Public media business models

September 19, 2009 3:05 PM

How does Gourmet: Diary of a Foodie get funded? Is it just like a non-commercial commercial for Gourmet magazine and its advertisers and then given away to public radio stations?
posted by parmanparman to grab bag (6 comments total)

Meant "given away to public tv stations..."
posted by parmanparman at 3:07 PM on September 19

This video archive indicates corporate funding in 2008 came from TIAA-Cref. It appears to be a Boston WGBH show, so I'd guess that like all PBS shows, it's funded by that station's budget, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, government fund, foundation grants, corporate and private donations. I'd imagine Gourmet covers some of the costs, but I haven't found anything that says so.
posted by crush-onastick at 3:21 PM on September 19

I work for a national Public Television show, not Public Radio, but I can tell you how it generally works:

The show's produced by KQED, at KQED's facilities. Gourmet underwrites it (that is: puts up most of the cash required to make it in exchange for having their name plastered all over it), but they don't have any official editorial oversight. Of course, being the sponsor of anything gives you some de facto editorial direction: it's unlikely that the theme of an episode will be "Gourmet Magazine Totally Sucks!" But's that pretty benign.

The distribution can be through several channels, but Public Radio stations airing it that are not KQED will have paid some amount of money to air it. It's not given away.
posted by Mayor Curley at 3:28 PM on September 19

crush-onastick's right-- it's produced by WGBH. Which surprises me, because WGBH TV produces shows with Cook's Illustrated. (and I thought it was a west-coast wine country program even though I work across the street for a TV show.)
posted by Mayor Curley at 3:39 PM on September 19

This looks actually fairly complex and somewhat non-traditional: According to it's distributor, APT's program listing (see particularly the Fact Sheet and Partner Release PDFs):

- The show is produced by WGbH and Zero Point Zero Productions (which produced Anthony Bourdain's A Cooks Tour and No Reservations) in association with
Gourmet magazine and discovery networks international (of Discovery Channel et al).

- Gourmet Magazine is an "editorial partner" and several magazine Editors contribute "on-air talent."

- TIAA-CREFF provides "exclusive corporate funding." I would guess that only means that they are the sole corporate underwriter, not that they provide all funds used in making the show, but that's just a guess.

It would be real interesting to know the ins and outs of that deal. Is discovery network getting rebroadcast rights? Who all is throwing money in the pot? WGBH, incidentally, is a huge powerhouse producer in public media (television and radio) and a major mover in food television, a genre they helped pioneer through bringing Julia Child to television.
posted by nanojath at 5:50 PM on September 19

As to the distribution question - the syndication distributor (again, APT in this case) is selling the media product to stations, it's not being given away. Purchasing programming is probably the major component of almost all public broadcasting stations' budgets (at least those that are predominantly in the broadcast business, and not heavy into producing programming in their own right). Part of the funding for the program will be coming from these revenues.
posted by nanojath at 7:12 PM on September 19