Modernizing Public Media for the Streaming Age at PBS

Miriam McLemore:
Welcome to the Executive Insights Podcast, brought to you by AWS. My name is Miriam McLemore, and I'm an enterprise strategist at AWS. And I am thrilled to have the opportunity today to speak with Ira Rubinstein, who is the chief marketing officer and chief digital officer for PBS. Ira, thank you so much for joining us today.

Ira Rubenstein:
Thank you for having me.

Miriam McLemore:
Could you tell us a little bit more about your role at PBS and about PBS?

Ira Rubenstein:
Sure. So my role at PBS is I oversee marketing and brand, of course. I also oversee our broadcast operations, our digital operations, all of our apps, as well as our distribution strategy, the business development, our business intelligence team, and video operations.

Miriam McLemore:
Wow, what a great gig.

Ira Rubenstein:
It's a wonderful opportunity. Really, having spent years in Hollywood, I feel like I'm now working for the good guys.

Miriam McLemore:
So tell us the back story. Just a little back story before you got here.

Ira Rubenstein:
Before I got to PBS, so I spent twenty-some years in Hollywood. I worked at 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures, Marvel, Disney.

Miriam McLemore:
Wow, you did a full tour.

Ira Rubenstein:
I was at the forefront of digital marketing, just being at the right place in the right time and being that curious person. I mean, at a studio, you had a lot of resources. And so, being a computer guy since childhood, I could get the best computers. And so I had a modem, and it was all paid for by the studio, and I was just playing around like I always did, and started some of the first marketing in Hollywood on Prodigy, Delphi, American Online. And then, the web comes along, and I'm looking at coffee pots and fish tanks. And my father was a professor at Minnesota, and he was explaining how all the college students were going to have access. And I went to my boss, and I said, "We always are marketing at college people. I can build a website. It's not that hard. Let's do one." And so luckily I was-

Miriam McLemore:
And who were you with at that time?

Ira Rubenstein:
That was 20th Century Fox.

Miriam McLemore:
Oh, okay.

Ira Rubenstein:
So we built two websites, one for Power Rangers the movie and one for Die Hard with a Vengeance. It was one of the first two websites in Hollywood, and I kind of started that whole digital marketing in Hollywood. And when I moved over to Sony Pictures, because of my background in media, I had the opportunity to start playing around with buying ads on the early internet, so buying that Yahoo homepage that was this big of a new ad or always being able to push technology. So I was involved with some of the first streaming of trailers on the internet with the RealPlayer, if you remember Real.

Miriam McLemore:
Yeah, I do.

Ira Rubenstein:
And doing some very first early VRML, and then actually getting pulled into a project from a colleague, Yair Landau, who wanted to see if we could build a movie download service because he had been watching what was happening with Napster. So I said, "I don't see why not," and so that's what was a precursor to Movielink, which was way before Netflix and everything else.

And so I just always had these great opportunities to try things and to push technology, and it was after Marvel and doing digital comics and things like that where I had this opportunity to come to PBS. And I'm an Eagle Scout, and I felt like it was my duty to start to give back.

Miriam McLemore:
Yeah, and with all those skills.

Ira Rubenstein:
And I felt like this national treasure, and I could see their website, and I could see the challenges they were having in streaming. This is over 10 years ago. And I felt like I had to come and do something to help transform PBS, and I'm really proud of everything we've done. It's certainly a team effort, but we now have, I'd like to say, the biggest digital secret out there. We do over 400 million streams a month, all on AWS. We are live linear streaming all of our stations, of course, on AWS. We have apps on every platform. We have a service called Passport, which is a membership benefit that I helped build and launch. So if you support your local station, you get access to a library of content, all the Ken Burns docs, for example. Instead of getting a DVD in the tote bag, you now have that library. And it's been super successful in helping to raise a lot of money for our local stations and also help that transformation into this digital streaming era.

Miriam McLemore:
And so you said it's, I agree with you, a national treasure, but it's the best-kept secret. Why do you think it's still such a secret? If you ask people, they'd say, "Oh, PBS, it is wonderful," right?

Ira Rubenstein:
I don't think people recognize how sophisticated we are in our digital efforts. So whether it's the scale of what we're doing streaming-wise, or whether it's leveraging AWS Bedrock for a recommendation engine, or the AI that goes into our kids' games that actually can level up games based on the applications of how the child's learning so that they master that skill, I mean, these are all very sophisticated digital tools that, when people think about PBS, they think about, "Oh, is that-"

Miriam McLemore:
And are you marketing that to the moms? I mean, because...

Ira Rubenstein:
When you're marketing to parents, do they care about that digital part? They just care, does it work?

Miriam McLemore:
Well, they do now for their kids because there's such screen orientation.

Ira Rubenstein:
Well, absolutely. I mean, we're a trusted brand.

Miriam McLemore:
Yes, a hundred percent.

Ira Rubenstein:
So I think people recognize that they know we're not tracking data, we're not serving ads, of course we're non-commercial, and we are a very safe place for kids. I mean, we have a separate kids app so that the kids' content is completely separate from the general audience content. We also have a separate kids games app because games is just as important as video assets. So are we marketing? Of course we are.

Miriam McLemore:
Of course.

Ira Rubenstein:
Do we have the same budgets as everyone else?

Miriam McLemore:
No.

Ira Rubenstein:
Of course we don't.

Miriam McLemore:
Fair.

Ira Rubenstein:
So I go on things like this, and I want people to know and word of mouth.

Miriam McLemore:
Fair enough.

Ira Rubenstein:
But I think, in the digital community, getting the word out and having people recognize because when they look under the hood of what we're doing digitally, we always blow people away. Our app is probably one of the most sophisticated apps out there in video because what we do is we localize your local station, and depending on where you are in America, you might have one or even three local stations. And so we also enable your local station to upload their local content, so it's one app, but it might look a little bit different depending on where you're coming from and what your station is. And then, we also have a whole backend donation platform that enables the donations to come in and go directly to the station.

Miriam McLemore:
I love this journey and you bringing such a robust set of skills to PBS and enabling this national treasure. Is there's something that's on the horizon, something that you're trying to do next? It sounds like there's-

Ira Rubenstein:
Oh gosh.

Miriam McLemore:
Or do you have this endless... It sounds like you're just a curious person.

Ira Rubenstein:
I have a long list. I think digital donations and what I call frictionless giving is the future for public media. Historically, public media, if you remember the pledge drive.

Miriam McLemore:
Oh, yeah.

Ira Rubenstein:
They interrupt the show, "Call this number." It's worked, and so for an entity where it's worked, where it's probably been the most friction, frictionless giving should work even better. Today we have it working on two platforms. One is the AWS Fire platform, the app on that platform. What we do is we tie into the wallet on the HAQM, and so when someone sees something they like, they want to donate, they can click donate, that's it. One click, and that has a 12% conversion rate. That I believe is the future for public media. If we can continue to work to do integrated donations on all the platforms that we're on, I think we have a chance because the media landscape is incredibly challenging right now.

Miriam McLemore:
Incredibly challenging.

Ira Rubenstein:
And when you see some of these very large media companies, and you read about how they're not large enough to compete, you have to remember for us, we are in the same industry, but we have a different business model. And that business model being supported by viewers like you is very true. And as long as we can continue to maintain that relationship, as long as we can continue to have our local stations matter and mean something to their communities, I'm very optimistic for the future for public media, especially as we bring in these digital tools to go there. You talk about what's on my horizon.

Miriam McLemore:
Yeah, are we helping you?

Ira Rubenstein:
So absolutely Gen AI and donation. I think there's a huge future in there. If I know, for example, let me pick another title, that you're a huge fan of All Creatures Great and Small.

Miriam McLemore:
I am, actually.

Ira Rubenstein:
New episode coming in January, my marketing hat.

Miriam McLemore:
I've read the books when I was younger.

Ira Rubenstein:
But wouldn't it be great if you got a message on the app saying, "We notice you're a big fan. Would you like to see season one or two? Because we know you're not a member of Passport," and we can tailor it. Or if we knew that you've been a member for the last five years, we could thank you for being a member and then ask you for an increase in your donation of your support. All that is possible. It's just going to take a lot of work, and there's costs involved. So I have to go raise that money to cover that, but I think that I am very optimistic is where we're going to go. That's one thing.

The other part of my job that I'm also very focused on is the distribution of the local channels. So in the broadcast cable era, there was a law called must-carry, and so every cable system had to carry their local station. In the digital era, that doesn't exist. And so to maintain the relevancy, we want to make sure our local stations are on these very popular platforms.

Miriam McLemore:
So I understand, Ira, that we just did a deal with you guys on Prime. Can you tell us about that?

Ira Rubenstein:
Yeah, so I'm very excited about our distribution deal with HAQM Prime Video. What we're going to be enabling is bringing all of our local stations' live linear feeds to the free area on HAQM Prime Video, and that just launched recently.

Miriam McLemore:
That's exciting.

Ira Rubenstein:
And rolling out, so we're super excited about that opportunity. But there's other platforms out there that I am desperately trying to figure out how can we get all 300 some stations up, and it has to be localized.

Miriam McLemore:
Right. Wow, you have quite the challenge, and I hope AWS has been a good partner.

Ira Rubenstein:
Well, it's been a great partner because it's easier when we go to these distribution partners to say, "We're all up on AWS." You plug in right there, I already have all the station feeds going to one place. It's in one format. It's all through the elemental servers. It makes it easier to partner than them trying to tie into 300 different ways, so it's scale and efficiency.

Miriam McLemore:
That's removing friction.

Ira Rubenstein:
Right.

Miriam McLemore:
Take that friction out.

Ira Rubenstein:
That's exactly right.

Miriam McLemore:
So obviously PBS has some legacy that you've had to transform. I worked at Coca-Cola, and it's 135 something years old, right? Lots of legacy, and so I understand that challenge. What have you been able to do to tackle that landscape?

Ira Rubenstein:
So I've been at PBS a little over 10 years, and I started it... Well, first let me take a step back and explain PBS. PBS is a membership organization of local stations. It's not like a central or national. So it's our local stations, our member stations, they pay dues in exchange for content and services. So the transformation wasn't just at PBS.

Miriam McLemore:
Right, it's all over the country.

Ira Rubenstein:
The transformation was at over 300 stations, all who have legacy, all who have different ownership structures.

Miriam McLemore:
And probably different funding.

Ira Rubenstein:
So what people aren't aware of is that PBS stations have different backgrounds, so I'll start with some of them. So KPBS in San Diego is owned by San Diego State University. That's a university licensee. Las Vegas PBS is owned by the Las Vegas School District. That's a school license. Maryland Public Television is owned by the state of Maryland. So is Kentucky, Arkansas, Mississippi. Those are all state licensees. And then, you have community licensees, which would be like a KQED in San Francisco as a community licensee or WGBH in Boston. So they have their own structures and legacies, you can imagine, that they have to.

So the way I took it was I wanted to get people thinking about digital change. And one of the first things I did was, well, I guess I'll give a shout-out to EMARKETER. And I did a deal where everyone in the system had a free access to EMARKETER because I wanted them to be reading the trends and seeing the data of the transformation that was coming, so that was step one. Step two was getting stations more comfortable in understanding about data and data-driven decisions, helping them focus more on the audience and the consumer from digital platforms. Also, approaching it in a way where we could build single solutions at scale that were customizable because our stations are all shapes and sizes. Some have more resources than others, but this digital stuff is hard. It's hard to do at scale.

Miriam McLemore:
Right. It's hard.

Ira Rubenstein:
And I felt that, if they focused on what they can do best, which is local community content, local community service, mattering local community, I could help enable, get that content out at scale on these digital platforms for them. And that was really the transformation, was getting them to focus the content and digital content, understanding data, and then taking all of that together. So we had a lot of partners. The Corporation of Public Broadcasting were a great partner.

I'm so grateful for that outside support because it enabled us to invest in the digital infrastructure to help transform the system.

Miriam McLemore:
And so how far along are you?

Ira Rubenstein:
We're still on that journey.

Miriam McLemore:
I was about to say, 300 stations.

Ira Rubenstein:
I feel like we're still on that journey, and some stations lean in more than the others, but I think everyone has recognized how in media the audience has really splintered. And people are all over, and you have some people who aren't on TV at all, core nevers, and so we have to reach them on platforms like YouTube that aren't anywhere in broadcast, but was public media content on YouTube. And so we have an initiative that was called PBS Digital Studios, and that was about imagining what kind of content works well on YouTube. But that was 10 years ago. You flash forward to today...

Miriam McLemore:
It's changed a bit.

Ira Rubenstein:
It's changed again. I mean, Frontline and PBS NewsHour do exceptionally well on YouTube. Frontline does about 70% of their YouTube views are on connected YouTube TV apps. They have an average viewing time of over 40 minutes. That's not what YouTube was 10 years ago. And so it's thinking about how to bring our content to that platform, but at the same time how to make sure people recognize that it's because of their support of their local station that this content's there in the first place. And that's one of the biggest challenges we face right now.

Miriam McLemore:
And then, continuing this evolution as this landscape is rapidly changing.

Ira Rubenstein:
Oh, I've said this before many times at public media. In my history of working in media, I've never seen a pace of change as I'm seeing right now.

Miriam McLemore:
Yeah, it's crazy.

Ira Rubenstein:
Working with partners or outside, people's business models are changing every three months, and people are desperately trying to figure out how to make this work in this new landscape. And it's definitely a challenge, but that's also what makes me excited.

Miriam McLemore:
It does. It makes it fun, right?

Ira Rubenstein:
And in trying to figure it out because we can't fail. It's too important. What public media means to this country is just too important. We hear these stories all the time of people will come up to me, and they'll say, "I learned English from watching public media." We had an astronaut on one of our shows. She told us the story of, she grew up, I think it was in Nebraska, and she said Nova was her vision into space and got her interested. Or Lin-Manuel will talk about how Great Performances was his view into Broadway and on and on and on, and that's because we are there and we are free. And you think about all the people in this country who might not have broadband access, who might have limited opportunities, there's something for them on public media and something that can spark that interest. That could be something great.

Miriam McLemore:
So Ira, this culture change, and I imagine, as you describe, these different ownerships of the different local stations and channels is a challenge to keep current, right? We are here in AWS, and it's a challenge to stay current with the volume of technology changes. And these are not entities that live and breathe in the technology space. What are some of the things you're doing to try to foster that culture, of we got to keep-

Ira Rubenstein: 
Of innovation and change.

Miriam McLemore:
Yeah, innovation.

Ira Rubenstein:
So we have an event at PBS where we bring all of our technology and people together. And I like it when stations share what they're doing because if I say it, they doubt it. But if they hear another station talk about a project they did, an innovation that they did, a digital show that they tried, they believe it. And so we foster that at our annual meeting, and we foster that through some other groups and webinars that we do within the system. Because stations talking to stations, it's always the best way to drive that change.

Miriam McLemore:
We believe that at AWS, customers talking to customers.

Ira Rubenstein:
Makes sense. That's right.

Miriam McLemore:
The best way to drive change, right, because you're going to believe somebody else. And it's good to hear what worked and what didn't work and the value that they got and how hard it was, right?

Ira Rubenstein:
Right, and what they would've done differently.

Miriam McLemore:
Yeah. All of those things, I think, add value. And accessibility I know is core to PBS and making sure that the content's accessible. You mentioned different types of people that got access to content, and that was their window into another world and a dimension they didn't know about. But then, there's other types of accessibility.

Ira Rubenstein:
Yeah, we take accessibility very seriously at PBS. It's something near and dear to my heart. On our website, we have accessibility for vision impairment. We do audio descriptions if you can't see. We also started this year with our kids content, we have American Sign Language with the show, which is different in captioning. Of course, PBS is the pioneer of closed captioning on TV if you didn't know that. And so of course all of our shows are closed captioned, but the ASL was something new, and we're looking to bring that to more shows. As a person who is deaf with cochlear implants, hearing loss and hearing accessibility is something that's really important to me. I lost my hearing recently. They don't know why. But it's something that I personally advocate for a lot. It's so important, whether it's at conferences or anywhere, that you have these technologies and tools that help people here.

And the thing about captioning, which is so funny, is there's all this new data that shows that people are watching their shows with captioning. And it's because, whether it's TikTok or Instagram Reels, they're always watching captioning, and that's what people prefer. And the new TVs don't have the best sound, and there's a whole host of reasons. But captioning has just taken off, which I personally love. And when it comes to hearing loss, many people are in denial. Many people are embarrassed about it, don't want to get the help. And all I can say is that it's in your best interest to. There's lots of studies that show why it can help you, and that it isn't this stigma as much as people, I think, believe it is. I feel like I have these huge implants, and half the time people don't even see it.

Miriam McLemore:
Don't even see them.

Ira Rubenstein:
Because the bottom line is no one looks at your ears, and today everyone has an AirPod or whatever in their head, and it just doesn't matter. But if it helps you hear, and it helps your family, and it helps you stay connected, I just encourage people just to go get their hearing checked. And there are resources. I'm also on the board of directors of the Hearing Loss Association of America, and we advocate for consumers. And I brought hearing coverage to PBS. I'm very proud about that. I have a wonderful CEO, Paula Kerger, who listens to me and recognized that it's just as important as glasses. And not many Americans have hearing health coverage where they work.

And it is very important, so it's just one of those things that I personally advocate for.

You can stream directly from your TV. You can stream your phone calls directly to your hearing aids. And all these sorts of technology tools, it just makes it so much easier to participate.

Miriam McLemore:
I love that, and I love the accessibility angle. We certainly as a country have improved, but we're not there yet.

Ira Rubenstein:
And again, it's something that's important to HAQM.

Miriam McLemore:
It is.

Ira Rubenstein:
I actually have on my computer an HAQM Smile accessibility sticker that I got from the team that was working on the HAQM Fire because they've done some work for sound boosting for dialogue, as well as tying directly into hearing aids on that Fire technology. So it's just wonderful.

Miriam McLemore:
Give us a problem. We like to puzzle it out, so I love that. Well, Ira, thank you for your time today.

Ira Rubenstein:
Thank you for having me.

Listen now

Listen now

Listen now