Public Media Joins Forces for One Big Platform

[Source: Wired, by Eliot Van Buskirk, June 14, 2010]

The country’s five silos of public radio and television are spilling into each other with a joint program that will allow them – and eventually the public itself — to build apps, stations, websites and other media services combining audio, text and video content from every public radio and television outlet in the country.

NPR president and CEO Vivian Schiller appeared at Wired’s Disruptive By Design conference Monday morning to announce the new Public Media Platform, a partnership between American Public Media, National Public Radio, Public Broadcasting Services (PBS), Public Radio International, and the Public Radio Exchange distribution network.

Over the next six months, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting will spend about $1 million to develop a working prototype of the platform, with NPR leading the charge

The Public Media Platform is “a series of platforms that will allow all of the content from all of those entities — whether news or cultural products — to flow freely amongst the partners and member stations, and ultimately, also to other publishers, other not-for-profits and software developers who will invent wonderful new products that we can’t even imagine,” said Schiller.

The Public Media Platform will cross-pollinate news across those five networks, and will data analysis to help reporters inside and outside those organizations present complex information more effectively. Both will be subject to various licensing rules, but the idea is to allow member stations and eventually third parties to distribute this information however they see fit.

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