Infrastructure Videos

@robpatrob (Robert Paterson) asks (responding to this tweet and this post) Why would GBH line up against BUR? Why have a war between 2 Pub stations in same city? (In this tweet and this one, Dan Kennedy asks pretty much the same thing.) The short answer is, Because it wouldn t be a war. Boston is the world s largest college town. There are already a pile of home-grown radio-ready program-filling goods here, if one bothers to dig and develop. The standard NPR line-up could also use a challenge from other producers. WGBH is already doing that in the mornings by putting The Takeaway up against Morning Edition. That succeeds for me because now I have more choices. I can jump back and forth between those two (which I do, and Howard Stern as well). The longer answer is that it gives GBH a start on the inevitable replacement of signal-based radio by multiple streams and podcast line-ups. WGBH has an exemplary record as a producer of televsion programming, but it s not setting the pace in other media, including radio. The story is apparent in the first four paragraphs of its About page (which is sure to change): WGBH is PBS’s single largest producer of content for television (prime-time and children’s programs) and the Web. Some of your favorite series and websites — Nova, Masterpiece, Frontline, Antiques Roadshow, Curious George, Arthur, and The Victory Garden, to name a few — are produced here in our Boston studios. WGBH also is a major supplier of programs heard nationally on public radio, including The World. And we’re a pioneer in educational multimedia and in media access technologies for people with hearing or vision loss. Our community ties run deep. We’re a local public broadcaster serving southern New England, with 11 public television services and three public radio services — and productions (from Greater Boston to Jazz with Eric in the Evening) that reflect the issues and cultural riches of our region. We’re a member station of PBS and an affiliate of both NPR and PRI. In today’s fast-changing media landscape, we’re making sure you can find our content when and where you choose — on TV, radio, the Web, podcasts, vodcasts, streaming audio and video, iPhone applications, groundbreaking teaching tools, and more. Our reach and impact keep growing. Note the order: TV first, radio second, the rest of it third. But where WGBH needs to lead in the future is with #3: that last paragraph. Look at WGBH s annual report. It s very TV-heavy. Compare its radio productions to those of Chicago Public Radio or WNYC. Very strong in classical music (now moving over to WCRB, at least on the air), and okay-but-not-great in other stuff. Public TV has already become a ghetto of geezers and kids, while the audience between those extrmes is diffusing across cable TV and other media. An increasingly negligible sum of people watch over-the-air (OTA) TV. Here WGBH lost out too. It s old signal on Channel 2 was huge, reaching more households than any other in New England. Now it s just another UHF digital signal like its own WGBX/44, with no special advantages. Public radio is in better shape, for now, because its band isn t the ever-growing accordion file that cable TV has become; and because most of it still lives in a regulated protectorate at the bottom fifth of the FM band. It also helps public radio that the rest of both the FM and the AM bands suck so royally. (Only sports and political talk are holding their own. Music programming is losing to file sharing and iPods. All-news stations are yielding to iPhone programs that offer better news, weather and traffic reporting. In Boston WBZ is still a landmark news station, but it has to worry a bit with WGBH going in the same direction.) So the timing is right. WGBH needs to start sinking new wells into the aquifer of smart, talented and original people and organizations here in the Boston area and taking the lead in producing great new programming with what they find. I ll put in another plug for Chris Lydon s Open Source, which is currently available only in podcast/Web form. And there is much more, including Cambridge-based PRX s enormous portfolio of goods.  (Disclosure: my work with the Berkman Center is partially funded through PRX and those folks, like Chris, are good friends.) In the long run what will matter are sources, listeners, and the finite amount of time the latter can devote to the former. Not old-fashioned signals. P.S. to Dan Kennedy s tweeted question, Is there another city in the country where two big-time public radio stations go head-to-head on news? Can t think of one. Here are a few (though I d broaden the answer beyond news, since WBUR isn t just that): Seattle (KUOW and KPLU) San Francisco (KQED and KALW) Los Angeles (KPPC and KCRW) Atlanta (various vs. GBP) Minnesota (too many to mention) Oregon (JPR and OPB) All with qualifications, of course. In some cases you can add in Pacifica (which, even though my hero Larry Josephson once called it a foghorn for political correctness, qualifies as competition). Still, my point is that there is room for more than one mostly-talk (or news) public radio station in most well-populated regions. Even in Boston, where WBUR has been king of the hill for many years. Hey, other things being equal (and they never are), the biggest signal still tends to win. And in Boston, WGBH has a bigger signal than WBUR: almost 100,000 watts vs. 12,000 watts. WBUR radiates from a higher elevaiton, but its signal is directional. On AM that means it s stronger than the listed power in some directions and weaker in others; but on FM it means no more than the listed power in some directions and weaker in others. See the FCC s relative field polar plot to see how WBUR s signal is dented in every direction other than a stretch from just west of North to Southeast. In other words, toward all but about a third of its coverage area. To sum up, WGBH has a much punchier signal. I m sure the GBH people also have this in mind when they think about how they ll compete with BUR.

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Hurricane Katrina is often referred to as a natural disaster as if it was all nature's fault. Not man's. The reality of course is that federal, state and local governments ignored warnings from scientists for years, both that climate change would lead to increased storm activity, and that destruction of wetlands outside of New Orleans had hurt the city's natural defenses against a storm surge. Calls for fixing levees and infrastructure investments went unheeded while the doctrine of markets and profits held sway. Well, this week a federal district judge finally ruled that the Army Corps of Engineers was indeed responsible for part of the devastation in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward and parts of St. Bernard Parish. The failure of the Corps to recognize the hazards wetland destruction had created was "clearly negligent on the part of the Corps," said U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval Jr.. "Furthermore, the Corps not only knew, but admitted by 1988" the threats to human life ... And yet it did not act in time to prevent the catastrophic disaster that ensued." In this decision alone the government could wind up paying $700,000 in damages -- doesn't sound like enough. More importantly, though, the ruling could open the gates to judgments that could reach into the billions. No judgment of course will bring back the Ninth Ward, which years after Katrina and Rita is still largely a ghost town. But this acknowledgment that the destruction didn't have to happen is important. Long neglect of federal infrastructure by governments more concerned with tax cuts than human safety... It's not a phenomenon limited to New Orleans. By way of reparations, how about not just $700,000 to the plaintiffs but a recommitment to federal infrastructure spending. You want national security? Stimulus? Jobs? That's it, and this is the time. The F Word is a regular commentary by Laura Flanders, the host of GRITtv which broadcasts weekdays on satellite TV (Dish Network Ch. 9415 Free Speech TV) on cable, and online at GRITtv.org and TheNation.com. Follow GRITtv or GRITlaura on Twitter.com.

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