CPB FY 2012 Business Plan

CPB's annual business planning cycle comprises three essential action items: review of the corporation's Goals and Objectives, approval of the annual operating budget, and endorsement of the annual business plan.

While the Goals and Objectives reflect CPB strategic priorities for the long term, the business plan focuses on CPB's shorter term use of discretionary funds. This plan provides CPB with a roadmap reflecting how we will apply those limited discretionary funds to preserve and advance the quality of public broadcasting's service. The business plan also serves to identify and address challenges and opportunities ahead for CPB and public broadcasting writ large.

The business plan is organized around a set of "strategic priorities" consistent with our Goals and Objectives but based on a shorter time frame and reflecting a more tactical approach.

The FY 2012 Business Plan is being crafted within a very challenging environment for public media. Although Congress has approved CPB's budget for FY 2012 as part of the advanced appropriation process, deficit reduction discussions create uncertainty about federal funding. In addition, with widespread cuts and outright elimination of funding at the state level, we anticipate that public media (and particularly public television) will operate with a significantly diminished public funding commitment going forward. These reductions frame the kinds of investments we will make for the system as we recognize the strain on stations and the need for efficient, sustainable plans to maintain service.

For the past several years, consistent with the Goals and Objectives, our business plans have focused on themes consistent with the "three D's" — Digital, Diversity and Dialogue — as well as Education, Journalism and Station Health. The Board has reaffirmed its support for these areas for FY 2012. Per discussions with the Board, we have expanded "Station Health" to "Healthy Local Stations and System" and we added a new strategic theme, "Transparency and Integrity."

The seven key strategic priorities for the FY 2012 Business Plan are:

• Digital and Innovation;
• Diversity;
• Dialogue and Engagement;
• Healthy Local Stations and System;
• Education;
• Journalism; and
• Transparency and Integrity.

This document provides an overview of these strategic priorities, and in some cases we have provided examples of the kinds of projects that could advance the priorities. Many of our planned projects will advance more than one priority. For example, the "three D's" (Digital, Diversity, and Dialogue) have become so intrinsic to our work that they are organic to almost every initiative.

Finally, we created an area focused on "Core Activities" where we highlight a few important programming and research investments that support the Goals and Objectives related to national programming for television and radio. We also provided a copy of CPB's Goals and Objectives at the end of the document.

Strategic Priority 1: Digital and Innovation

CPB's investments in the first "D," digital technology and digital media, span three areas.

The first area focuses on new distribution platforms and content for those platforms. This work is designed to expand public media's ability to serve listeners and viewers as the public embraces new patterns of accessing and using media. Today's audiences want the ability to customize their media experiences in ways relevant to their lives; they want a content menu that reflects their interests; they want a high degree of portability with media available to them wherever they are; and many expect to have an interactive experience sharing their thoughts and opinions with other audience members. These expectations are driving the creation of new kinds of content, new infrastructure on which to deliver that content, new methods of managing content across multiple platforms, new methods of measuring the use and value of content that includes all these platforms, and new ways to value content, manage the intellectual property associated with the content and compensate producers for creation of the content.

CPB will support projects that can facilitate access to public media content for audiences using an array of digital and portable devices and support new content for specific platforms, like the iPad and mobile digital television, which will allow for user‐customization, interactivity, and greater portability.

The second area of investment in digital technology and innovation is designed to help public media operate more efficiently, helping stations and the system provide first‐rate public media service while leveraging technology to operate more cost‐effectively. Many of the activities that CPB might implement under this priority are also relevant to the Healthy Local Stations and System strategic priority because digital technology offers many new opportunities to improve operating effectiveness.

Stations have fewer financial resources from state and federal sources yet licensing costs and the faster depreciation rate of digital equipment are driving up station fixed costs, thus forcing stations to divert resources from content and services to overhead. Digital technology offers opportunities for stations to rethink their design and operation, to share facilities, to outsource business processes, to combine back‐office operations, and to acquire professional expertise through shared, networked employees. All of these areas of restructuring are possible targets of exploration during 2012. One particular strategy, the use of digital technology to create multi‐station master control facilities, clearly has the potential to significantly improve stations' operating efficiency.

The third area of effort in the Digital and Innovation strategic priority is in CPB's continuing efforts to preserve and catalogue the history of America as captured over the last forty‐plus years of programming and community involvement by public media. In FY 2012, we will complete the inventory of content at stations around the country; we will work to identify a partner interested in serving as a future home for the American Archive; and, with the collaboration of potential future partners, we will select and complete the restoration and preservation of 40,000 hours of this content by transferring them to archive quality digital files.

Strategic Priority 2: Diversity

The second "D," Diversity, permeates all of CPB's work and continues unabated as a major area of investment and system development. This focus on diversity is deeply embedded in CPB's culture and increased service to diverse audiences is a consideration in virtually every investment that CPB makes. For example, the Community Service Grant program provides supplemental funds for stations that serve underserved audiences. Support for the national minority consortia provides training for diverse producers and supports creation of content of interest to diverse communities. Television and radio program grants likewise support diverse producers and content. System support funds help build capacity at minority stations.

CPB's preeminent diversity investment is the Diversity and Innovation (D&I) Fund. This game‐ changing fund provides for significant new projects for PBS primetime and the National Program Service (NPS).

Beyond our programming investments, CPB will support professional development needs for the public media system of the future. In FY 2012, we will complete a comprehensive review of our prior training and professional development investments and create a revised professional development agenda with measurable outcomes designed to support producers and managers in meeting today's challenges.

Strategic Priority 3: Dialogue and Engagement

In FY 2012, CPB will focus the bulk of its work in dialogue and engagement on the American Graduate initiative. CPB launched this initiative during FY 2011 to raise awareness of and promote solutions to the nation's dropout crisis. Major elements of the engagement effort for American Graduate are outlined below; other components of the American Graduate initiative are included under the Education priority.

CPB will also continue to support the Public Awareness Initiative (PAI) in FY 2012 through the National Center for Media Engagement (NCME). CPB's and public media's ability to help communities address the dropout crisis through the American Graduate initiative is the direct result of CPB's previous investments in the PAI. These investments have transformed stations from passive reporters of community issues to partners with the community in solving community problems. In FY 2011, CPB shifted primary responsibility for the PAI to NCME. NCME, with its focus on engagement, will continue to advance the practice of community engagement in public media.

On the national level, discussion continues among scholars, policy makers, political leaders, and within public media itself of the changing and evolving role of public media.1 During FY 2012, CPB will engage the public media system, opinion leaders around the country, and the public in a dialogue about the value proposition represented by the American public media service, and the importance and impact of public media.

CPB will also work with a number of national producers in FY 2012 to develop community engagement initiatives around important national programming.

American Graduate Initiative: Dialogue and Engagement Activities

In the first year of the American Graduate initiative, CPB has built the foundation for public media to play a powerful role in raising awareness of and promoting community solutions to our nation's dropout crisis. CPB is collaborating with leading educationally‐focused organizations, including America's Promise, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, StoryCorps, and the Alliance for Excellent Education. To build the foundation for American Graduate: Let's Make it Happen, CPB identified twenty communities around the country where the dropout crisis is acute. We funded twenty‐five strong public media organizations to work within those communities to identify and address the crisis. CPB selected two stations as initiative managers to organize the efforts of these stations in hub communities and build partnerships with leading educational organizations. CPB is also working with national public media producers to support the American Graduate initiative by producing news and documentary programming about the dropout crisis. CPB launched the American Graduate initiative with speakers from the Department of Education, America's Promise Alliance, and the Bill and Melinda Gates¹ Foundation. Coverage was extensive through traditional and digital media, as well as education and trade publications.

These intensive first year efforts have been affirmed by both government and business leaders. On July 18th, Patricia Harrison joined President Obama, Education Secretary Arne Duncan, General and Mrs. Alma Powell and 32 chief executive officers of Fortune 500 corporations at the White House Education Roundtable. This was an opportunity for CPB to reiterate public media's commitment to education and the importance of the American Graduate initiative.

In FY 2012, content from national producers will begin to reach the public. Stations in hub communities across the country in partnership with local and national organizations will host a series of town hall meetings. Stations will begin to produce local content to inform communities of efforts to address the issue. NCME will work with stations outside of hub markets to raise awareness of the issue in other communities around the country. The number of hub stations will be expanded and CPB will support the development of an American Graduate website to serve as a resource to stations and a comprehensive guide for the public to the American Graduate initiative.

Strategic Priority 4: Healthy Local Stations and System

One of CPB's primary leadership responsibilities is to further the long‐term health and sustainability of the public media system. Some of the ways in which CPB supports the financial health of the system include developing sound Community Service Grant policies, making grants strategically to support system sustainability, researching, identifying and promoting improved management and operational practices, providing data for benchmarking, convening meetings of system leaders and outside experts to address station challenges, supporting strong governance practices at stations, supporting appropriate professional development, and generally encouraging stations to challenge current practices and learn from peers.

Much of the public radio and television system has evolved with the ideal of a single station serving a single community. The assumption has been that stations with very local community roots can best meet unique needs of a particular community. In earlier years when support from state and local governments, universities, and other local institutions was plentiful, this very local model of station organization was feasible, even in many rural areas. In today's environment of scarce institutional support, it is difficult for some stand‐alone stations to maintain their sustainability.

To make matters even more challenging, digital technology, for all of its benefits, is requiring stations to spend a greater portion of their resources on refreshing equipment, licensing costs, and depreciation. With the loss of the federal PTFP equipment replacement program, stations have to fund more of these costs from basic operations instead of special grant funds. More and more of public radio and television station budgets are being consumed by fixed costs of infrastructure, leaving fewer resources available to fund content and services.

It is clear that the path to becoming and maintaining a public media organization as an indispensable community asset is achieved through the organization's commitment to content and services. The greater the portion of a station's resources that goes to the core business of delivering content and services, the more likely it is that a station will succeed. The more resources that are devoted to overhead and infrastructure, the more challenged the station will be in achieving its goal of community indispensability. Thus, we know it is essential that stations reduce those other costs ‐ infrastructure, equipment, and overhead ‐ so that they can continue to invest in the content and services that represent the real value‐added benefits they provide their community.

Many of the projects CPB is developing under this healthy station priority are focused on maximizing the resources stations have available for service. These initiatives are not about creating big multi‐station organizations for their own sake or in imitation of the consolidation that has occurred in the commercial broadcasting sector. These initiatives are about managing the costs of overhead and operations to provide more resources for the content that audiences care about.

CPB's work in FY 2012 will continue to emphasize universal service as a key priority - that is, no public radio or television audience member should lose over‐the‐air service due to a station's financial difficulty - and we will support new service models that might result from the current financial environment.

CPB's efforts will be based on our work with stations experiencing financial difficulties, communities faced with losing their primary PBS station, and stations that have recognized the need to change and who have developed new operating models. Our strategy will utilize approaches that encourage economies of scale to maintain and even improve station capacity while reducing cost. Simultaneously, we will provide support to replace inefficient or duplicative station structures to maximize the stations' and systems' operational efficiency.

Strategic Priority 5: Education

In FY 2011, CPB launched two major, long‐term, multi‐faceted initiatives to help the nation address the persistent challenges that confront our most disadvantaged students: the American Graduate initiative and a new phase of Ready to Learn. In FY 2012, we will continue to devote the bulk of our education resources to these two areas.

Ready To Learn

RTL is a five‐year program supported by a $71.4 million grant to CPB from the U.S. Department of Education.² The goal of RTL is to develop, evaluate, and distribute innovative content to improve the math and literacy skills of children aged three to eight, especially those from low‐income backgrounds. The project uses a variety of media platforms, including television, the internet, mobile devices, and interactive whiteboards to create a "transmedia" experience for young learners.

Ready to Learn is a partnership between CPB and PBS.³ PBS's role is to coordinate and lead production and distribution of new content, manage content producers, and lead the communications and PR efforts. As part of this work, PBS will commission and supervise the development of original children's content.

CPB's role is to provide overall management of the partnership for the Department of Education, to manage community engagement efforts that support broadcast and digital content with promotion and "on‐the ground" educational opportunities for young students and their families, and to contract for independent research to assess the impact and effectiveness of the partnership's work. As part of the engagement effort, CPB has selected twelve public television stations to work with low‐income children as Demonstration Stations. The stations will work with schools, summer care and after school programs to deliver Ready to Learn tools and resources to children from low‐income families and their parents, teachers and caregivers.

Sesame Workshop is the major content producer in the RTL grant. In 2011, Sesame Workshop created "The Adventures of The Electric Company on Prankster Planet", an online gaming experience that weaves narrative content from on‐air The Electric Company episodes into a series of online math missions. The "Prankster Planet" launch was remarkably successful, bringing nearly 5 million visits to The Electric Company website. In FY 2012, Sesame Workshop will continue to extend the "Prankster Planet" content to new platforms such as smartphones and tablets and create additional gaming missions that focus on learning to solve math problems.

American Graduate Initiative: Educational Resources

As described under the Dialogue and Engagement priority, CPB launched the American Graduate initiative during FY 2011 to raise awareness of and promote solutions to our nation's dropout crisis. In addition to the significant areas of work in station‐led engagement and national content development discussed above, CPB will also support the development and distribution of educational resources through American Graduate that target the students most at risk for dropping out.

The NewsHour Student Reporting Labs and StoryCorps U are curriculum‐based projects that help students stay engaged in school by teaching them to communicate about their own lives and experiences. In addition, a number of American Graduate stations are working with schools to provide training to students to use media tools to tell their stories.

Strategic Priority 6: Journalism

Journalism is in transition. Legacy models of news dissemination are coming under pressure from emerging, digitally‐distributed news providers, some using professional journalists and others giving voice to a new breed of citizen journalist. The ultimate impact of this restructuring has been the source of great study and comment, including the recently released FCC report, The Information Needs of Communities.

Reviews of the current situation in journalism are mixed. Some commentators suggest that the overall impact has been positive with the emergence of online sources offering news tailored to the interests of specific consumers when and where they want it; others perceive a growing information gap, questioning the overall quality and availability of local information. For example, the FCC's The Information Needs of Communities stated that "in many communities, we now face a shortage of local, professional, accountability reporting."

Public media has a reputation for quality and in‐depth coverage of a vast range of local, national and international topics, and it has an extensive infrastructure of local stations and content producers. With these assets, public media is well positioned to help stations serve communities with high quality, trustworthy, and local content. The Information Needs of Communities recognized this, commenting favorably on public media's efforts to build local reporting capacity in the face of a changing journalism landscape. Examples include the Local Journalism Centers (LJCs), the Public Insight Network (PIN), Frontline, PBS NewsHour, Project Argo, WHYY's NewsWorks project, the Editorial Integrity Project, and the Essential Public Media news service in Pittsburgh, among others.

Given this ongoing emphasis on the importance of public media's role of ensuring that communities can access the information they need, and with CPB's statutory obligation to ensure balance and objectivity and to guarantee the editorial independence of producers, CPB will continue to make investments to support capacity in developing sustainable local and regional newsrooms that are efficient, transparent, and effective.

We will also continue our vital investments at the national level. As CPB's 2012 fiscal year begins, the nation is in a highly‐charged political environment where the demand for and value of trustworthy information is greater than ever. The campaign and election cycle will be a central part of the FY 2012 investments leading up to the elections in the fall. CPB's support will span coverage of primary and general election campaigns, debates, and party conventions. It will include the presidential race, significant races for the Senate and House, and statewide and local races of national importance. CPB will support topical reporting on issues such as the economy, immigration, education, and health care as well as coverage of traditional party politics. In all of these efforts, cost‐effective collaborations and partnerships will be essential, along with strong interactive features, to support involvement of the public.

Finally, the report of the Editorial Integrity Project will be released during the first quarter of FY 2012. This project has brought stations and national organizations together to make recommendations to help stations develop principles and practical approaches to enhance editorial transparency in reporting, while maintaining an appropriate firewall between political and institutional interests and their local reporting.

Strategic Priority 7: Transparency and Integrity

Transparency and Integrity is a new area of strategic focus for the CPB business plan. Guidestar, a centralized source of information about nonprofits, uses this definition of transparency: "The release of information that is relevant to evaluating… institutions."⁴ In public media, this definition can be applied to decision making around governance, management, finances, and content.

CPB has engaged in a continuous process of improving its own transparency in operations and grant‐making and for many years has required a level of transparency in station governance and management. Community Service Grant recipients have long been required to comply with open meetings laws, to make audited financial statements available to the public, and to disclose certain information relating to CPB funding.

Recently, the Board approved additional requirements for transparency for CSG recipients. For example, in FY 2012 stations will be required to post information about governing boards and executive compensation on station websites. CPB also supported the Editorial Integrity Project, which is exploring areas of editorial concern for stations. The recommendations of the Editorial Integrity Project will be released in FY 2012, providing guidance for stations in such areas as editorial independence, editorial partnerships, transparency around funding of news content and editorial decision‐making, and issues arising from employee activities outside the station.

Through the Office of the Ombudsman, CPB meets its statutory obligations to ensure balance and objectivity, to guarantee the editorial independence of producers, and to foster transparency. CPB's newly appointed ombudsman, Joel Kaplan, began work this summer. Mr. Kaplan outlines his role as serving as a representative of the listeners and viewers of public media, investigating complaints of bias and inaccuracy, helping the public get information, and communicating with public media personnel on behalf of listeners and viewers.

Core Activities: Content and Research

CPB supports the creation of strong, compelling national programming through the PBS National Program Service. We will work with PBS to jointly invest in high‐profile limited series, primetime specials, and election coverage through the Program Challenge Fund and CPB will directly support projects that meet the public media mission of an educated and enriched citizenry. These investments, such as Ken Burns' The National Parks: America's Best Idea , Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s Exploring Our Roots, and American Experience: Freedom Riders, provide

lifelong education, enrichment and entertainment for viewers of all ages. In FY 2012, we will invest in the continued strengthening of PBS primetime. We will also support audience research to strengthen the primetime schedule, inform our investments, and ensure our understanding of the way audiences are using content.