The Medium and the Message:
What PEG stations can do about the fall of Cable TV
2019. It’s a dizzying time to be in media. Especially, the Public, Educational, and Governmental (PEG) channels space — partly because they may all soon come to an end.
Many in the PEG world consider the “in-kind” rule currently making its way through the FCC to be an existential threat. The rule could be a major blow to PEG stations and might reach further into many municipalities’ budgets.
I don’t know much about the regulation process of the FCC or what local governments can do to convince Ajit Pai that large telecoms shouldn’t be allowed to do whatever they want. However, despite this uncertainty, I can tell you this: 2019 is a great year to be a media organization.
All kinds of organizations are succeeding in the new media environment. The examples are numerous and exciting. The tools are there, the blueprints are there, and the capabilities of video and audio production have never been more relevant.
With smarts, agility, and an innovative spirit, PEG stations all over the country have a chance for a new life.
I’d like to offer you a rough map, a set of tools, a finger pointing at the moon. These ideas come from my experience in PEG, corporate video, and commercial documentary production, from my training as an MBA, and through my time in art school, as an improviser, and a musician.
The following thoughts are geared toward government TV stations (“G” stations), although what I’m suggesting can be certainly be applied to any PEG station and more broadly to any creative team struggling to connect organizational communications with its mission.
I’m coming at this a bit from the outside, but as they say, “the visitor brings the sharpest knife.” I hope this is the beginning of a productive conversation in the PEG world and beyond, and I’d love to hear from you if you have any thoughts about the ideas I’ve presented.
The Problem: Cable TV as a Depreciating Asset
PEG stations are confronted with a major problem: a cable TV channel is a rapidly depreciating asset. There’s never been more competition for eyes and ears, and cable TV is losing market share at an alarming rate.
The number of people watching TV in general is dropping, especially people under 50, and many of those are now using on-demand services like Netflix. The effect has been particularly dramatic for many PEG stations. One municipality that does a biannual survey to see how their citizens get information from their government recently reported that TV dropped in importance from 35% to just 5% since 2010.
But all of this is happening during a parallel renaissance. Outside of cable TV, video and audio production have never been more valuable. People are consuming more audio and video than ever. They’re just not doing it on cable TV.
Many other organizations have dealt with chaos in the new media landscape. This uncertainty will continue as new mediums, outlets, and networks come in and out of the landscape. How have these institutions successfully dealt with this change?
Focus on the mission, not on the medium.
The path to successfully navigating an evolution of this type is by clarifying who you serve and what value you want to create. Getting back to basics, and focusing on the core of your mission can clarify the way forward.
Most “G” channels do some combination of these three things: provide transparent and uninflected coverage of public meetings, provide marketing and communications assets to local municipalities, and create original programming, often designed to “tell the story” of a local government or show the intersection of the government’s work and the everyday lives of the people who live there. (Your organization might do something that’s outside of these three categories. Either way, the prescription is the same.)
Meeting & Event Coverage
The bread and butter of many government channels is to provide coverage of public meetings. For some, it’s their core responsibility.
Many “G” channels have already migrated much of their meeting and event coverage online and are doing a great job at anticipating their user’s needs by making the videos easily navigable and available on-demand. These meetings still air on TV, but the primary medium is digital. This is a great example of thinking of the user first, not the medium or distribution channel.
Marketing and Communications
We can apply this same principle to the marketing and communications arena.
Making a great marketing or communications video requires three elements: excellent strategy, technical mastery, and creative execution. Producers don’t normally set their own strategy. This usually comes from the executive producer, manager, or client.
A strategy in this context is knowing what the intended effect of the message is and how success is measured. For example:
- What do I want to say?
- Who am I going to say it to?
- How am I going to get it to them?
The first two parts of the equation are particular to each message. That’s why the producers don’t usually set their own strategy, because they aren’t subject matter experts. Producers create these messages for clients who need a certain result, but aren’t sure how to get it themselves. When considering the third part — “How am I going to get it to them?” — chances are the answer isn’t always going to be via a cable TV channel.
Trying to find out where your audiences are is part art and part science. There are data showing demographic trends on each of the major social media sites. The municipality you work for may already have a website, newsletter, or other communication channels that have their own built-in audiences, and it can also be effective to ask your audience where they are by conducting surveys and interviews.
What if your municipality provides an important service to a particular community, your council wants to give an end of year message, or your upcoming election has some complicated and important issues on the ballot that would merit further explanation? Each of those might be best suited for a particular medium, so it’s important to consider all options before deciding where a particular message belongs. Optimizing your marketing and communications for each medium will take some time and testing, but your engagement will increase and your value will skyrocket.
Original Programming
The greatest opportunity for government stations in the new media landscape comes in telling the story of a municipality and in creating a two-way connection with residents.
Here are a few examples of what this might look like:
- A weekly podcast with an in-depth discussion of one issue a council is investigating;
- A “talk-back” on Instagram live where an executive can take questions live from the audience (author Seth Godin calls them office hours);
- A series of explainer videos that lay out important issues — like a charter or a budget — and can be linked to anytime those issues are written about or referenced (Vox is pioneering this).
There are a million other ways to tell a government’s story online. The principles of good storytelling work across media. What can your organization do to focus on the mission, not the medium?
What about your franchise agreement?
I believe that most municipalities can move toward a more robust approach in their content strategy and still fulfill all of their obligations to the cable company. It’s much easier to make digital-first content and then package it for cable distribution than it is to go the other way (many PEG stations are already doing this). Also, fully implementing this approach will take some time, some trial and error. You can be sure you’re fulfilling your obligations at each step. Making sure you’re complying with your franchise agreement is in no way mutually exclusive with taking a user-focused approach to creating content.
Developing a Culture of Creativity
This new focus will require your producers (from here on I’m referring to all creatives, including editors, shooters, graphic designers, etc. as producers just to save ink) to learn new skills, and to think of themselves in a new way.
In creative agencies there’s a monetary incentive to be innovative and take risks — success is tied to earnings. Most of the production world relies on freelancers which puts the onus of skill building on the producer or creative themselves. As a government entity or non-profit, you usually don’t have that luxury.
Another factor is that in government, there is often a negative incentive for taking risks. Government is notoriously slow and deliberative. Government stations need to figure out how to create a culture of risk taking and creativity within this context.
Although it requires using the same skills and tools — cameras, microphones, storytelling — creating content for new media requires a modern approach to using those tools, and a more robust creative skill set. Said another way, people that have been making hyper-local cable TV for twenty years are not going to be able to make high production value social media content overnight. But there is a way to get there.
The good news is that in many “G” stations, the building blocks of technical mastery and creative interest are already there. Many of the people I met in the PEG world were very skilled technicians, and every single person I have met in the production world started doing it because they were excited to create. Your producers might be tired, disillusioned, or frustrated. But I believe that in almost all cases the raw materials of a dynamic and creative producer are there. The link between where you are now and the future is through a serious investment in developing a creative culture.
A creative culture is one that incentivizes taking risks and innovation, encourages tapping into the inner motivation of the creator, provides structure and strong expectations around the work, offers the tools needed to make great work, and reinforces change with plenty of actionable feedback. A creative culture is focused on what other industries call professional development.
Clear Expectations
To start with, producers need a clear idea of what kind of media they’re trying to make. They need plenty of exposure to modern media, and need to be looking at it with a critical eye.
Art schools provide a perfect example of how to do this; as part of their training, artists have to view and critique an immense amount of work from across disciplines. This experience is guided by a professor, but I think smart and engaged teams can do this themselves. I suggest having periodic vision boarding meetings where your team can consume a wide variety of inspiring, well made, aspirational media.
I keep a running document with videos, songs, podcasts, and pieces of design that I think are exciting and want to emulate. Generally, it’s helpful if everyone in the group brings things to share. We did this weekly at my former production company. It was the creative glue that kept us on the same page.
During the meeting, create space for questions. Why is this good? What are the elements you think are effective and exciting? Who was the audience? What was the message? What can we use? Look critically at the successes and faults and then use what you can.
Tools
Another way to facilitate a creative culture is providing access modern tools. Many “G” stations are under-resourced in this area. I’m not suggesting that your station needs a RED or Arri, but 2019 is an exciting time for gear. The Black Magic Pocket Cinema Camera provides access to a 4k cinema camera that shoots in in ProRes or RAW for around $1200. You can buy a very serviceable slider for $250. Drones are getting cheaper everyday. The DJI Osmo 4k+ Action camera provides a 4k camera with a gimbal for around $500 (this one still blows my mind!). There has never been a better time to shoot and edit video. Going from SD to HD was exciting for anyone creating video, but I would argue that the leap from HD to 4k is even more exciting.
Strategy and Feedback
Paradoxically, it’s crucial that a creative culture strictly define success and provides boundaries for producers to work within. Producers need expectations and strong feedback so they can get better and focus on mastering their craft.
We talked about strategy above and the effect it has on the way a message is put together, but a well-defined strategy is also important to the producer as a way to set expectations and give feedback. If a producer knows who the audience is, and what the message is supposed to say, then they can channel their creativity in the telling and crafting of that message. The strategy will hopefully have feedback built in; for example, a video with a strategy of creating awareness of a website will prove its effectiveness via that site’s view count.
Strategy is also a crucial element to job satisfaction. It provides an intrinsic motivation and an element of challenge; something meaningful to push up against. It can be especially difficult to determine the efficacy of TV programming, so having a clear expectation of what the effect of your message should be is so helpful in motivating producers.
There are many other ways to provide feedback to producers. They can include:
- One on one feedback with an executive producer or manager
- Peer feedback or group discussions
- Feedback from clients (done directly or indirectly)
- Feedback from end users, usually collected in surveys
At the production company I used to run, we did all of these, especially peer critique. Like our weekly vision boarding meeting, we had a weekly peer critique meeting. This type of feedback is also used very effectively across other creative communities. Documentary creators, improvisers, musicians, visual artists, and many other communities have designed ways for peers to give feedback to each other.
A good leader can set boundaries around how critique sessions should be run to ensure trust, participation and a positive outcome. Keep the critique about the work, and what is on screen. New producers should be able to participate in peer critique with veterans and feel heard and respected — and vice versa. It’s tricky to have this kind of critique without the producers taking it personally, but the more you do it, the easier it will be for them look at their own work critically. The work will be substantially better for it.
I hope these suggestions help make your station or organization more effective and prepared to deal with the challenges and opportunities new media outlets are presenting.
I don’t know how to make PEG stations more politically impactful any better than I know how to defend against the Night King (or Ajit Pai…). But I’m sure that if you use these ideas, your station can be more operationally effective, and can create more value for your stakeholders, your municipality, and your residents.
