Many people in public media are asking an important question right now: What should public media look like today?
When the industry goes through periods of uncertainty, it helps to return to first principles. At its core, the mission of public media is simple: serve the underserved.
The idea behind the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 was that certain public vital needs would not be met by the commercial market alone. If the market couldn’t support those needs, public funding could ensure they were still met.
That mission raises two practical questions: Who is underserved, and what are they missing?
The answers have changed since 1967.
At that time, producing and distributing media required expensive equipment and trained staff. Only a small number of organizations could reach a mass audience. Public broadcasting helped fill important gaps, particularly in areas like children’s educational programming and national news.
Today those gaps look very different.
Educational content for children is widely available across streaming services, YouTube, podcasts, and countless digital platforms. National news is also abundant, with dozens of outlets producing coverage around the clock.
In other words, some of the needs public media originally stepped in to address are now being met by the broader media ecosystem.
At the same time, other areas have moved in the opposite direction.
In the late 1960s, most cities had multiple newspapers along with local radio and television newsrooms. Local journalism was plentiful in many communities. Today many of those institutions have disappeared, leaving large parts of the country with little or no local reporting.
Some of the things Americans once lacked are now abundant. Some of the things they once had in abundance are now scarce.
Public media’s mission hasn’t changed. But the gaps it exists to fill have.
A New Gap Is Emerging
In 2024, the Public Media Content Collective, Station Resource Group, and Greater Public surveyed more than 30,000 Americans in a study called Researching Unmet Needs. The top finding?
“There’s a powerful craving for community and live local connection. People want to know their local areas better and to connect with other members of their community, not only virtually but live and in-person.”
This aligns with what many researchers have been observing. Former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy has warned for years that the United States is facing a loneliness epidemic, and Harvard researcher Robert Putnam has documented the long decline of social capital — the networks of relationships that help democracy function.
At the same time, media consumption continues to rise. People spend more time with content and less time with each other. For many Americans, the gap is no longer access to content. The gap is connection.
Public media organizations have reported on this problem extensively. Judy Woodruff’s PBS series America at a Crossroads has explored the issue in depth, including conversations with Putnam.
But reporting on a problem and addressing it are two different things.
An Audience Is Not A Community
Public media stations are especially well positioned to help rebuild local connection. They already convene audiences around shared interests. They operate trusted local brands. They maintain relationships with civic leaders, nonprofits, and cultural organizations. Those assets put public media in a rare position to help people reconnect with the places they live.
Doing that requires recognizing an important distinction:
An audience and a community are not the same thing.
Your listeners are an audience. Your viewers are an audience. Your email list and your social media followers are audiences as well. These are people who consume the content your organization produces.
A community works differently. Members interact with each other, not just with the organization. Relationships begin to form between the people involved, and those relationships become the reason people continue to show up.
The distinction matters because the habits that grow an audience are different from the habits that build a community. In some cases, audience-building tactics can actually work against community building.
Public media institutions now face a practical choice. They can continue focusing primarily on producing content for the needs that existed when the system was designed, or they can expand their work to address the growing need for connection within local communities.
The second path doesn’t replace the first. Public service journalism and storytelling still matter deeply. But meeting today’s unmet needs will require developing new capabilities alongside the ones public media already has.
Webinar: How Public Media Can Build Community
Next Wednesday at 2:00pm EDT / 11:00am PDT, I’ll be hosting a webinar called Community as a Sustainability Strategy.
We’ll examine how public media stations can move beyond simply reporting on the loneliness crisis and begin actively rebuilding local connection. The session will cover what community initiatives could look like at a station, how they can strengthen audience loyalty and membership revenue, and what it takes to launch and sustain them.
Stations across the country are beginning to explore this shift. If your organization is asking how public media can remain essential to the communities it serves — and financially sustainable in the process — this webinar will give you a practical starting point.
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