PBS Brings Bugs, Presidents and Soufflés to the Web
Saul Hansell
Editor's note: Method designed and built the PBS video player.
Public television may be non-profit and government-sponsored, but it has many of the same problems as commercial broadcasters when it comes to the Web. More and more viewers want to watch "Nova", "Frontline", and "Antiques Roadshow" online, but the public broadcasters worry that that if everything were available on the Internet, they could lose some of their traditional sources of funding: corporate sponsors, viewer donations, and DVD sales.
Nonetheless, the public TV stations are taking more risks, and on Wednesday they introduced a fancy new video portal at PBS.org/video. It replaces a hodgepodge of sites, with different features, run by the producers of each of the network’s programs and by its member stations.
The sleek animation and the features of the site will be familiar to users of Hulu, the NBC-Fox joint venture. You can search and browse among thousands of programs, contributed both by PBS and its member stations. You can watch full episodes, and also search for clips and segments.
The site is built on new technology that will also allow users to upload video, make comments and otherwise interact with the site and each other. For example, in conjunction with the Ken Burns documentary series "The National Parks", which debuts this fall, users will be invited to upload their video of parks.
There's a lot of programming on the new site, including several years worth of episodes of many PBS programs including "Frontline", "Nova", "The American Experience", the "Newshour with Jim Lehrer" and "Antiques Roadshow", the highest-rated show on the network. Cooking fans may enjoy a library of the Julia Childs shows.
But there are lots of PBS programs that won't be online at all or will be available for only a short period. As with the commercial networks, some shows have many owners with various agendas. In most cases, PBS only pays for 20 to 33 percent of the cost of producing each show, and so independent production companies and foreign networks have a controlling interest.
For example, much of the programming on "Masterpiece Theater" is owned by the BBC, which will allow shows to be available on PBS.com for only a few weeks. Similarly, Mr. Burns is being particularly stingy with rights to "The National Parks". Each two-hour episode will be available online for only about a week after broadcast. Joe DePlasco, a spokesman for Mr. Burns, declined to say why his for-profit production company is limiting the streaming rights.
Jason Seiken, PBS's senior vice president for interactive, said that some production companies are concerned that if people have too much access to programs online, they will be less likely to buy DVDs.
"There are different views", he said. "I believe that putting stuff online actually increases DVD sales and increases tune-in". Much of the viewership of PBS programming so far, the network has found, has been at lunch time, when it assumes office workers sample programs they may want to watch on television later.
PBS is attempting to compensate for any revenue that is lost by making money from the new site. It will sell DVDs of the network's programs. There will be banner ads on the site and video commercials will be inserted before each program, although these will be in the form of the sponsorship announcements seen on PBS. And of course, there will be plentiful links to local station Web sites, which hit up viewers for membership pledges.
If all this revenue grows big enough, then PBS can negotiate to buy more online rights from various program producers. It hopes to commission original video for the Web as well.
"The eventual goal is to have a monumental catalog of PBS video", Mr. Seiken said.
