Local Station Promotion of PBS Online-Only Content March 23, 2006
Posted by ptvGuy. Comments: 8 comments
A little project of mine a few months back started out as just a bit of filler-content for Southern Oregon Public Television's homepage and has steadily begun outgrowing the sidebar where it was born. I'm speaking of a section that I not so brilliantly called "Online Xtras" which was really just a place to put a link to PBS's then new online "TV" show, NerdTV. I also filled it out with links to the PBS RSS page along with their podcasts page and figured I was done. Right?
…the granddaddy of all PBS web-original projects, American Field Guide…
Well, you probably guessed what happened next… Along came Mediashift. You know I couldn't leave that out. Then, of course, I discovered POV: Borders followed closely by Independent Lens: Off The Map and just as I'm thinking how cool all of this stuff is, it occurs to me that I've left off the granddaddy of all PBS web-original projects, American Field Guide, a vast and underused resource if ever there was one. Then I'm feeling really stupid…
American Field Guide is an Oregon Public Broadcasting project that grew–in collaboration with PBS–out of the original Oregon Field Guide under Steve Amen. Here I am promoting PBS online-only content on Southern Oregon Public Television's website and AFG is the last thing that occurs to me. Oh well, I corrected that and went on. Done, right? Well not quite…
…growing PBS trend in creating web-original content…
My "Online Xtras" section (which desperately needs a better name) has already far exceeded the space I had originally planned for it. The growing PBS trend in creating web-original content is bound to expand it even further. Besides that, I have plans to create an SOPTV-original RSS feed of their monthly program highlights that will have to be clearly distinguished from the general PBS feeds. All of this has led me to the conclusion that this entire section of web-only and web-original content needs its own page–perhaps with more extensive write-ups of each item's content and a way cooler name.
Tah-dum… Thus have I led you through the humble beginnings of a small piece of original station web content. You're thrilled, right? Hey, somewhere out there right now someone is applauding something, and you know what? That's close enough for me. Thank you, everyone, and good night.
