Digital Future of Public Service Media
The media landscape is changing at a breakneck pace. Media can now be consumed over a plethora of devices anywhere, anytime, and on-demand. The advent of digital convergence and broadband wireless technology creates enormous opportunities to fulfill pressing public needs in areas such as education and workforce development, civic discourse, and public health. But in an era in which resources for public service media and R&D for advanced educational technology are tight, technological change also poses enormous challenges.
For several years, the Wireless Future Program has advocated that significant portions of the tens of billions of dollars in federal revenue expected from spectrum auctions should be earmarked for reinvestment in a range of civic, educational and public media priorities. These unmet needs include free media time for political candidates, expanded civic discourse, quality children’s and educational programming, and advanced educational content and software. It also includes the unfunded costs of preserving, modernizing and expanding America’s public broadcasting system for the on-demand digital media era.
Another of these ideas is the earmarking of spectrum auction revenue to create an endowment to transform public broadcasting for the digital era. New technologies and the conversion to digital broadcasting (DTV) present public broadcasters with expanded opportunities to meet critical American needs and serve the public, as well as new challenges to produce content for multiple distribution platforms. To take advantage of these opportunities and meet the challenges, however, public broadcasters will require substantial and additional sources of funding. In 2004, PBS asked New America to help lead an independent, bipartisan and high-profile task force -- a “Digital Future Initiative” co-chaired by former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt and former Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale. Over the course of a year, the initiative engaged the entire public broadcasting system (CPB, PBS, NPR, and local stations) and prominent national thought leaders from outside of it to articulate a vision of the digital future for public service media, and to develop proposals for a public media trust fund to finance that vision. The DFI task force includes representatives from each of the four public broadcasting entities (CPB, PBS, NPR and APTS, the stations’ group), as well as business, communications, media and policy experts.
Program director Calabrese drafted the panel’s 125-page final report, Digital Future Initiative: Challenges and Opportunities for Public Service Media in the Digital Age, which was released in December at a day-long Summit on the Future of Public Broadcasting. The report outlines the panel’s far-reaching recommendations in the areas of lifelong education, civic engagement, public health and emergency preparedness. It further recommends the creation of an ambitious Public Service Media Web Engine -- a curated, customizable gateway to public service media content, as well as other noncommercial media -- to be available online and on-demand via home computers, PDAs, iPods and other portable digital platforms. December’s summit also marked the launch of several Working Groups on the implementation of DFI recommendations. New America plays a continued role in the deliberations of these working groups and in seeking funding for implementation.
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Digital Future Initiative
Over the past year, the Wireless Future Program continued its collaboration with PBS to lead the Digital Future Initiative (DFI), a bipartisan and high-profile task force, initiated in December of 2004, to study and report on how public broadcasting can expand its role in the digital future -- and how those expanded services should be funded. Co-chaired by former FCC Chairman Reed Hundt and former Netscape CEO James Barksdale, the panel held a series of public forums and private meetings throughout 2005. The process engaged the entire public broadcasting system, as well as prominent outside thought leaders outside, to develop a blueprint for both enhanced public media services made possible by multiple digital platforms, as well as for a public media trust fund to provide the enhanced -- and more politically-independent -- resources to make it possible.
Program director Calabrese drafted the panel’s 125-page final report, Digital Future Initiative: Challenges and Opportunities for Public Service Media in the Digital Age, which was released in December at a day-long Summit on the Future of Public Broadcasting. The report outlines the panel’s far-reaching recommendations in the areas of lifelong education, civic engagement, public health and emergency preparedness. It further recommends the creation of an ambitious Public Service Media Web Engine -- a curated, customizable gateway to public service media content, as well as other noncommercial media -- to be available online and on-demand via home computers, PDAs, iPods and other portable digital platforms. December’s summit also marked the launch of several Working Groups on the implementation of DFI recommendations. New America plays a continued role in the deliberations of these working groups and in seeking funding for implementation.
DOIT
New America's Wireless Future Program continues to collaborate with the coalition advocating for a Digital Opportunity Investment Trust (DOIT) to finance the research and development of advanced technology tools for education, workforce training, and lifelong learning. As the GI Bill, the Land Grant Colleges Act, and the Northwest Ordinance did in the past, DOIT would enhance America's economic competitiveness in the 21st century. The Trust would be funded by a portion of revenues from spectrum auctions or other federal resources. DOIT would fund R&D for educational technology in the same way the NIH, NSF, and DARPA fund health, science, and military research, respectively.
DOIT has made tremendous progress in the 2006 legislative session in Congress: bipartisan bills have been introduced in the House and Senate, with several senior members of the Senate and House Commerce Committees in support. New America has conducted several Capitol Hill briefings on the potential benefits of DOIT and plans to continue its role as a spectrum policy resource and Washington advocate for DOIT.
For more information on DOIT, visit the website of Digital Promise.
