When I worked in public television, I used to say that it was like flying a Boeing 747 without instruments.
Last week, I wrote that public media's crisis is a failure to adapt to a changing landscape. Today, I want to dive deeper into why that adaptation has been so slow.
For decades, very few operational metrics were captured, much less used in day-to-day decision-making. Until recently, a majority of stations didn't even have access to Nielsen ratings. Getting data from PBS was notoriously difficult.
This is a sharp contrast to commercial media. There, audience performance equals ad revenue. Feedback loops are existential.
In public media, revenue (grants and donations) is often disconnected from the core business of content performance. This created a culture of flying by feel.
Think of public media leaders as highly seasoned pilots. They have been flying the same route, every day, for decades. They don't need instruments. They know the route, they can eyeball the velocity, and they can stick the landing.
That model works as long as the route stays the same. But the media landscape has changed the destination.
To fly to new destinations, digital streaming, on-demand, fragmented audiences, you need instrumentation that provides precise headings, airspeeds, and altitudes. You can no longer fly by looking out the window.
We are seeing success stories where stations have pivoted. Connecticut Public and PBS SoCal have invested significantly in the infrastructure for data-informed operations.
To replicate this, every station needs to answer three questions:
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Clear goals. What does "success" actually mean? Growth? Retention? Donations?
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Instrumentation. What signals contribute to those goals, and how do we measure them consistently?
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Decision systems. How do we analyze that data and, crucially, incorporate it into our operational processes?
In a world where public media is fighting for every individual eyeball, we can no longer afford to fly blind.