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Introducing Local Public

WETA+ on-boarding screen
WETA came with market research to help our coalition optimize our on-boarding flow

Cascade PBS and nine partner stations banded together in late 2023 to form the Local Streaming Initiative, a collaborative effort to develop modern, affordable streaming apps for local PBS and dual-licensee stations.

After just over a year of hard work, we are excited to announce our platform is live. And it has a new name:

Local Public (or LocalPublic.TV)

Local Public logo displayed against a light and dark background
Local is our priority. Public media is what we do. Hence the product name. The logo mark is meant to evoke a play button, and the wave-like pattern reflects streaming.

Of course, Local Public is totally white-label. So our brand is nowhere to be found on station apps, which are sport station logos and colors.

Here's a gallery of screenshots that will be appearing in app stores:

A sampling of app designs

You'll start seeing more and more apps in the wild.

We have four Roku apps live now, in soft-launch mode. And we will be launching apps for 10 stations across nine platforms in the coming weeks.

About the apps

Local Public offers modern, locally branded apps, with full local curatorial control, deep metadata and AI recommendations across the following platforms:

  1. Roku
  2. Apple TV
  3. Fire TV
  4. Google TV
  5. Android TV
  6. iOS
  7. Android
  8. LG smart TV
  9. Samsung smart TV

A station-branded web portal is coming soon.

The system is backed by a shared, collaborative Content Management System which is seamlessly integrated with Media Manager, Passport and various PBS services (SSO, TV listings API, etc.)

Our system features three levels of metadata:

  1. We pull all PBS Core Data metadata (eg: genre, short description, long description)
  2. Our friends at The Programming Service, who screen every title, add an additional, human-powered layer of metadata (eg: 60+ genres, 30+ vibes, show type, etc.)
  3. And each station has ability to add to – and/or override – any PBS or TPS-supplied metadata for their local audience

This rich metadata allows for advanced, keyword-based, carousel building, and helps our AI recommendation engine to better recommend shows your members will want to watch.

Smart recommendations are woven throughout the app – from personalized carousels to Up Next autoplay choices (eg: once all episodes of a series have autoplayed, the recommendation engine will pick a fresh show).

And automated carousels like "Trending Shows" are tailored for your market. Because what's popular in Seattle may not necessarily be popular in Nashville.

Want to talk about it?

With our first cohort of stations launching, we're actively looking to grow our coalition. Stations that sign up before June 30 can lock in FY25 pricing for three years. (And it's perfectly fine to launch and start billing in FY26.)

If you have any interest in hearing more, or have a specific question or suggestion, please reach out to me, Kevin Colligan, your friendly Local Public project lead.

Or schedule a 30-minute meeting at your convenience to talk it over.

We know it's tough for stations to add any spending when belts are tightening due to uncertainty around federal funding. But the time is NOW for local PBS stations to build self-sustaining streaming services ... before we run out of broadcast runway.

Cheers,
Kevin Colligan

Published by:

Kevin Colligan