Digital Future of Public Media

As the era of broadcasting as a primarily scheduled and one-way service fades to black, public broadcasting both here and abroad will need to transform itself to keep pace with commercial media. As the public becomes accustomed to consuming video anytime and anyplace -- including in bite-size segments on mobile wireless devices 24/7 -- traditional broadcasting will be eclipsed by a wide variety of new digital media formats and distribution platforms.

Our distinguished panel will offer… more

Business, philanthropic, education and public broadcasting leaders from across the country gather in Washington, DC today for the Digital Future Initiative (DFI) Summit, an invitation-only event where participants will explore the future of America’s public service media.

The Summit features the release of the final report of the bipartisan DFI panel and the launch of working groups to implement key DFI recommendations to develop, fund and launch major new initiatives addressing… more

Links to PDF versions of the full report (133 pp.), as well as the Executive Summary (11 pp.), are below.

On July 12, 2005, Michael Calabrese testified before the full Senate Commerce Committee about issues regarding the nation's transition from analog to digital television (DTV) broadcasting. Below is a summary of his testimony. To access the full transcript, refer to the PDF file linked below.

TV channels 52 to 69 have become a vast wasteland of underutilized airwaves that are urgently needed for both public safety and for wireless broadband services. Because of the urgent need to reallocate these… more

The digital age has drastically reshaped the world that we live in—making communication faster, information more accessible, and our knowledge more expansive than ever before. With even more information at our fingertips, it has become increasingly difficult to keep up with the pace of information output. Knowledge is now the principal source of wealth creation and new jobs in the United States. Ensuring that the United States and its populace keep up with the fast pace of knowledge dissemination and… more

Over the past thirty years, by many measures, U.S. student educational performance has not improved. Some measures of educational achievement have actually decreased. This development is coupled with a dramatic decline in the productivity of educational spending: As a nation, we spend more and more to obtain the same level of educational achievement. Other industrialized countries do much better than the U.S. when comparing educational performance and the productivity of educational spending. With respect to educational achievement, the position of… more

Please join the New America Foundation and Digital Promise for an invitation only Congressional Breakfast Briefing to mark the release of two new education papers on America's stagnant educational productivity and the role e-learning R&D could play to increase it. Learn why e-learning R&D is prone to market failure and why it makes sense to fund e-learning R&D the way NSF funds scientific research and NIH funds health research.

This is the second public meeting of the Digital Future Initiative, a distinguished panel whose mission is to develop a vision for the digital future of public broadcasting. At this conference, the nation's most innovative local public stations present their visions for the greatly enhanced programming and community services made possible by digital technologies. This forum previews visions for digital learning services, civic engagement and broad-based community partnerships, as well as the public debate over how to adequately fund America's… more

As commercial stations prepare to leverage the enormous potential of digital broadcasting, it remains unclear whether America's non-commercial broadcasters will have the resources to keep pace -- and to deliver the enhanced community services that digital multi-casting and interactive programming make possible. The presidents of the principal public broadcasting entities will articulate their vision for America's DTV future -- and announce the launch of an Enhanced Funding Initiative to propose a plan for a sustainable source of funding for… more

Even amidst the burst of the "dot com" bubble, many believe that new information technologies are having a dramatic impact on the way we live, work, learn, and communicate with each other. One of the applications of information technology that has attracted the most attention is "e-learning." Technology has the potential to transform education and lifelong learning. In the future, learners of all ages will be able to tap in to vast digital libraries and online museums,… more