Facebook for PBS Stations - an idea

tommy Spann

So next week I'll be attending the McPherson Co-op conference in Tampa, FL (ah... warm weather) to discuss the Open Initiative. I plan to spend a majority of the time discussion how PBS stations might tap the power of Facebook and use the Convio Facebook application.

I did some research to prepare and was suprised to find that very few stations have any FB presence. Yes there a few with FB "groups" and/or "fan" pages. Also I found a few with a presence on the Causes application, but only one - KQED with an application. This surprised me because I would expect PBS stations to have quickly adopted the application model and found ways to tap in to the social networking strengths.

It's very possible I missed some (note: FB does not have a great search tool), but still...

So I started thinking, what would I want to see my local PBS station (OPB) develop for FB and how would I use it?

And here's what I came up with, please comment and let me know what you think!

The Idea and some assumptions/guidance:

• Every station has a program guide and most have a list of "highlight" programs they are promoting more heavily than others.

• I have DirecTV and some 400+ channels, of which I monitor only about a dozen for programs I'm interested in. I LOVE the DVR feature that allows me to record shows I know I will not be able to watch live.

• I admittedly don't open every email from OPB with the program guide

• I am inspired by friends who recommend I watch a particular show

So what if OPB created a FB application that listed their highlighted programs for the next 7-10 days. Each time it's updated (let's say 1/week) I get a FB email, pulling me back to the site). When I view the program guide I'm able to check the listings I plan to watch. This triggers a few events: it sends a news alert to my friends letting them know I plan to watch shows a,b,c. It also creates reminders for me so that I'm alerted in time before the show begins. When my friends see that I plan to watch a particular show, they then have the chance to click the show title, learn more about it and choose to add it to their "to do" list, and this triggers news feeds to their friends and on and on and on.

After the show airs, the OPB app automatically asks me to rate the show (a la Netflix) or let it know I missed it. If I rate the show, another news feed is created letting my friends know what I thought of the show. Then the next time I'm having dinner with one of my FB friends or at a party and they comment "hey Tommy, I saw that you watched show (a) last week on OPB", we're able to have a dialogue and share our affinity for OPB programming.

Technically, this is entirely possible. Is it easy to create? Not likely, but once developed it could/should be fairly self-sufficient. Wouldn't that be cool? There are all kinds of other ways to harness the power of FB for broadcasting groups and others.

What's your idea? Let's share!

I've uploaded a PPT slide I will be presenting next week to help illustrate this idea. Check it out and let me know what you think.

Message was edited by: tompkins