BOULDER, Colo. and PALO ALTO, Calif.—Public Media Venture Group (PMVG) and Distributed Media Lab (DML) are partnering to build state and regional news content syndication networks with the aim of growing audiences and creating revenue for local news organizations and public stations around the country, PMVG said today.
The announcement follows the recent launch of a news web syndication network in California by public broadcaster KQED in San Francisco using the DML solution. Local news organizations around the state are taking advantage of the network to build audience reach and revenue, it said.
As part of PMVG’s shared services model, DML’s technology will be used to power these syndication networks to provide new audience channels for participating publishers and earn additional revenue, it said.
“New audience engagement and new revenue models are needed more than ever to sustain the journalistic mission of public media and local news,” says Tim Olson, senior vice president of digital strategic partnerships at KQED. “Combining the effort of local media companies and their audiences to share their content more widely is a strategy with immense potential to lift engagement and open up new fundraising opportunities.”
Pointing to DML’s technology as a way to create syndication networks easily, PMVG CEO Mark Hand said the offering also offers media organizations a new means to control their future.
“This is about giving local news and public media companies the ability to control their own destiny with a truly innovative web technology platform and business model that will bring in expanded audiences and new sources of revenue,” said Hand.
The partnership also offers private local media a new revenue model, said DML CEO David Gehring.
“I think the corporate sponsorship and donor revenue models that are traditional for public media can be extended to support local news media more broadly in the emerging web economy, and we’re very excited to support that trend,” he said.
