Lost L.A.

Juan Devis

Michael Riley

Fill 1
Fill 1
January 11, 2016
In The Mix

Going Local

Five years past its split from PBS, KCET is on the rebound with digital-to-broadcast programming and a hyperlocal approach.

Jeff Weinstock

When Michael Riley told a ballroom full of celebrants at KCET's 50th anniversary reception that he prefers the term "new-ish," he was talking about his nine months as president and CEO of the southern California public media provider, but he may as well have been referring to the direction of the station's programming content.

In the company offices in Burbank the next day, he gives it a name: "Hyperlocal storytelling, which is something that's been in our DNA at KCET for a long time."

So it's fairer to call what is under way at KCET not so much a rebirth as a refocus. Having broken from its parent network, PBS, in 2011 over what it considered exorbitant membership fees, the station is placing its energy — and its livelihood — behind programming that amplifies its longstanding coverage of arts and culture across Los Angeles.

"We basically put gas on it," says Juan Devis, the station's senior vice-president of content, development and production.

Now five years on from going independent, KCET management believes the station is finally getting beyond a period of collapsed viewership, multiple layoffs and disastrous annual balance statements that seemed unsalvageable. Even an internal auditor was a doomsayer, noting in KCET's 2013 fiscal report losses that "raise substantial doubt about its ability to continue."

"We lost a lot of members," Devis says. "We had to prove ourselves to funders, to audiences, to communities, that we had something of value that would reflect their needs."

There are signs those efforts are taking hold. Riley, who has a history of enterprising programming at ABC Family (where he was president) and Turner Broadcasting, announced at the anniversary gathering that Nielsen ratings from 2014 to 2015 had risen substantially: a primetime increase of 31 percent and a bump of 40 percent for whole-day viewership.

The station continues to take steps to square up its finances, including renting out its studio facilities to other production companies, which has been a durable moneymaker. Its 2013 merger with satellite network Link TV — creating KCETLink Media Group — has given KCET a national reach through Link's presence on DirecTV and the Dish Network.

The union is natural: Link's global facing-programming rounds out KCET's local emphasis. In the short-term, the company will extract what it can from the coinciding of KCET's 50th and Link TV's 15th anniversaries (the former ended in September; the latter ends this month), with special broadcasts and events that it hopes will inspire donations.

Long-term, the strategy is the storytelling. Riley believes the way forward is a content model that Devis initiated in 2012 with the arts-and-culture series ArtBound, introducing stories online and then assembling those that draw the most favorable response into fully formed episodes for television.

“We want to take that concept across all of the content that we're developing," Riley says. He sees in this organically grown content — what could be termed crowd-journalism — a driver that can rebuild the station's audience. "As we work with communities, we're bringing more people into the hearts of KCET, and that hopefully will move our membership in the right direction."

The station's TV lineup for 2015-16 still makes room for the holdover viewers from the PBS days, with sturdy British crime dramas and news shows from the BBC and Japan's NHK. And anyone in need of a restorative dose of Huell Howser won't have to wait long for a rerun to appear.

But the life of KCET is in its own digital-first productions, with a greater focus now on a multimedia approach. The station lists four new series under the heading of digital-to-broadcast, including Lost L.A., in which up-and-coming filmmakers investigate local history in partnership with USC's "LA As Subject" initiative. Devis spells out the governing principle: "Incubate online, aggregate on air."

But can it work?

Loyola Marymount University English professor Ruben Martinez thinks it can. That's a reversal: only 18 months ago the former KCET on-air host told the Los Angeles Times that the station's survival was "an open question." But the hyperlocal, "horizontal" approach, he says, turned him around.

"They don't go for what's in the center; they go for what's on the margins," says Martinez, who has contributed to KCET's online content. "They're going for artists in San Bernardino, Riverside, Imperial, down to San Diego, across the border to Tijuana. Nobody was doing that, except for lonely academics in lame dissertations.

"When you go more horizontal, you bring in more people. You can build community and, ultimately, business. I'm not privy to numbers, but I think it's working."

Riley is privy to numbers, of course, though he declines to precisely address KCETLink's finances. He does say that forthcoming 2015 statistics indicate "nice movement forward. We're certainly seeing stabilization."

Devis is less circumspect. "It's almost my mission to prove there's still a space for media like what we're producing here," he says. "When I meet an ex-donor of KCET's and they start to criticize the split from PBS, I ask them, 'Have you seen any of our programming?' And they're like, 'No, but...' On Monday, I send them a stack of DVDs of the new things that we're doing

"There are a lot of people who thought we were going to be completely done and gone by now. And we're not."

Moreover, he believes the recovery phase is about over: "It's the end of the beginning."



 

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