Celebrating our independents
Local Public, formerly a service of Cascade PBS, begins its next chapter today as an independent Public Benefit Corporation.
On the eve of America's Independence Day, the Local Public team and I are marking the occasion by recommitting ourselves to a simple but increasingly important mission: helping independent public television and radio stations survive – and thrive – in the post-broadcast age.
Local Public, formerly a service of Cascade PBS, begins its next chapter today as an independent Public Benefit Corporation.
The timing feels appropriate. As our nation prepares to celebrate independence, we're celebrating a different kind of independence: the continued strength and relevance of locally rooted public media organizations that are accountable not to shareholders, private equity firms, or corporate parents, but to the communities they serve.
That mission matters now more than ever.
Across the commercial media landscape, over the past several decades, consolidation has become the defining trend. A shrinking number of corporations control an ever-growing share of what Americans watch, read, and hear. Local newsrooms have been hollowed out. Community voices have been replaced by centralized programming. Audiences are often presented with the appearance of choice while receiving increasingly uniform content.
At the same time, trust in media has eroded. News organizations face pressure from corporate owners, political factions, advertisers, and algorithms. In pursuit of scale, efficiency, and growth, the public interest can often become secondary to commercial interests.
And now a new challenge is emerging: a flood of AI-generated content optimized for engagement rather than enrichment. The internet is increasingly crowded with "AI slop" – content that is cheap to produce, abundant in quantity, but often thin in originality, expertise, or genuine human perspective.
In this environment, local public media's value proposition becomes crystal clear.
A station-produced documentary preserving regional history. A public radio host connecting neighbors around issues that matter in their community. A trusted local reporter covering a city council meeting. A live event that brings people together in-person rather than pushing them further apart online. These are not relics of a bygone era. They are exactly the kinds of experiences people will seek out as media becomes more centralized, automated, and detached from real communities.
That's why Local Public exists.
Our goal is not to replace public media's traditions. Our goal is to help modernize and strengthen them.
We believe local public media possesses extraordinary assets: trusted brands, deep community relationships, talented storytellers, and a public-service mission that has proven its value over generations. What many stations have lacked are the resources, scale, and technology needed to compete in a rapidly changing media environment.
Local Public aims to provide those missing pieces.
We bring a startup mentality to public media's longstanding tradition of community service. We are building technology that allows stations to move faster, collaborate more effectively, and reach audiences wherever they are. We believe partnerships should create shared value rather than winners and losers. Most importantly, we believe innovation works best when it starts with listening.
Our locally curated streaming apps are the first piece of that strategy. These apps combine the quality of national public media with the unique identity of local stations—something the major streaming platforms simply cannot replicate.
But apps are only the beginning.
In the months ahead, we'll introduce new features and programs designed to deepen community engagement, reinvigorate local journalism and original productions, and create new grassroots economies around independent documentary and film creation and distribution. We believe local stations can become even more important cultural and civic institutions in the digital age than they were in the broadcast era.
That may sound ambitious. It is.
But the alternative is accepting a future in which local media withers away while a handful of national platforms determine what stories get told, what voices get heard, and what communities matter. We reject that future.
Instead, we're pursuing something different: a growing coalition of independent public media organizations working together while remaining deeply rooted in their own communities. We are starting small, neighborhood by neighborhood and station by station, listening carefully, experimenting boldly, and building collaboratively.
Yes, today's media landscape can look bleak. Especially public media, which faces technological disruption, financial pressures, and federal defunding. The challenges are real.
But so is the opportunity.
The communities served by public media still need trusted journalism. They still crave authentic local stories. They still want meaningful cultural experiences. They still benefit from institutions whose primary loyalty is to the public rather than profit.
So while others consolidate, we are connecting.
While others centralize, we are empowering local voices.
Public media will not quietly fade away. The stations that have informed, educated, and inspired generations of Americans still have an essential role to play. Our job is to help equip them for the next generation.
This Independence Day, we're celebrating our independents – stations, creators and partners of every stripe – and betting that the future of media is more local, more human, and more impactful.
A huge thank you to …
- Cascade PBS, for incubating Local Public and for having the foresight to set-up Local Public up as a public benefit corporation. This structure will allow us to take investment from fellow PBS stations and programming partners, while keeping our focus squarely on mission (which is too broad and too important to be owned by any single station)
- PBS for building an open infrastructure that allows local stations to offer Passport and PBS programming to viewers in locally branded apps
- Our partner stations, who have made Local Public possible, and who will help steer the future of our platform and products
- Our programming partners, who help station programmers assemble and curate the world’s best television
- And streamers like you, who get their PBS programming from the local source, and who generously support their local stations
Stay tuned for the fireworks.
Cheers,
Kevin Colligan
CEO & President
Local Public, a Public Benefit Corporation
