Each December, New York Women in Film & Television (NYWIFT) presents the Muse Awards for Vision and Achievement, honoring women who have made significant contributions to the field.

Some 1,200 industry guests gathered to celebrate the accomplishments of the 2011 Muse Award recipients: actors Claire Danes and Christine Baranski, TV celebrity Martha Stewart, Sony Pictures Classics co-founder Marcie Bloom, and Budd Enterprises president Nadine Schramm. At the same luncheon, Sally Fifer accepted the Loreen Arbus Award on behalf of ITVS, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and PBS and expressed great appreciation for the independent filmmakers who provided the powerful stories at the core of Women and Girls Lead.

Sally Jo Fifer, President & CEO of ITVS

“Women and Girls Lead didn’t start in the offices of ITVS or CPB or PBS,” Fifer told the audience. “It started with these filmmakers zooming in on unsung heroes in Calcutta, Los Angeles, Liberia.  Capturing stories of the women who would share the Nobel Peace Prize, of presidents, soldiers, mothers and daughters.  Of women and girls everywhere striving to realize their potential, often against heavy odds.”

The first Loreen Arbus Award was given in 2006 to producer John Wells for his Minority Directors Program, which increased the number of women and minorities working as directors in prime-time television.

Since then, the award has been given to producer Gale Anne Hurd, for her hiring practices and philanthropic activity, Eastman Kodak Company for their exceptional support for women cinematographers, and Chicken & Egg Pictures, among others.

Learn more about ITVS’s commitment to the Women and Girls Lead Campaign

ITVS President & CEO Sally Jo Fifer calls on public media leaders to put “new technology to work for a public interest free from the gravity of profit.”

Sally Jo Fifer, President & CEO of ITVS

Information is valuable.  It’s valuable to those of us working in public media and it’s valuable to Rupert Murdoch, who started out owning a single Australian afternoon tabloid newspaper and ended up building the $33 billion News Corp empire by acquiring information, often at great cost, and packaging it to maximize profits.  Yet for Murdoch, perhaps no information in recent memory was as costly as the phone messages his staff allegedly stole, toppling the 168-year-old News of the World despite a circulation of 7.5 million.

On the surface, it would seem that there could be no two beasts as dissimilar as public media and tabloid journalism. One strives to serve the public with the information and tools it needs as citizens; the other hawks sex scandals, celebrity secrets, and other entertainments.

It might seem like they are the yin and yang of media, defined by their contrasts yet containing surprising elements of one another.  Public media, after all, must plumb the public’s obsessions — some dark, some trivial — in order to compete in the media marketplace and serve its audience. And tabloid journalism often invokes “the public interest” in its defense, as the National Enquirer does in ferreting out the untrustworthiness of public figures like John Edwards.

But as the past and present editors of the National Enquirer or News of the World would tell you, the marketplace for information is intensifying. A few years ago, the British documentary crew for Starsuckers secretly filmed journalists for three tabloids offering to buy private medical records, while Lindsay Lohan’s father brokered multi-thousand dollar deals for information stateside.

Even for tabloids, any “public interest” portion of their journalistic mission appears lost in the mad dash for circulation and ratings and the incredible acceleration of the news cycle, where being first is more important than being right. And more respected publications are vulnerable; even the New York Times, in a momentary rush to scoop the national dailies, ran an erroneous online headline claiming Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords died in an assassination attempt.

All of these companies have a business to run. Some depend on their reputation and credibility; others on their appeal to a certain niche group; still others on a talent for spectacle and showmanship.  What we often overlook, however, are the newer players that are reshaping the universe — companies like Facebook and Google, for instance. We think they are giving us a more level playing field for access to information, and maybe they are, for now. But what will happen as competition intensifies as it did for tabloid and other media endeavors? What lines will be crossed when the new media giants encounter potentially devastating market forces as did News Corp and the other five media conglomerates that dominate the media landscape?

Public media has a business to run, too. The bottom line for our business is working to ensure that there’s an equal playing field for the public to get the information it needs to make informed decisions as citizens. Just as the financial meltdown showed us a glimpse of a world where information is shared unequally, and with great harm to those on the outside, the Murdoch scandal hints at the levels of inequity and codes of ethics at work in the increasingly bottom-line driven world of corporate media.

As we put more and more trust in the new arbiters of information — the Googles and the Facebooks who track our search, mine our email, and analyze our social interactions — public media must provide the leadership in putting new technology to work for a public interest free from the gravity of profit.

In the end, Murdoch is accountable only to his shareholders; we are accountable to the American people. We can’t afford to make the mistakes that corporate media makes —and we can’t afford to ignore our duties to represent the public in the wild west of the most competitive, chaotic, and potential-filled media environment the world has ever seen.

Celebrate 20 years of Independent filmmakers on ITVS’s Indies Showcase, streaming award-winning documentaries now until September 23. 

ITVS President & CEO Sally Jo Fifer explores how the FCC’s latest report on media and technology affects ITVS, independent producers, and the public media ecosystem.

Sally Jo Fifer, President & CEO of ITVS

In Part One of this post, I talked about the Federal Communication Commission’s significant report on the impact of technology on the media landscape, ending with the question: What should we do?  And how does this debate directly impact ITVS, independent producers, and the public media ecosystem?

Other voices have already chimed in on these questions, including think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, echoing some of the FCC’s findings (universal broadband) and differing on others (restructuring public media funding).  However, few are considering the big picture with the work and role of independent filmmakers in mind — despite the fact that the FCC report emphasizes the important role of deeper reporting, storytelling, and media making in our democracy, quoting news directors like Matthew Zelkind of WKRN in Nashville:  “Long-form stories are dying because they’re not financially feasible. … It’s all economically driven.”

Independent documentary filmmakers work outside of the newsrooms and stations whose decline and challenges the FCC report describes.  Yet their role in long-form storytelling — in digging deeper into immigration through films like Welcome to Shelbyville or capturing the soldier’s experience of the battlefield and returning home in Hell and Back Again — continues to grow alongside their capacity and ability to innovate with new media: games for Garbage Dreams, The Revolutionary Optimists and Half the Sky; interactive experiences for The Way We Get By and Deep Down; interactive online chats and screenings; and the list goes on.  The fact is, these professionals already work in the shifting space between commercial and non-profit media, moving back and forth between worlds.

One key to that movement has been independent filmmaker’s creativity, innovation, fierce determination, and their ability to adapt.  But another key has been that a thriving public media square exists to support their enterprises that indispensably serve the public but do not and probably never will carry a big payday.

Without that public square to create a balance between the public interest of democracy and the   marketplace of free commerce, there is no back and forth.  It’s one of the reasons that ITVS can’t just fund documentaries, but must do our part in carving out a true public square so that these programs matter, now and in the days to come, before we live in a world where the demands of the marketplace have wiped out media’s public service to democracy.  Because when that happens, there will be no real public square in which to share the kinds of stories independent filmmakers want to tell or foundations want to fund.  There will only be a bottom line that does not include the public interest.

The FCC report used the metaphor of the bucket brigade, with water as information and citizens passing buckets.  Right now, the buckets are heading off in so many different directions that there’s information everywhere, but shared knowledge is scarce and civic conversation scarcer.   As an organization, ITVS can and must be a part of the process of working with new partners to create the 21^st century civic space — citizen journalists, NGOs, government agencies, new media companies, publicity strategists, key influencers and celebrities, commercial media — alongside the professional independent filmmakers and public television partners who represent our core and our success.  We must connect the dots that individual filmmakers and station partners and strands and even civil society alone cannot.

The stories and storytellers that we work with at ITVS have the potential to be more powerful than ever and to help address the gaps that the FCC and other reports describe with fear and worry.  Now we must all work together to secure that public space: space to share, to think, reflect and synthesize.  We must do it in a way that can survive within the marketplace — with dazzle and flash, shock and inspiration, transcendent beauty and calm — yet works for the democracy we must believe in.

ITVS President & CEO Sally Jo Fifer responds to the FCC’s significant report on the impact of technology on the media landscape.

Sally Jo Fifer, President & CEO of ITVS

How will 21^st century media serve the public interest and local communities?  That’s the question a number of recent reports have tackled, most significantly the summer publication of the Federal Communication Commission’s 465-page The Information Needs of Communities.

In the report, the FCC takes a hard look at what’s happening on the media landscape and provides a deep context for today’s transformation, referencing the words of Founding Fathers and Google executives alike alongside a huge mine of data and myriad anecdotes about court reporters, carrier pigeons, camera phones, and just about everything else under the sun.

It’s a semi-monumental report that raises many questions with few answers.  But the way it asks the questions tasks all of us to put our heads together — and our resources and goodwill — to figure things out. And fast.  As the report reminds us: “Americans need to at least come together around one idea: that democracy requires, and citizens deserve, a healthy flow of information and a news and information system that holds powerful institutions accountable.”

The FCC report echoes and provides exhaustive detail for the conclusion of a bipartisan Knight Commission that inspired it, quoting its 2009 diagnosis:

“The digital age is creating an information and communications renaissance. But it is not serving all Americans and their local communities equally. It is not yet serving democracy fully. How we react, individually and collectively, to this democratic shortfall will affect the quality of our lives and the very nature of our communities.”

The response to the FCC report has been interesting.   Many laud its analysis and criticize its recommendations for various reasons — for suggesting too much or too little government policy and investment, for abandoning or sticking with existing strategies, for putting too much or too little trust in the marketplace.  In short, as with so many things on today’s politicized landscape, there is some agreement about the problems and very little about the solutions.  The call to action, however is clear, as the FCC writes:

“It is time to move past some of the false dichotomies. Do we need professional or citizen reports?  Obviously we need both.  Do we need old media or new media?  Again, both.  Objective or advocacy journalism?  Commercial or nonprofit?  Free or paid?  Both, both and both….

“A shortage of reporting manifests itself in invisible ways: stories not written, scandals not exposed, government waste not discovered, health dangers not identified in time, local elections involving candidates about whom we know little. …Why should we worry about shortages in the midst of such abundance?

To switch metaphors, one can imagine an old-fashioned bucket brigade, each citizen passing water to the next to put out a raging fire.  In many cases, we now have more citizens, more buckets, and less water.”

It’s a vivid metaphor.  But it’s unclear if less water—less valuable information—is really the problem, although the FCC certainly documents the decline of professional and particularly accountability journalism.  The question is: Where do those old-fashioned lines of buckets lead?  The aerial pyrotechnics of celebrity lives, disasters, sex scandals, and political dogfights are being well doused, and groups have formed their own lines leading off toward roaring campfires of their favorite team, hobby, or cause.  But the buckets leading to the vast wildfires that touch every community — poverty, illiteracy, participatory business and government, discrimination, the abuse of private and public power — have dwindled, with half of the already the scarce drops wasted by sworn enemies splashing one another in the fray.

The FCC report is an unignorable reminder that every information revolution — from pigeons to broadband — requires an equally revolutionary effort to achieve a working balance between marketplace and democracy, where the rule of the people does not overwhelm commerce and commerce does not undermine democracy.  The message of the FCC report is clear: The effort is not happening, and it’s time to figure out how to get everyone — government, public media, nonprofits, foundations, media makers, companies, and citizens —to do something about it.

Well, what should we do?  In Part II, I’ll explore how this debate directly impacts ITVS, independent producers, and the public media ecosystem.

ITVS President & CEO Sally Jo Fifer explains why the times call for a new tagline.

Since 1991, the work and mission of ITVS has been reflected in our simple tagline: “Television’s Independent Voice.”  Twenty years later, after careful consideration, we have made a small but important change, becoming “Public Media’s Independent Voice.”

The most obvious reason for this change is that what we once called television now intermingles and crossbreeds with video media on countless devices: desktops, laptops, tablets, smart phones, gaming consoles.  The most important reason, however, has less to do with the devices than with a moment of truth for public media in the brave new 21^st century world.

Technologically, that world offers the public more access to more information in more ways than ever before. Yet the jury still is out on whether the public is finding, using, or benefiting from the contextualized reporting that makes a democracy strong.  As columnist Ellen Goodman put it: “The thing that has not speeded up is the capacity to actually think through something.”

Some recent polls are discouraging. A majority of Americans believe that the United States ranks high among other countries in academic performance, access to health care, eradication of poverty, and infant survival. In truth, we fail to crack the top 20. A much cited CNN poll on the federal budget debates found that Americans think 5% — or about $625 per citizen per year — of annual government spending flows to public broadcasting. In reality, the budget allocation comes out to $1.35 per citizen per year. A 2010 World Public Opinion survey found that Americans believe foreign aid accounts for 27 percent of the budget and recommend cutting it to 13 percent. The real number is under 1 percent. Seventy-six percent of Finns could identify the Taliban, but only 58 percent of Americans managed to do the same — even though 9/11 has been in the news for a decade and we’re now spending almost $7 billion a month fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. And the list goes on.

Sally Jo Fifer, President & CEO of ITVS

If politicians are pandering to an uninformed public — and in some cases, with media abetting their ignorance — it is hard to imagine how we can intelligently balance the budget, much less make wise decisions about anything else.

When targeted on a single topic, issue, and timeframe, however, the new power of media is unparalleled, whatever the purpose. Tweets easily crack news embargoes, from the first hint of Osama Bin Laden’s death to street reports from Tehran and Tunis.  The America’s Army video game proved the most powerful military recruitment tool of the last decade. And all of us know that a smart search can turn up almost any information we seek — although research suggests that few of us delve past the first page’s results on Google and find most of our information through 25 top portals dominated by the same 10 to 15 stories.

That’s where media committed to the public interest comes in — and for ITVS, public television, and independent media makers — that means video in all its forms.  Shorts, clips, modules, games, and full-length programming, accessed through any kind of device, most of which offer opportunities for more collaboration, more participation, more voices contributing to the conversation.  It’s public media’s job to make sure that happens — and happens in a productive way that fills the gaps in our national knowledge, serves underserved audiences, and enriches that conversation.

It’s time to take a hard look at whether public media is living up to its responsibility and promise.  To ask why niche audiences are digging deeper into segregated shells, as poll after poll surfaces spiking partisanship and misperceptions on every front.  To recognize what’s happening in the marketplace and why, and make sure that the new tools and new media frontiers are working for community as well as commerce.

For two decades, ITVS was public television’s independent voice, in an age when public television changed television, revolutionizing the marketplace for history programs, science shows, documentaries, children’s shows, and even reality TV.  Now the challenges and opportunities are even greater — to bring the mission of public-interest media to this moment and the market-driven changes in store.  As critics continue to drag public broadcasting back to the chopping block, the message is clear: We must all make the case, not only in words and support (although that’s important too!), but by showing the full power of public media in action.

To that end, in the months ahead BTB will publish a series of interviews with the best minds focused on the state of public media. We look forward to your comments as these conversations unfold, and hope you will contribute questions and suggestions to enrich the exchange of ideas. Write to me at sally_jo_fifer@itvs.org.

Ready Sally’s most recent BTB posts including an overview of the newly launched Women and Girls Lead campaign and her editorial on the importance of public media.

ITVS President and CEO Sally Jo Fifer announces the Women and Girls Lead campaign — a major public media initiative that uses independent films to focus, educate, and connect audiences in support of women and girl’s leadership and development around the world.

It’s no secret that the competitive sea in which ITVS and independent filmmakers paddle is not getting any calmer.  Over the last year, more than 1,000 proposals came to us for funding.  The Sundance Film Festival received 841 documentary submissions.  Public broadcasting is grappling with marketplace and demographic challenges. New metrics and “theory of change” frameworks have shifted foundations’ approaches to individual films. The public clicks like crazy between 120 television channels and 300 million websites vying for their attention — and that same public flunks miserably at any basic test of civic knowledge.

Yet some favorable winds and currents for independent filmmakers are popping up within the storm.  Social media and crowd-funding are formidable tools for many DIY efforts.  Engagement networks have created new funding and promotion partners in organizations and communities that value media.  No less a commercial titan than Oprah herself has carved out new television real estate for documentaries.  And independent champions like Chicken and Egg, Women Make Movies, The Fledgling Fund, and so many others continue their ongoing invaluable support for filmmakers.

Sally Jo Fifer, President & CEO of ITVS

Over the last decade of technological change, ITVS too has sought out these currents, working to serve filmmakers, public television, and the public — with more funding, more programs, and more ways to find and engage viewers. The creation of Independent Lens brought in 22-27 new broadcast slots for independents.  Amid globalization and a zeitgeist for cultural exchange, ITVS International funded international programs and took the work of U.S. indies abroad. IndiesLab helped open doors and set fair terms at iTunes, Amazon, Hulu, and beyond; Global Voices opened a second or third window for older programs; the reboot of Community Cinema alongside social media opened 100 markets where local partners and stations come together around the power of independent film; FUTURESTATES and Project 360 created opportunities for makers focused on new media.

Our newest initiative, Women and Girls Lead, represents another current, one that brings together many of the last decade’s opportunities and builds on our work around powerful storytelling.  A multiyear initiative to focus, educate, and connect citizens worldwide — Women and Girls Lead provides a frame to highlight 50 compelling documentaries, both premieres and archive selections.  These documentaries represent a groundswell of stories about the leadership of women and girls facing tremendous challenges.

For public television and the public we serve, this effort will stand beside system-wide efforts like the American Graduate initiative, which raises awareness of the high school dropout crisis, and the mortgage town halls, using the power of media to start and sustain conversations around a widely shared set of issues. Details will emerge in the coming weeks on how we will do this work, with which partners and films, and with what goals.  What is more important, right now, is to make clear what we believe this initiative can do for filmmakers in the 21^st century marketplace.

First, Women and Girls Lead will help bring back to the limelight some “evergreen” films that are as relevant today as the day they premiered, finding new audiences for work online, through live engagement, and even rebroadcasts.  There will also be valuable cross-promotion, cross-distribution, and cross-engagement opportunities for films linked and grouped together.  Pulling together independent work as a content block has been critical to claiming real estate in the past; it’s worked with buckets like P.O.V., Independent Lens, and even online with IndiesLab.

Now, technology, and opportunity have gelled to connect the dots that too often go unconnected.  Most importantly, we believe Women and Girls Lead as a model will provide an undeniable case for the social value of documentary film — not just for the occasional documentary “blockbuster” but for the whole collective of independent work that thousands of filmmakers do on every important issue facing civil society here and abroad, with each film a contributor to long-term conversations that benefit all.

Read more about the Women and Girls Lead campaign in Monday’s edition of The New York Times

ITVS President & CEO Sally Jo Fifer explains why — now more than ever — our democracy depends on the in-depth, diverse, and nuanced stories of independent filmmakers.

Beyond the Box trumpets the work of independent filmmakers, and rightly so.

Amid the posts, an occasional report from the organization about the organization seems in order — and not just because ITVS is rolling into its 20^th year.  We all have a stake in the health of the public institutions that serve us and for which we fought hard to make possible.

ITVS was certainly born from a long and hard fight. Its founders spent more than a decade pressing Congress and the PTV system to make a winning case that independents were public media’s diversity strategy.  Their argument: The strength of democracy is measured by how the majority treats its minorities. Their objective: A mandate to support voices disregarded by both commercial and public media and bring them to the public square.

In the 20^th century, a television in every living room became America’s window to the world, and to ourselves. Holders of the window shape people’s beliefs and actions, whether it is voting, buying cereal, or volunteering in the community. It quickly became clear that the window must belong to more than a few shot-callers — at least in a democracy. And so public broadcasting was born.

In the 21^st century, the public square swelled into a chaotic plaza — an extreme bazaar of entertainment, data, conversation with 300 million websites to choose from — in effect, 300 million windows. Yes, 10 companies own most of the Internet traffic. But unlike 20 years ago, when voices went unheard because of the prohibitive price of admission to the public square, voices today go unheard because the price has plummeted to virtually nothing.

Sally Jo Fifer, President & CEO of ITVS

With (mostly) free access there has never been more connectivity, more mass collaboration, more access and sharing of knowledge — worldwide. Digital means global. So what does public media look like?

For enthusiasts, the Internet’s content and delivery devices represent the ultimate democratization of knowledge, even shared consciousness; for skeptics, they render us distracted, narcissistic addicts of the superfluous and celebrity.

The question of whether this latest feat of technology is our liberator or our jailer will rage on. The better question is this: What makes for excellent communication in a democracy?

To answer that question, the public has to recognize itself in the conversation and recognize when it affects them. A lot of people talking doesn’t equate to hearing, much less digesting, the information we need to participate in the shared project of democracy.

This is where public media steps in — as a gathering of citizens who focus on igniting civic discourse and independent thinking outside of the win-loss columns of commercial media and politics.

ITVS is one of these gatherings. Independent citizen filmmakers find the in-depth, diverse, and nuanced stories that enrich people’s understanding of one another and inspire insights and even epiphanies on what it means to be human and connected. ITVS’s job is to find those missing stories and to find the public.

ITVS’s mission has never been clearer as we grapple with the 21^st century media landscape. A clear mission and great challenges are the best ingredients for any organization’s good health. And so by that analysis ITVS is in excellent health. Challenges demand an appetite for change and movement, risk taking, and an ability to learn fast from one’s mistakes — for plenty will happen if you try new things.

ITVS wants to wrest opportunities for indies from the challenges. Since launching Independent Lens, a 22-week series for the National Programming Schedule 9 years ago we have: expanded Community Cinema to 100 markets and 1,000 NGO partners for our filmmakers; brought 125 international independent documentaries to American broadcasting through the Global Perspectives Project; joined with the WGBH’s World Digital Channel to present a 26-week series, Global Voices; began exporting American independent documentaries abroad to 20 developing countries through a series called True Stories: Life in the U.S.A.; took a crack at the tough nut of digital rights by creating the IndiesLab to negotiate on behalf of filmmakers on new digital platforms such as Amazon and iTunes; began supporting filmmakers to make enhanced content for the web as a transmedia strategy for their films through P360; launched a Diversity Development Fund and a feature film web programming initiative called Futurestates; experimented with games such as World Without Oil; launched 11 new social media properties to promote filmmaker’s content in the bazaar — all while more than doubling our funding to the field from a decade ago. We’ve gone from delivering 24 hours 10 years ago to 80 hours to the system across series, including P.O.V., American Experience, Frontline, American Masters, and as one-off specials in addition to Independent Lens.

Is it a lot? Yes. Is it enough? No. Not amid the force and scale of change from unrelenting technology inventions, hyperkinetic social networks, and volatile politics. Is the charge of artists to jostle the public out of its fitful sleep to care for itself? If we hope to do more as a society than just hang on, we have to keep innovating. And systems and institutions dedicated to helping us succeed are worth protecting.

The newly approved federal budget largely preserves short-term funding commitments for public broadcasting — about $1.35 per citizen per year. Yet a recent CNN poll showed most Americans believe public broadcasting receives hundreds of dollars per citizen, a misconception with real consequences as constituents pressure their legislators to reduce spending.

As the 2012 election approaches, we could face another long and hard fight to keep unheard voices in the public square, even as 80 percent of Americans rated public broadcasting as an “excellent” use of taxpayer dollars in a recent Roper Poll.

I hope you will join ITVS in supporting a campaign, 170 Million Americans for Public Broadcasting, to strengthen our democracy through public media.

I’ll be joining BTB at least once a month to step back and report ITVS’s progress as we adapt and innovate in service of our producers and the public. We put a stake in the ground to help give the public a communications strategy outside commercial interests — to ensure the diverse voices of indies get heard. It will take all of us to keep the winds of change from pulling up the stakes and blowing the tent away.

I look forward to writing about the issues that most concern you. Please write to me at sally_jo_fifer@itvs.org with your questions and ideas.

If you’re new to ITVS, what you’ll find on our new site is the full sweep of the work we do: the award-winning documentaries and new media we present on television and online; the many ways we help viewers, communities, and educators access social issue programming to connect with one another; the funding and services we provide to empower independent producers to create programming that serves the public interest.

For those of you who know ITVS, you’ll see that our redesign reflects the impact of the changing media landscape — a world that is more digital, more global, more user-centered, more networked, and more impact-oriented than before. Here’s what’s new and what it means for you:

• More, better, and more accessible video: A new section contains a wealth of high-quality formatted and embeddable video, including film trailers, clips, and other interviews and behind-the-scenes content.

• New media showcase: Experience ITVS’s interactive games, websites, and other new media features.

• 21^st century catalog: Search, sort, and browse our nearly 800 programs by topic, region, zip-code-based broadcast listings, online availability, or nearby theatrical screenings.

• Film profiles: Find detailed synopses, filmmaker bios, viewer comments, and up-to-the-minute viewing info along with press kits, reviews, and awards, and film-specific engagement resources.

• New tools for social media, community engagement, and educators: Integrated social media tools, expanded Community Cinema and Community Classroom sections, and specialty engagement resources, video modules, and lesson plans make it easier for audiences, filmmakers, and communities to connect and engage.

• Filmmaker resources and support: Find the optimal initiative for a project, apply online, and access special reports about the media landscape.

• And more: Learn about series such as Independent Lens and international initiatives like the Global Perspectives Project.

Whether you’re a viewer, producer, educator, or partner, we’ve built this site to give you more access, more control, more information, and more input. We hope you’ll use it, enjoy it, participate, and help us make it better in the weeks to come.

Sally Jo Fifer
President and CEO

1. Distribution: easy and cheap!
2. Niche markets and social networks at your fingertips!
3. Kiss the middlemen goodbye!

And here are three reasons the Internet is TERRIBLE for filmmakers:

1. Hello, free. Goodbye, revenue.
2. 90 minutes? How about three?
3. If a film streams on the Internet and no one ever finds it, is it really streaming?

It’s a lot more complicated than that, of course, but these are sample horns of the digital dilemma facing documentary filmmakers and all of us in public media. And the simple fact is that nobody knows how the business and audience models are ultimately going to shake out online, which makes the universe complicated for filmmakers, broadcasters and traditional home video and educational distributors.

We do know public media needs to find new ways to bring its mission online. No commercial entity is going to do that for us, not in the long run certainly, not through thick and thin. We know that independents need income and exposure. And we know that both independents and public media want to reach and serve the public; this shared goal is the basis of their long-standing partnership.

ITVS was founded to support independent producers’ access to public broadcasting and to ensure that Americans would hear and see stories about those most underrepresented. Our mandate was to create a service that in part provides funding in exchange for domestic public television licensing. When the world was only about television broadcast, that left producers free to distribute their programs beyond broadcast to earn revenue.

Today, as definitions shift and broadcast merges with digital, PBS, like all broadcasters, is considering what it must do to serve American audiences and reach more people in more ways. For ITVS, it is a balancing act to manage the GREAT and the TERRIBLE with our two partners. We must help independent producers and public broadcasting gain a foothold with new digital and participatory audiences, while ensuring that producers garner the revenue they need to keep working.

We know that independents and PBS must succeed together, and we’ve been working for several years to find ways to navigate the digital terrain to represent the public media mission, generate indie income, collaborate with traditional distributors, gain exposure, reach audiences, connect communities and serve the democratic commons—all at the same time.

Over the last three years, that work has included a survey of 430 producers on how they use the Internet; eight commissioned case studies on indies’ digital activities; two co-published reports with the Center for Social Media on the new digital marketplace; a series of national meetings on digital rights in conjunction with the Paley Center; experimental partnerships with Jaman, SnagFilms and iThentic; and ongoing meetings with PBS Digital leadership. Now we’re teaming up with PBS on the Independent Digital Distribution Lab to build some working models for the PBS-Independent partnership online.

For producers, that may mean exploring new kinds of content. Long-form content is still finding audiences online, but users increasingly view in segments on a wide variety of different devices. Others expect alternative versions: the full, the half, the short, the micro, the pre-, the post-, the making of. Funders are still supporting underrepresented voices, but there are new options competing with the 90-minute, $500k documentary. That’s why part of the new lab is providing ITVS-funded producers with additional support and partnerships to help independents experiment with audience development strategies.

The other part of the Independent Digital Distribution Lab is focused on helping producers who want to experiment with online audiences gain access to PBS’s partnerships with commercial digital platforms. How do we carve out a place for public media on the Internet? How do we bring in much needed revenue for independents trying to pay the rent and fund their next projects? How can we balance these new opportunities with those presented by traditional home video and educational distributors, and how can these best work in tandem? How can we best position ourselves for the right revenue and audience models when this transitional phase—with its still limited audiences and even more limited profits—matures? These are challenges we will only have the opportunity to meet by getting in the game.

Independents have a vision, an authenticity, an innovative spirit and a commitment to unique stories in service to the public. In a world where non-fiction as a genre is on the rise, independents increasingly are the ones who carry the banner of significance—the stuff that seeks more complicated truths and finds new ways to help us see the world anew. These qualities, and the hard-won craft of telling stories, will serve independents well in these exciting, discouraging, chaotic, utopian, terrible and great times. Nobody knows how this will all exactly shake out, but ITVS will continue to find opportunities for independents to tell their stories to the public—that is a given.

Sally Jo Fifer
President and CEO

Woodward Wickham

It is with great sadness and a deep sense of loss that we at ITVS learned of the passing of Woody Wickham, a leading member of ITVS’ Board of Directors, this past Sunday.

My first and true introduction to Woodward Wickham, or Woody as he is better known, was during a presentation at the MacArthur Foundation where I was pitching the merits of a workforce development plan to him and ten of his colleagues. Somewhere in the middle of my presentation I forgot my nervousness and began to wave my hands around, knocking a full glass of water onto my lap. Without a blink or pause, Woody held my wide-eyed glance and commanded me to continue while someone else mopped up. So intense was his questioning that my suit steamed itself dry—not even a damp spot by the time we were done.

Years later, I realized the depths of strategy and kindness that lay behind his command, as he saved me from my predicament that day at MacArthur and from many that were to come over the years. Woody joined the ITVS board in 2002, served as chair in 2005 and 2006 and on a multitude of committees throughout his tenure. There is no doubt that our field and ITVS would not be where we are today if not for his leadership, exacting standards and generosity. Personally, I know that I am a better person for having known him, worked with him and enjoyed his friendship. I think he knows our love and gratitude as he passes on. He died peacefully yesterday at 5:30 PM in his home in Chicago. We miss him already.

Sally Jo Fifer
President and CEO

P.S. – Gifts in his memory can be sent to the endowment of the Woodward A. Wickham Butterfly Garden at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, 2430 N. Cannon Drive, Chicago, IL 60614.