovation in FY 2011: policy design and infrastructure development.
Digital and Innovation: Policy Design
Advances Goals ID, IIBi, IIIA
Conversations are taking place all around us about the future of journalism and the need for communities to have reliable information. Much has been written about how established entities like public media and new actors like nonprofit journalism organizations might help meet those needs. Relevant activities on the policy front include the Knight Commission Report, the Broadband and Future of Media proceedings at the FCC, the workshops at the FTC about journalism, and the recent FOCAS meeting on the information needs of communities at the Aspen Institute.
In FY 2011, CPB will collaborate with stations and public media organizations to develop designs for the public media system of the future built on the sound foundation of public broadcasting, operating in a digital, broadband environment, and informed by recent agency proceedings and foundation and think tank reports.
Digital and Innovation: Infrastructure Projects
Advances Goals IBi, IBii, IIA, IIBi, IVB
Many of the public media organizations and stations of the future will continue to use broadcasting as a distribution platform because of the vast numbers of people that broadcasting can reach at modest cost. However, over time, broadcasting will become one platform in a portfolio of distribution alternatives that stations and public media organizations will manage. Public media will need to build new systems and infrastructure on top of the digital broadcast foundation that CPB has already invested in so heavily.
For the past several years, given the television conversion deadline, the primary focus of CPB's infrastructure investments has been to support the digital conversion of transmission equipment. Although this occupied most of our attention, we also made several key investments in digital technology projects such as PBS Kids Go, the new TV interconnection system, and a plan for developing a Public Media Platform. While we will continue to make significant investments in digital transmission in 2011, the focus of our infrastructure investments this year will move toward creating the technical backbone for the station and public media organization of the future. These efforts will include projects that facilitate cross-platform activities, projects that will improve operational effectiveness, such as master control facilities serving multiple stations; projects that will improve system productivity; and projects that will allow public media to expand its services to new settings and new constituents.
Strategic Priority 2: Diversity
The changing demographics of our nation and the statutory requirement to serve unserved and underserved audiences continue as primary factors underlying CPB's Goals and Objectives and this business plan. We will continue to bring more diversity to public media's content and professional staff in FY 2011 in three primary ways:
First, we will invest in content capable of engaging a diverse, multi-cultural nation. We will do this by supporting efforts by PBS, ITVS, the minority consortia, NPR, emerging cross-platform producers and other content creators to invent content that appeals to diverse audiences. We will also support efforts to refresh the signature morning and afternoon news programs.
Second, CPB will invest in professional development and training to expand the skill set of public media's current staff and to recruit new professionals with diverse backgrounds to our industry.
Third, CPB will make a significant investment in audience measurement to improve evaluation of our content investments.
Advances Goals IA, IBi, IC, ID, IIA, IIBi, IIBii, IIIA, IIIB, IVC
Strategic Priority 3: Dialogue, Engagement and Awareness
Advances Goals ID, IVA, IVB, IVC
Over the past few years, CPB has changed the culture of public media with our investments in the Public Awareness Initiative (PAI), our work with the Harwood Institute, and our support of the reinvented National Center for Media Engagement (NCME). In FY 2011, CPB will consolidate its gains in community engagement and in public awareness by shifting primary responsibility for supporting these activities to the CPB funded NCME, and by working with NCME to create online resources and training tools that will provide "anytime, anywhere" access to the fundamental principles, resources, and tools of public awareness and community engagement.
In FY 2011, CPB will work with NCME in three significant areas. First, we will support continuing development of station capacity to effectively communicate station impact to community leaders and key stakeholders. This will include effective use of on-air messaging, marketing and promotion and beyond-the-broadcast community activities. Second, we will support experimentation with digital platforms and social media as tools to deepen engagement. Third, we will complement station efforts by refreshing the national awareness tools we have already developed that make the case for the value of public media and the important service we provide to American citizens and democracy.
In addition, throughout FY 2011 we will build and implement public relations strategies for several of CPB's existing and planned initiatives, such as the American Archive, Ready to Learn, the Dropout Prevention Initiative, Future of Media activities,
journalism and education investments, and diversity initiatives.
Strategic Priority 4: Education
Advances Goals IA, IBii, IIA, IVA
In FY 2011, CPB will help address the persistent challenges that confront our nation's most disadvantaged students. We will pursue two major objectives in our education work: continue to help close the achievement gap in school for young disadvantaged students, and help educators, parents and communities address the national high school dropout crisis.
CPB will help students from challenged economic and social environments enter school with the pre-reading skills that they need to learn to read. Expanding on the past RTL effort, CPB will also help young children acquire the basic counting and numeracy skills they need to be successful in mathematics.
In a major new initiative, CPB will work to engage the public media system in addressing the nation's dropout crisis. Three out of every ten students in America's public schools fail to finish high school. Most non-graduates are members of historically disadvantaged minority groups. Only 56% of Latino, 54% of African American, and 51% of Native American students graduate on time as compared to more than 75% of their White and Asian peers.
CPB will work with stations located in regions with the highest dropout rates, collaborating with national public media organizations, and with district, state and national education leaders to raise awareness of the dropout crisis among the general public. We will invest in the research, development and distribution of interactive and electronic educational tools that have the potential to engage at-risk students.
Strategic Priority 5: Journalism
Addresses Goals IA, IBi, IC, ID, IIA, IVA
Much has been written about the crisis in journalism. Newspapers continue to struggle, the number of out-of-work reporters continues to grow, and citizens continue to have trouble finding reliable information about their communities. The Knight Commission underscored the important role that public media should play in meeting the information needs of communities, recommending increased funding to make it possible. The FTC's and the FCC's proceedings on journalism and media are also considering possible approaches to addressing the journalism issue that could involve public media.
While it is unrealistic to think that public media can solve the journalism problem by itself, public media clearly has an important role to play. In FY 2011, CPB intends to invest an addition $11 million in journalism projects. Still under development, these projects will seek to further increase quality reporting at the local level.
Strategic Priority 6: Core System Support
Addresses Goals ID, IIBi
When he addressed the CPB Board last April, FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps commented that an important part of his job was, "…preserving, protecting and advancing a thriving and robust public media." This strategic priority encompasses CPB's responsibility to preserve, protect, and advance public media.
As we've noted throughout this business plan, public television and radio stations are facing an unprecedented array of challenges. These include the challenging economy, shifting community demographics, fracturing audiences and emerging patterns in the way content is delivered and consumed.
Public television has been hit especially hard. Over the past two years, the public television economy has declined by $250 million dollars, and CPB projects a further decline over the next two years. In addition, while the digital conversion in public television has provided exciting new opportunities for service, digital equipment becomes obsolete much more quickly than the analog equipment it replaced.
As a result, the need to maintain infrastructure is decreasing the availability of resources for content and local service at stations.
CPB will work in two areas to help the system begin to reverse this trend: mergers and consolidations, and joint master control operations. In addition, CPB will work to preserve universal service by helping stations understand their financial situation and the steps needed to restore themselves to sustainable operation. If that proves to be unfeasible, CPB will explore alternatives to maintain public broadcasting service to the affected community. CPB will also assist the Los Angeles stations in their efforts to develop a new operating model that will reduce competition, increase content differentiation and improve fundraising capacity.
Conclusion
To summarize the business plan:
- In the "digital" area we will work on major policy issues and we will develop key digital infrastructure platforms.
- In the "diversity" area, we will focus on funding content and developing producers and other public media professionals who can attract more diverse audiences to our public media system.
- In the "dialogue" area, we will secure the gains we have achieved in the Public Awareness Initiative and continue to help stations transition themselves from legacy broadcast operations to public media anchor institutions, deeply engaged in their community.
- In the education area, we will focus primarily on helping disadvantaged students succeed in school. We will work with young students through the Ready to Learn program and with older students through the Dropout Prevention Initiative.
- In the journalism area, we will work to increase local reporting capacity by helping local news organizations come together.
- And in the core system support area, we will help stations in financial trouble, preserve universal service, and streamline system master control operations.
We believe this is an ambitious and impactful set of initiatives that will have significant impact in moving public media forward, advancing the Three D's, and increasing service to the American people.