Potential Uses of the Public Media Platform (PMP)

Feeding the websites of stations, producers, networks, and
potentially other non-profit media
The PMP could provide extensive content to the websites of public radio and
television and other public media organizations. Currently NPR publishes to
its site and third party sites all at the same time via its API. The station
websites MPR.org, WBUR.org and KQED.org and others are also fed in part
by the NPR API. An even more robust, shared API built on the foundation of
the PMP could serve many more content presenters, providing a rich mix of
local and national content, and sparing them from investing in creating and
maintaining individual API’s, and freeing their resources for more content
creation and innovation.

Distributing station, network and producer content to more people
and places
Subject to the distribution goals of each producer, the entire body of public
media content could be potentially be available for use by other public media
organizations, content partners, educational portals, third party mobile apps,
audio and video content aggregators, individuals and possibly other non-profit
websites. These uses would significantly expand the reach and influence of
public media’s work, for example:
o Aggregation sites, such as Google and Yahoo! could provide rich
news content to end users based on their location. This content
could reflect the users’ locations, offering content from their local or
regional public media producers.
o A teacher could update and enrich their curriculum on current
issues and major news events with text, audio, visuals, using
content from local and national public media organizations.
o Users of Android phones, iPhones or iPads who are intensely
interested in specific topics, such as immigration or the
environment, could receive stories about those topics from local
and national producers via any website that has access to the PMP
body of content.
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Potential Uses of the PMP, cont.

Giving context to major news events
Major news events are best conveyed through a variety of lenses. For
example, the Gulf oil spill is a national story covered by NPR and virtually
every other media organization. Local public radio and TV stations could bring
a perspective to that story unheard elsewhere; the national producers could
provide national and international context, data and resources unavailable to
local stations. The PMP could serve as a vehicle to pool audio, text, video
and data about these major news events and their impact – serving as a
resource for its presentation to users on any platform.
.
 Informing the work of journalists and bloggers
In addition to the rich content available from the PMP for distribution and
presentation, it could employ tools to help content producers shape their
work. A Wordpress plug in could be created that links directly to the PMP,
allowing a journalist, blogger or web producer to automatically draw out
content germane to their topic, informing and augmenting their own work..
In turn, their reporting or blog posts could flow back into the PMP for use by
other content creators and presenters.

Supporting partnerships
With a comprehensive rights-management system, the PMP could make it
possible for producers to establish and maintain content partnerships in ways
that they can’t today. Stations, for example, could distribute their content to a
specific partner such as a regional newspaper, while restricting it from others.
This would allow the consumers of the content to have standardized ways of
accessing it while allowing the content providers consistent ways to interact
with partners.

Other non-profit websites
Subject to the business rules determine by the PMP and the rights
preferences of producers, non-profit organizations could access the PMP to
enrich their sites. For example, Wikipedia could illustrate their entries with
content from PMP producers.
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Potential Uses of the PMP, cont.

A resource for a multiplicity of apps
o Geo-targeted news app: an iPad or iPhone app could geo-detect
the device’s location and deliver local or regional content to the
user.
o A jazz app for Android: jazz fan could create a jazz site and feed
it with the PMP content from the many stations and producers that
create and have rights to original jazz material.
o Personal playlists: a user could create their own playlist suited to
their tastes and topical interests drawing on content from local and
national producers.
o IP radio in cars: a driver with IP radio could create a stream of
content to listen to, determined by location, topic or format. Once
selected, the PMP could deliver a steady stream of stories or
content that meets the driver’s criteria.
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