JMS

There is progress on the Digital Distribution Consortium (DDC) front.

We’ve posted an overview document (PDF) (edited by yours truly) that summarizes the Working Group’s business planning and discussions and some comments on where the process stands.

You can download it from the DDC wiki site here and I recommend a thorough read.

As a refresher, here is a brief overview of the DDC:

As envisioned by the working group, the Digital Distribution Consortium (DDC) provides services for aggregation, syndication, and monetization of public media’s digital content. The DDC is primarily a business-to-business service, working with content providers, distributors and presenters to further the public service goal of delivering public media content to audiences within and beyond the current terrestrial reach of public broadcasting’s core franchise. The service creates economies of scale and efficiency to address the rapidly evolving digital distribution landscape. It is a coordinated effort across public media, recognizing that the resources required to achieve these opportunities are beyond the reach of any single organization in the field.

In a nutshell: the DDC ingests content from a variety of sources – such as public radio networks, stations, and independent producers – and delivers it to audiences through a variety of presenters and distributors – such as local station websites and third-party platforms like iTunes. Revenue is primarily derived from sponsorship and underwriting spots inserted in openly syndicated content. Additional revenue will come from content licensing and ancillary deals, and potentially through subscription, donation and other audience-facing services supported by the DDC. Most of the revenue flows back to the content providers, with the DDC taking a percentage to cover its operational costs.

In posting this now we’re trying to live up to our promise to communicate with the system about the DDC, and spur additional conversations and momentum for the idea on the eve of the IMA Public Media conference.

Last week the Station Resource Group (SRG) convened a meeting with executives of the three networks and managers of several stations to discuss whether, how and with whom next steps towards implementation of the DDC will happen. I believe we’ll hear more soon about how that went.