Localore was a year long, $2 million AIR production.  It was designed to spark new,  producer-led innovation at public radio and television stations across the U.S. during  a time of change.  We hired a dozen lead producers and planted them at ten radio and  TV station across the country in cities large and small.  Collectively, Localore involved  more than two hundred collaborators — community storytellers, designers, coders,  shooters, editors, reporters, radio hosts… and stretching into the community… musicians, priests, farmers, violin makers, librarians, etc… The assignment for our producers was to “Go Outside.”  We wanted our teams to invent new ways to blend digital, broadcast, and “street” plaforms, to help take their incubator stations outside their dominant mindsets, and we wanted them to physically go outside to the far corners of their local communities.  Our long term goal is to plant new seeds to build out the strengths of public media and carry service to more Americans.

This report, “What’s Outside?,” unpacks what we found out there.  I hope it informs stations, producers, and those invested in public media who are inspired by the possibilities of what lies ahead.