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PUBLIC INTERACTIVE®

Public Action™
Up and Running at WOSU and KUER

From beta-testing through public launch, Public Action and its potential to serve listeners have been getting staff at KUER/Salt Lake City and WOSU/Columbus pretty excited. Over the last few months, they've begun to see their listeners being served more fully than ever before.

Scott Gowans,
WOSU
For Web Manager Scott Gowans, WOSU Public Media, getting a good community engagement tool was critical. "I'd tried a few online forums, and while they were easy to populate, they were inflexible. Linking to the forums in a way users liked —much less the way I liked — was impossible.

"Public Action offered ways to blend our Web site with the forum that made it easier to link, to focus on particular discussions and easier for users to interact comfortably. As soon as I read about its features, I was bugging my boss to find the money for it. Like all PBS stations, our budget is tight. But not committing to Public Action would have cost us more in the long run: we were losing audience to other blogs/forums, and losing clout and credibility for not having enough interaction."

Elaine Clark,
KUER
At KUER, Senior Producer Elaine Clark saw Public Action as a means to increase listener involvement with "RadioWest," the station's popular call-in show.

"I've been pushing to get a service like this for two years," she says. "'RadioWest' airs live at 11 a.m. MT, repeats at 7 p.m. and is podcast, so only our morning listeners could participate in the discussion. Public Action not only solves that problem, it also lets all of our listeners — morning, evening and podcast — talk to one another. Those were two very important ways that I wanted to expand service to our audience."

Clark has been using Public Action since June. She says, "Since 'RadioWest' listeners can now join the conversation at any time, we end shows with an invitation to continue the discussion online. I've also begun posting e-mail comments that we don't use on-air. I recently did that with a fairly controversial topic and immediately got a lively discussion started, which was exciting to see."

Clark sends a daily e-mail to subscribers outlining the next day's show. This has generated comments in advance of the broadcast that she can forward to the host. She says, "On-air and online are starting to inform one another."

So how does one get from concept to launch of Public Action? Turns out it's a simple process, one that's greatly facilitated by Public Interactive and that is made easy because of Public Action's design features.

Chad Johnson,
KUER
As KUER Web Producer Chad Johnson says, "We're a mid-sized market with a small-sized staff. We really had to figure out who was going to do what and make decisions about management, policy, oversight, those kinds of things. Public Interactive and Public Action made it easy to figure those questions out. Public Interactive has been very responsive, addressing everyone's concerns in a timely way, from the least tech-savvy person all the way up to us geeks. It's been great."

WOSU's Gowans readily agrees. He says the training he and his colleagues got was both ample and easy to understand. As a result, early use of Public Action at WOSU is spread across several programs.

"We have a live, two-hour radio talk show called 'Open Line' that since early August has posted one new discussion question a week. 'Columbus on the Record,' a 30-minute taped TV broadcast, recently joined in and will do one or two discussions a week, and "Viewpoint," another TV talk show, should join in soon."

Gowans also invites the WOSU audience to voice their comments, complaints and praises that aren't show related. And for every local TV or radio show, he says, "We're thinking through how best to use Public Action with it."

As is Johnson. KUER posts all of its local news stories online, and it airs jazz programming at night. At some point, it will also offer triple-A and classical music. Johnson says, "We'll be doing more and more online in the future. Public Action allows us to develop two-way communication, so creating additional discussions around our new programming is a logical next step."

Clark, KUER's heaviest Public Action user, adds, "As the conversations on 'RadioWest' continue to expand, I can see listeners asking for involvement around other content. The templates for setting up discussions are so user-friendly that it won't be hard. We have a great audience, and they bring the same civility to the Web that they have on-air."

Looking ahead, each of these new Public Action users expects to welcome continuing growth online. As Johnson notes, "Community engagement is part of our mission statement, and Public Action is a strong online tool that is helping us fulfill our mission."

Gowans says, "We expect to gain loyalty, to make our audience feel they have a stake in the quality of the dialogs. We're now learning to ask what's on their minds, and what aren't we talking about that we should."

For example, to tie in to the Ken Burns series "The War," WOSU has started to collect Ohioans' war stories. Gowans says, "What's coming in is astonishing. I can't believe how willing people are to share their deeply personal stories with us. But it's been easy to get these stories because we asked the question in the right way at the right time."

For Johnson, Clark and Gowans, Public Action is delivering on every promise. Gowans sums things up this way: "Public Action is easy to use, looks great and has generated positive response. It's not just a cool thing to use — it's essential. My only wish is that it had come out years ago, and we would be past our initial wonderment of it."

Find out what all the excitement is about. Contact your PRI Client Relations Manager for a Public Action demo today!