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Report: Station Outreach Focus Groups 2000 
Focus groups were held at KUED/Salt Lake City and UNCTV/North Carolina, sites chosen for geographic diversity. Twenty-eight participants representing stations in 20 states attended. Although at each meeting a range of different perspectives was voiced, this report is the collection of all the voices and ideas shared. Outreach is overwhelmingly a women's field, so this report will refer to staffers throughout with the feminine pronoun. 
Station outreach staff recognize the inherent challenge in their work, which tends to take them away from the public television "core audience"—the over-50 white middle class who are their station's membership and viewers—and into direct contact with communities which are far more diverse than the station's programming may reflect. They are constantly seeking ways to constructively engage new populations of ethnic minorities and immigrants, from Latinos to Somalis, often without support from other key areas of the station (discussed further below). One participant talked about being the "diversity police" at her station, to ensure that promotional materials, on-air spots and written materials truly reflected their potential viewing audiences. Correspondingly, some face difficulty effectively reaching ethnic communities, either because of insularity of the minority group, a dearth of organizations serving the target population to be appropriate outreach partners, or due to a lack of culturally appropriate programs. As one participant observed, it is incumbent on outreach staff to learn about their audiences: "Just because a program has culture- specific content doesn't mean it's culturally sensitive." Ready to Learn (RTL) workshops have proved to be one sure winner, and in the past year outreach staff have found opportunities to offer them in bilingual settings—in one case a workshop was offered with multiple interpreters, all speaking simultaneously in different corners of the room. Another station has found success in drawing a multi-issue, multi-ethnic group for all screenings, rather than approaching each population individually with material specific to their culture or interest. Many participants mentioned the growing Latino populations in their communities, with varying responses. For some this is a difficult group to reach, with few support organizations outside the Catholic dioceses. One station has made a commitment to stay in their poor Latino neighborhood and transform themselves into a community telecommunications center rather than seek a new suburban location, but their on-air programming does not yet reflect the interests of their immediate neighborhood. Others have had success through bilingual RTL workshops, and one station has gone all-out to reach this community through community leader "brain trusts," bilingual newsletters and bilingual phone staff during pledge drives. Another form of diversity which several people noted was the urban-rural divide, which "cuts across every issue," in one participant's words. In many locations, cities are booming while rural areas are starving, but the dispersion of population makes it difficult to bring effective community programs out to rural areas. This is addressed again in the discussion about the Web and new technologies, below. How many "hats" do you wear? Outreach is a discipline with fuzzy edges, open to interpretation and renegotiation at the level of the individual station. If a station assigns a staff person to outreach, that person is often expected to manage areas ranging from promotional events to Web content to on-air reporting. One woman said she "has never seen a job description for my position. It just keeps growing and growing." Many stations conflate outreach and education, and place their primary emphasis on curriculum-related initiatives including the preschool RTL program, an extremely demanding project involving as many as 150 children's literacy workshops per year. Outreach staff are pulled between competing demands. In the most extreme case, one person working half time is responsible for all her station's outreach, education and RTL for an entire (and very large) state. About half the focus group respondents are one-person departments, although most are able to hire project-specific contractors when grant funding is available. The maximum was four full-time outreach employees at a major producing station. Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that there are serious challenges to how much community-based outreach—the type appropriate for most ITVS productions—a station could realistically undertake.
Because of factors mentioned above, outreach staff often get mixed signals about the importance of their work to the station as a whole. Although there was evidence in a few locations of significant resources being devoted to outreach efforts, by far the most common refrain was, "The only time the station focuses its attention on outreach is when they are doing an annual report or applying for a grant." Outreach staff are frustrated at the confusion between outreach and marketing events driven by the development department. "There is a mental disconnect between so-called 'outreach' that's really funder development and promotional events, and 'social service outreach' that doesn't get a big budget but is a high priority when final reports are written." Many outreach staff have the very real perspective that at their station the numbers are all-important, and outreach is seen solely in terms of the money it brings in or costs the station, rather than the service it provides to the community. In these situations, outreach campaigns are often dictated—or precluded—based on the perception of underwriter sensibilities, rather than on an objective assessment of community need. Many staff also cited difficulties working with their programmers, who are in turn pressured to schedule based on ratings-based performance standards. In the most extreme situations, an off-site consultant programs the station and the outreach manager is unable to have direct conversations about her interest in a program and its potential for the station. The overall trend in the system toward increasing use of off-site programming services and a uniform national PBS schedule is a disquieting one from the outreach perspective, which values an in-depth understanding and responsiveness to specific local conditions. Two bright spots emerge in the picture: the stations that are members in the Television Race Initiative (TRI) reported that this initiative has been extremely helpful in improving understanding of and support for outreach at their stations. Also, the establishment of the new National Center for Outreach (NCO) is already showing signs of bringing new attention and credibility to outreach efforts throughout the system and at the national level. This is happening with a presence on the monthly PBS teleconferences, sessions at the Public Television Programmers Association meetings, and interlinking conferences between programmers and outreach staff. We are all extremely encouraged by these developments and will play an active partnership role. |
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