Happy New Year!

Welcome back to reality. Hope your time off over the holidays was relaxing and enjoyable.

As we begin 2014, I wanted to bring you up to speed on some exciting projects we have in the works this year:

Anniversaries

Marketplace 25th: On January 2nd, 1989, Marketplace aired its first broadcast. This year the program will be marking its 25th anniversary in a variety of ways including a handful of station events and special programming throughout 2014. As they mark 25 years, I hope you continue to find Marketplace content engaging, informative, relevant and fun.

Splendid Table 20th: The Splendid Table is also marking a special milestone, celebrating 20 years on the air in December of this year. Lynne Rossetto Kasper, Sally Swift and their team have come a long way since they hit the airwaves with 40 stations and live shows back in 1994. We’re looking ahead to a year of collaboration with some of the brightest stars in the food world.

A Prairie Home Companion 40th: This July (July 6th to be exact) marks the beginning of the 40th year of A Prairie Home Companion!

Request: If you have a favorite APHC story, either from a performance you attended or when the show came to your town, please send it along to David O’Neill at Prairie Home Productions (davido@prairiehome.us). If you have a photo, even better! APHC will be collecting stories from their own staff, performers, the audience, and from the stations and venues they’ve visited. Our Distribution team will also be soliciting ideas from you on the best way to say “thanks” to the APHC team over the next several months. You can also reach out to your Station Relations Representative if you have any ideas you want to share.

BBC

We had a busy year working with the BBC. We developed some new communications tools to help you stay on top of BBC programming and I want to briefly remind you of what we are offering:

• BBC Today: The purpose of this communication is to give you a snapshot of the content rundown you can expect on marquee BBC shows for that day.
• BBC Bulletin: This is a monthly communication that highlights a few great BBC produced specials or features. They have a longer shelf life and it is our goal to offer these in one hour increments as well as provide full promos and clock updates when appropriate.
• Finally, I hope you are finding AND using our special audio segments made available in Content Depot during breaking news. You should be getting a note (called BBC Today, special edition) alerting you to special coverage of certain events (e.g., Nelson Mandela’s passing or Ariel Sharon’s death).

Our goal is to keep you informed of important BBC programs. If you are not getting this information, sign up through APM Stations.

Look for an email linking you to our annual BBC Station Survey, beginning January 27th. If you complete the survey by February 7th you will be registered to win a $100 Amazon gift card. We look forward to hearing from you!

Digital Content

I know that delivering content to your audiences wherever and whenever they want it continues to be the focus for you. APM Distribution is gearing-up to help deliver digital content to your platforms in the very near future. We are excited by the progress of The Public Media Platform (PMP) over the last several months and that is the reason we can make this happen.

If you aren’t familiar with the PMP or need a refresher, please read here: http://publicmediaplatform.org/

I have formed a small station advisory group to inform digital content decisions that will help drive traffic and engagement on your websites. Please feel free to reach out to me at Ncassutt@mpr.org if you have any suggestions or ideas.

My timeline for delivering our first product will be sometime this summer.

Healthy States Initiative

American Public Media recently launched Healthy States, a new content initiative working across platforms to bring a fresh view of health and health care to audiences nationally. This is not a radio show at this point but it is being produced digitally, to start.

Healthy States’ mission is to provide knowledge and create relationships that move individuals and communities toward better health.

Healthy States’ Quik Pik offers a daily aggregator that culls top health stories at www.healthystates.org.

The project also creates original content through projects aimed at mental health, wellness, and the disparities in children’s health and access to health care.

This is a new initiative and we will be offering this content for you to place on your websites. Eventually, I hope to get this content into the PMP but for now we will make it available via the APMstations.org site. The “go live” date for this content will be announced in the next month.

For more information about this initiative, please contact Kate Moos at 651-290-1318 or kmoos@mpr.org.

Thanks for reading and thank you for carrying APM programming.

If you have any comments or questions, as always, please call or write.

Sincerely,

Nancy Cassutt
Managing Director, National Distribution
American Public Media
ncassutt@americanpublicmedia.org