Exploration #137

Greetings from South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. This week we’ve got Tom Davidson’s piece on firing your GM (or yourself), new ChatGPT products from OpenAI, the latest on AI search, and finally, the sinister vibes of Billy Joels “Uptown Girl.”

But First…

A quick plug for March’s education-focused, post-SXSW webinar. You’ll find more info on that in our Learn section below.

And then, again this year, I played around with the Otter.ai transcription tool as an enhancement to help me get more out of the conference. I’ll have more thoughts on that in the next column, but I just want to put in a quick word advocating this type of software for conferences and in-person meetings. I’m not specifically saying you should only use Otter, but as we go into the spring conference season (PMVG Tech Connect, PBS Annual Meeting, PMBA, PMDMC) these types of tools really do help you be more present in professional development sessions. More next time.

It's Going to Be a Harrowing Journey, Everyone Lock In

Prior to 2023, the last time AI was in the news was 2012. In 2013, South by Southwest was abuzz with sessions on AI. And by 2014 there was literally nothing else to say about it. That’s not the case this time. The 2025 conference marks the third consecutive year that AI has been a dominant topic of discussion. That’s not surprising given its potential now as a general purpose technology, but the conversation is definitely evolving. Do we have enough data to keep the momentum going? Are LLMs (like ChatGPT) a cul-de-sac at the end of an offramp on the autobahn to artificial general intelligence? What does it mean to be an AI-native company. I heard one speaker say that if 2024 was the year of AI (I’d argue that was 2023), then 2025 will be the year of AI impact. I interpret that to mean that this is the year where **** gets real.

And yet, there’s also a seductive quality to being in a (warm, early spring) echo chamber like South by Southwest. I’m still processing to 20+ hours of sessions attended, but as I hop the flight back I’m thinking a lot about a few topics. First, what is the right way to truly bring a public media staff up to current speed with AI; especially agentic AI. Second, your organization may have mastered Search Engine Optimization, but how do we approach Answer Engine Optimization; because that is becoming ‘a thing.’ And what does it mean to be an AI-native company. Or, put another way, how could we re-envision public media from the ground up as a media organization that exists in a world with AI (and this is important: in a way that creates more time for public media staff to focus on the work that truly adds value to the organization).

None of this will be easy. A couple of us were walking back to the hotel last Friday night, and we bisected a flock of college students on the sidewalk celebrating a friend’s 22nd birthday. One young woman was taking a cell-phone pic of two others and at 11p, they were clearly just starting their night. “It’s going to be a harrowing journey,” the impromptu photographer said. “Everyone lock in.”

Looking at the state of public media, I can relate. But one thing I am also feeling is grateful. Times are tough for public media, but we’re also in the early stages of a major technology shift from which public media organizations stand to potentially benefit in a sizable way…if we can accept that we are not a TV or Radio station. If you use radio frequencies (RF) as part of your distribution strategy, good on you. I’m not saying that’s not legit. But you are not your medium. You are bigger than that. And from where I’m sitting, the tools clearly exist for your company to be bigger than that.

Okay, on to the links.

Learn…

Future Frames: Where AI and Media Converge (Wednesday, March 26, noon ET/9aPT) “Discover how artificial intelligence is reshaping every facet of media—from pre-production to distribution—without sacrificing the creative spark that drives compelling storytelling. Led by seasoned media technology strategist Andy Beach and accomplished producer/creative director Doug Daulton, this series of live discussions and long-form analyses dives into AI’s transformative impact on content creation and delivery. By examining real-world applications and insights from industry experts, Future Frames illuminates how AI augments human ingenuity, carving out new possibilities in a rapidly evolving media landscape.” H/t to Ian MacSpadden for sending this my way.

Ed Tech Innovations: Highlights from SXSW EDU 2025 - Thursday, March 20, 2025, 1pET/10aPT - Public media plays a vital role in education, but how can we stay ahead of emerging trends to better serve our communities? This year, our annual tech and culture trends recap takes an educational turn, focusing on insights from SXSW EDU the international education conference shaping the future of learning.

Join us for a dynamic conversation with Greg Rosenbaum, VP of Education at SXSW, as he shares key takeaways designed specifically for public media professionals. Discover how emerging trends create opportunities for your station to:

• Adopt innovative storytelling approaches that resonate with diverse audiences

• Implement accessibility features that expand your community reach Integrate arts and creativity into your educational content

• Leverage new technologies that align with public media's mission

Co-presented with NETA’s Education Peer Learning Community, This webinar will equip you with fresh ideas and forward-thinking strategies to keep your station at the forefront of education and innovation in public media.

Think…

Should you fire your CEO? (Or yourself?) (Tom Davidson - Editor & Publisher) Key Line: "Taken together, these (and more) add up to a cold reality that traditional broadcasting is a dead end with both audiences and financial backers. The only hope of survival is radical digital transformation. [...] So it’s time for every public media board, executive team and CEO to ask a hard question: Do we have the right leadership and skills to lead a radical digital transformation?"
Why It Matters: Tom stole his own thunder by saying some of this during our January webinar. But it's still worth seeing in black & white. There's a lot of attention being paid to the political threat to public media, and that's real, but it can't cause us to lose sight of the other asteroid that was bearing down on our world before politics broke bad for us.

The New Aesthetics of Slop (Ted Gioia - The Honest Broker) 
Key Line: "Yes, they have the money. But we have good taste."
Why It Matters: Maybe you've heard the term "AI Slop". But what is "Slop"? And what does the tsunami of slop coming through internet mean for American culture? Then, my question, how does public media offer an alternative to slop. Gioia offers a cultural critique that doubles as an explainer of AI Slop.

The Legal Landscape Around DEI Is Shifting. Your Messaging Should, Too. (Kenji Yoshino, David Glasgow and Christina Joseph - Harvard Business Review)
Key line: "DEI communications create legal risk when a statement suggests that the organization engages in what we call the “three Ps” by conferring a preference on a protected group with respect to a palpable benefit."
Why It Matters: Words matter. But how they matter is changing in ways that seem capricious and unexpected. This article has been making the rounds, and it at least offers a third party take on the issue that can serve as a point for discussion in your organization. For the censorious reading this, I'm not trying to offer counsel, just some nutritious food for thought.

Our obsession with this d-word is only growing (Katy Steinmetz - The Washington Post) 
Key Line: " Close ties to artificial intelligence have led to a surge in “deep” being used for AI-related endeavors, to the point that the word is fast becoming shorthand for “cutting-edge tech”— and is already starting to feel derivative. In 2025, “deep” is to the tech world what the plus sign (+) became a few years ago to streaming platforms such as AppleTV+, Disney+ and Paramount+."
Why It Matters: This piece is for my word nerds in the crowd. I've wanted to write a "deep" piece for a couple of weeks. But Steinmetz did it way better than I could, so I just checked something off the to-do list!
Extra credit: Word nerds may also enjoy this piece by Joanna Wolfe in Scientific American on the evolution of the meaning of carcinization.
 

Know…

Google is adding more AI Overviews and a new ‘AI Mode’ to Search (David Pierce - The Verge) 
Key Line: "As Google moves ever deeper into AI search, it seems to be running away from linking to websites — and the fundamental value trade it made with the internet. Stein is adamant that’s not the case. “We see that with AI Overviews, people will get the context, and they’ll click in. And when they click in and go to websites, they’ll stay longer on those websites."
Why It Matters: AI Search, and its implications for content creators in terms of search engine optimization (if that is even a thing in the future) is one of the big themes I'm thinking about this year. There's no question at this point that this is the future.
Extra Credit: Aisha Malik's reporting in TechCrunch is also worth a skim: Google Search’s new ‘AI Mode’ lets users ask complex, multi-part questions 
But You Don’t Have to Take My Word for It: Read the announcement from Robby Stein, Google’s VP of Product: Expanding AI Overviews and introducing AI Mode

OpenAI Launches GPT-4.5 for ChatGPT—It’s Huge and Compute-Intensive (Reece Rogers - Wired) 
Key Line: "Pro users are getting a first look, with rollouts for Plus and Team users scheduled for next week [Plus users now get ~50 uses of 4.5 a week] and Enterprise and Edu the week afterwards [so, soon]. GPT-4.5 supports the web search and canvas feature as well as uploads of files and images, though it’s not yet compatible with the AI Voice Mode."
Why It Matters: OpenAI is consolidating its product offering, which is good. But it also has indicated that this model will be the last in the line of models that don't use chain of thought reasoning (like their o1 and o3 models), but the speculation is that eventually these types of models will converge into something similar to the hybrid reasoning models underpinning Anthropic's Claude 3.7, announced last week.
Extra Credit: Extra Credit: And, as Maxwell Zeff reports in TechCrunch: OpenAI plans to bring Sora’s video generator to ChatGPT at some point as well.
Bonus Round: And in even more OpenAI news: OpenAI reportedly plans to charge up to $20,000 a month for specialized AI ‘agents’

Gen Z teens tell us why they stopped trusting experts in favor of influencers on TikTok (Iman Pabani - Fortune) 
Key Line: “Gen-Z isn’t just trusting influencers over experts, they’re redefining what “expert” even means. Doctors, journalists, and scientists are dismissed, not because they are wrong, but because they are inconvenient, a straw poll of teens told Fortune. Influencers, on the other hand, are fast, familiar, and on the medium we turn to most: our phones. [...] It’s not that Gen Z doesn’t believe in experts. Rather, it’s that social media has rewired the way they think about credibility. [...] Credibility today isn’t about expertise but about who tells the most compelling story. This change is slowly reshaping how an entire generation decides what is true and what is not—sometimes with demonstrably negative results.”
Why It Matters: When I read this piece, I think about Steve Jobs saying "It just works." But not in a good way. The point of this piece is that social media is easy, and kids like easy. This we know. But humans have trusted questionable reporting from neighbors, cousins, and other vectors of fellowship since time immemorial. Some of the issues illuminated here will just get corrected through maturity or evolution. But the question this prompts is important. How do we create experiences and tell stories that hack (in a constructive, pro-social way) those vectors of fellowship.

YouTube Says It Now Has More Than 1 Billion Monthly Viewers of Podcast Content (Todd Spangler - Variety) Key Line: "In the U.S., about 31% of weekly podcast listeners choose YouTube as their preferred service, over Spotify (27%) and Apple Podcasts (15%), per Edison Podcast Metrics research released last October." Why It Matters: First, I think all public media companies should be working to create podcasting content, regardless of whether your organization originated with video or audio. Second, this underscores the need for public media companies to have a well-defined YouTube strategy and the operations to support that strategy.

Kate Bush, Annie Lennox, and a slew of other stars are on this silent album. Here’s why (Azapata - Fast Company) 
Key Line: 'The protest album features recordings of empty studios and performance spaces, to show what they fear will be the fate of creative venues if the plan goes through. The titles of the 12 tracks spell out: “The British government must not legalize music theft to benefit AI companies.”'
Why It Matters: Hello darkness, my old friend. The UK has recently taken an unusually aggressive stand (for a Labor government) on becoming an AI superpower. Not everyone agrees with this approach though. AI nationalism is a tricky thing.

And finally…

Declaration that ‘Uptown Girl’ brought ‘sinister vibes’ to the Uber ride has everyone worried about Gen Z (Rachel Kiley - Daily Dot) 
Key Line: "Several suggested Hollywood has made such a point of repurposing upbeat songs for horror movie trailers or dark moments in film and TV that expectations of them may have shifted."
Why It Matters: I intensely disliked this song as a kid (in 1983, my tastes skewed toward Duran Duran and any other band that - I would learn as an adult - cited Kraftwerk as an inspiration). So, it's funny to me that this track is now creeping young people out. GenX's revenge is complete if we've successfully soured modern listeners on the upbeat boomer rock and soul of 40 years ago.

Have a creative, productive week!