Three Things for August 26, 2021
From the Public Impact Group
This week’s Three Things for public media leaders looks at:
Competition Alert: the Black Information Network
Strategy in a Post-Pandemic World
What Is Public Media’s equivalent to a Chief Subscription Officer?
THING ONE: iHeart’s Black Information Network Expanding Local News Coverage
A few weeks ago, I wrote about the efforts by Audacy to add more than 50 journalists at its news/talk stations in eight markets in an attempt to establish a more substantial local presence, both in broadcast and digital, through its network of stations. This week, iHeartMedia announced that it would be expanding local news coverage for its Black Information Network that’s currently in 32 markets across America.
BIN: The Black Information Network was launched a little more than a year ago as a 24/7 national and local all-news network focused on serving Black audiences.
Most of the 32 stations are either on AM or on HD with an FM translator; nonetheless, for iHeart to make any commitment to expanding local news coverage is notable. Also worth noting is that a number of corporate sponsors have signed on as founding partners who “share and support the mission of the BIN.”
As public radio seeks to reach more diverse audiences, this development is worth keeping an eye on for various reasons. First, these are investments in broadcast properties, although a digital play is undoubtedly part of the mix. Second, by having the scale of a networked approach, iHeart will leverage its efforts across its network of stations and with its digital offerings. This includes several podcasts displayed pm each station’s website,1 something that is unimaginable in our federated world of public radio. Finally, it reinforces the fact that radio is a format-driven platform where a focused format and target audience are the recipes for success.
Aside from iHeart’s moves, another station to watch is KBLA AM 1580, the Los Angeles talk station that former PBS, NPR, and PRI host Tavis Smiley purchased with other investors last year. Tavis recently spoke about the station as well as his departure from public media in a brief television interview last month. KBLA has a terrific line-up of hosts including LA radio veteran Dominique Diprima, DL Hughley, and Alonzo Bodden (known to public radio fans through his appearances on Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me). The station has also created a “Friends of KBLA” group to raise funds for the station.
Before closing the loop on this topic, I also want to give a shout-out to WURD Radio in Philadelphia. The station will be celebrating its 20th anniversary next year and is led by the extraordinarily Sara Lomax-Reese. As the only African-American-owned talk radio station in Pennsylvania, WURD is deeply connected to the Black community in Philadelphia and has a strong membership program in place for listener support.
We can learn some excellent lessons by listening to these stations and paying attention to how they are connecting and serving their communities.
THING TWO: Thinking Strategy in a Post-Pandemic World
I’ll be the first to admit that I’m a bit of a strategy-nerd, which means that when I’m looking for some inspiration, I can usually find it in a few clicks, thanks to the high-level thinkers at McKinsey, Bain & Company, BCG, and others. Nevertheless, as public media seeks to move forward in the post-pandemic world, I found a couple of posts that can be very helpful in creating a roadmap for stations for the next few years.
Last year (when we were only a few months into the pandemic), Dunigan O’Keeffe at Bain and Company wrote about the new agenda for companies to retool their strategy, focusing on three vital aspects: adaptability, prediction, and resilience.
In our pre-COVID world, prediction would typically take the lead over adaptability and resilience in most scenario and strategic planning work. But that has certainly changed over the past 18 months.
O’Keeffe writes that a truly adaptable organization can make up for a lot of shortcomings when it comes to prediction and resilience. The ability to spot signals of change and respond to them quickly is how the best companies stay relevant year after year, come what may. During the pandemic, we’ve seen that organizations under duress can react faster and more decisively than we ever thought possible.
That’s certainly been true across public media. We’ve changed our processes for content production, sought new ways to grow and engage donors, taken to virtual events via Zoom and other video platforms, and adapted in countless other ways to maintain our public service to the communities we serve across America. We’ve done all of this basically on the fly, which is extraordinary.
But how do we maintain that agility that outlasts the pandemic?
O’Keeffe suggests first that it’s essential to embed what we’ve learned in systems that we can use on an ongoing basis. This includes an organizational commitment to innovating at a fast pace, perhaps incorporating the idea of micro-disruptions into the organization’s culture.
Another recommendation is to create “Engine 2.” In April, I wrote about this concept that has been effectively adapted for the nonprofit sector by The Bridgespan Group.
As for the prediction aspects of strategy, O’Keeffe recommends anticipating change using six lenses that can help uncover the biggest uncertainties and most consequential tipping points.
We should be asking, “what does it mean for my business?” through each of these lenses. For example, for public radio organizations looking through the lens of Technology, we might be asking:
We know that we will probably never return to the pre-pandemic levels of traditional radio listening, so what steps we must take to build audiences on our digital platforms and channels to lessen the audience loss through broadcast?
How can we make more effective use of data and analytics to grow revenue and provide a better service for our audience?
Asking questions like this through each of these lenses can help create scenarios and strategies in a post-pandemic world.
The final element that O’Keeffe touches on is resilience. The focus here should revolve around talent. It goes without saying that public media is a very people-oriented industry, and the people inside our organizations are essential in executing any strategy that we’re seeking to implement.
The chart below is from a survey by McKinsey from earlier this year of more than 1,100 executives across a variety of industries. The research study, The new digital edge, Rethinking strategy for the post-pandemic era, touches on many of the same ideas as O’Keeffe writes in the Bain piece.
Talent poses a perennial challenge to companies that are transforming their business through digital and technology—as many of the respondents say their companies aim to do.
As organizations make their plans for filling critical talent gaps in technology, from the board to the front line, the results suggest that there is no silver bullet to filling skill gaps. Top economic performers report a greater reliance in hiring new employees. At other companies, respondents report an equal focus on hiring and retraining their current people, and the two groups rely equally on partnering or contracting.
Every organization needs to decide what works best for them. However, the survey response actually comes as somewhat of a surprise to me as I’ve been a longtime believer that if you can invest and grow your own talent, the likelihood of retaining your top performers increases if they see a growth pathway inside an organization.
Technology (i.e. digital disruption) and talent are the drivers in a post-pandemic strategy. It’s up to leaders within organizations to identify and prioritize the most important questions and commit to seeking answers aggressively. What’s clear is the new strategic imperative: In a turbulent, disorienting time, it is essential to build strength by finding the appropriate balance of adaptability, prediction, and resilience.2
THING THREE: “All Roads Lead to Subscription Growth” for Publishers. What about Public Media?
With 2020 marking the first time that the newspaper industry earned more money from subscriptions than advertising, there’s been a major shift to grow the influence of those responsible for driving subscriptions by creating a Chief Subscriptions Officer (CSO) or Chief Customer Officer position.
The role of the CSO crosses a range of areas from the subscription funnel to having the authority along with the digital fluency to also play a role in the advertising, audience development, and content strategy within an organization.
This work is not easy because of the tension created between subscription, content, and advertising areas. However, with the industry's clear focus that subscription revenue is a much higher strategic priority than in the past, the importance of the position is vital to the future of the industry.
So, is there an equivalent to a CSO at most public media organizations?
Not exactly.
But where I see this coalescing is not around a specific position but instead around the concept of building an “Audience-Centered Culture.”
Greater Public has produced two excellent webinars featuring the work that KERA is doing around this idea. Greater Public’s Joyce MacDonald outlined some of the concepts in a blog post in June that were also published in Current. The single essential question is:
“What does our community need from us right now, and how can we best provide it for them?”
Over the past decade, we’ve centered our efforts around the audience’s journey using the framework of:
Grow + Diversity
Engage
Know
Monetize
In the webinars, KERA staff and consultant Shane Guiter of Public Works shared the journey down that path (similar to how newspapers are focused on building subscription revenue as a survival mechanism).
This work requires a willingness to structure your organization differently and to identify the various functions and areas within a station that interacts with the audience. You’ll be surprised by how many areas connect in some way with the audience.
There’s also a requirement to take a disciplined approach to identify and clearly serve audiences through the various channels and products that you’ve created at your station. That discipline also requires a cultural transformation within an organization. This is not an initiative but a new way of doing business.
A good measure of the culture shift is utilizing a matrix to measure the value and effort of various activities at the station. The chart below helps bring about the discipline needed for this work by assessing activities that you should stop doing.3
The two webinars are worth watching if you’re interested in learning more about this new model. Part one features Briana O’Higgins, Chief of Staff at KERA, and Shane Guiter, CEO of Public Works.
Part two features the team at KERA, including Nico Leone, President and CEO; Nancy Saustad, Senior Vice President, Major Gifts; Gabrielle Jones, Audience Editor; Andy Canales, Director, Audience Development; and Sylvia Komatsu, Chief Content and Diversity Officer.
Thanks for reading.
Retooling Strategy for a Post-Pandemic World By Dunigan O'Keeffe | Bain & Company
These would be activities with a low value to the audience with high effort and cost.