Exploration #150

Hi all. This week generative AI turns 3, we announce our December webinar, Google releases Gemini 3, ATSC 3.0’s malnourished adoption strategy, not everyone is worried about “Google Zero,” AI tunes tops the Billboard charts, and finally, the right way to cook your Xenomorph for that perfect family get together.

But First…

Registration is open for our December 11 webinar, SEO + AI: Best Practices for 2026. If you were at the PBS Annual Meeting you might have been in the room for PBS SEO Manager Richard Traylor’s presentation on this topic. It was so good, we hit him up immediately to present it in a webinar for you, but we agreed the most value would be to wait 6 months and give an updated version to set folks up for success in 2026. He’ll be joined by Emily Clark, Manager of Multiplatform Marketing, for a talk about what is changing (and more importantly what is not) now that AI has entered the chat on search and web browsers. There will be plenty of time for Q&A, so bring all your SEO questions (even if they aren’t specifically AI-focused).

AI is a Threenager Now, How Will Public Media Respond?

November 30, 2025, is ChatGPT’s third birthday. While the modern generative AI era really started with the release of Midjourney on July 12, 2022, ChatGPT’s release on November 30 is what kicked off this new technological era.

What began as a set of generative tools that demanded we question our roles and responsibilities as artists, creators and journalists is now also an extensive technological infrastructure infusing our search results and our web browsers — impacting both how we ask for, subsequently access, and ultimately understand knowledge.

Across all of it is the demand that we understand both how this technology works, who it works for, and how it works on us. Reality literacy is the new media literacy, upgraded for an AI-first web and requiring us to know what’s synthetic, what’s optimized for you, who made it, and how to verify it before you believe or amplify it.

What does that mean for public media? We were born as an enlightened alternative for consumers of the state of the art in communications. At that time, broadcast media (radio, and then TV) was the most impactful technology on culture. Mid-century media theorists reminded us that any technology that could be used for ill, could also be used for good. And so, our forebears created public media on a basis of equitable education and social responsibility free of charge to anyone (who could afford a receiver).

Those values were translated in nearly linear fashion to both the internet and algorithmic (social) media. There have been pockets of innovation across public media in the last 20 years where attempts were made to retool our approach for interactive and algorithmic media distribution — for digital natives by digital natives. But this usually occurred in more progressive areas of public media stations that were not core to the station’s broadcasting identity.

The media shifts of the internet and algorithmic eras, while seismic, were barely measurable when compared to the speed and scope that machine learning and AI are shifting media and culture under our feet. Being in the vanguard of media innovation is our heritage, and the vanguard is clearly not broadcast. But when the federal funding crisis pushes our backs to the wall, we stop pretending we want to innovate and just revert to the muscle memory of being broadcasters.

If the media landscape of tomorrow is a landscape in which reality is mediated largely by black-box AI models (open weights models remain in the minority and do not guarantee transparent training data), how do we inject our pro-civil society values (not the least of which are education and social responsibility) into that mediated knowledge ecosystem in a way that supports our communities? Does public media need to build its own set of “experiences” based on AI models that we can guardrail with our own battle-tested values? If so, how do we do that in a way that adapts to the patchwork of subcultures that make up our communities?

These are the questions that are preoccupying me and the issues that I’m trying to reason my way through as consumer-facing AI turns three and 2025 winds down. I don’t have answers. And maybe these aren’t even the right questions. But if you have thoughts, I’d love to hear them.

Okay, on to the links.

Webinars and Tutorials…

SEO + AI: Best Practices for 2026 (Thursday, December 11, 1pET/10aPT)
2025 was the year we all learned the phrase “Goggle Zero.” But whether you believe Google will completely stop delivering traffic to your organization’s website or not, AI is definitely changing how we get information from and find content on the internet. Join PBS’s Richard Traylor, SEO Manager, and Emily Clark, Manager of Multiplatform Marketing, for a talk about what is changing (and more importantly what is not) now that AI has entered the chat on search and web browsers. If you saw Richard speak at the PBS Annual Meeting in Atlanta, this will be an evolution, 6 months on, of the information presented there. And if you missed that one, you don’t want to miss this one. Register here.

Five prompts to upgrade your resume (ChatGPTPromptGenius vis Reddit via Superhuman.AI) - I wish this weren’t so necessary for our public media community right now, but it is. So, please cut, paste and share. NOTE: I’m including all five prompts below, but you can check the source at the link.

•  Prompt 1: I’m applying for a [Job Title] position in [Industry], and I want my resume summary to stand out. Please rewrite this professional summary to make it more concise, engaging, and aligned with the expectations for this role. It should reflect my strengths, relevant skills, and years of experience in a compelling way.

• Prompt 2: Here are the bullet points for one of my past roles. Please rework them to focus on measurable accomplishments rather than generic responsibilities. Make them results-oriented, use strong action verbs, and include numbers or metrics wherever possible.

• Prompt 3: I want my resume to pass ATS filters and still read well to human recruiters. Based on this job description [paste job description], can you help me optimize my resume content to include relevant keywords and phrases from the posting in a natural way?

• Prompt 4: I’m transitioning into a new career from [Previous Field] to [New Field]. Please help me rewrite my resume summary and key achievements so they highlight transferable skills and make a strong case for why I’m a great fit, even without direct experience.

• Prompt 5: Can you audit this entire resume and point out areas where I’m being too vague, too wordy, or not showing enough impact? I want your feedback on tone, structure, and how I can better emphasize leadership, results, or innovation.

Thoughts on Public Media…

A New Chapter: Tactics for Today, Transformation for Tomorrow (Melanie Coulson - Greater Public) 
Key Line: "Another recommendation from the findings has stuck with me: 'Lift up the community you serve. In news, cover local and global problems through a solutions lens and conveying information that people can use to make their lives better. In music, provide people the respite they seek from stressful lives and the joy they find in being connected with others through live local music experiences.' We make our audiences’ lives better. But we need to prove it to them through our messaging."
Why It Matters: This content marketing piece for GP offers a radio-oriented perspective on this moment. So, if you have more of a TV background, there are a couple of interesting points for reflection. I was also glad to see them mention the Researching Unmet Needs study, which we've participated in at Nebraska.
Related: Download the Researching Unmet Needs (RUN) study, published March 4, 2025.
Also Related: Mark Lapidus’ piece from RadioWorld last August also offers some helpful (at times helpfully remedial) suggestions: Replacing Congress With Your Audience 

Brendan Carr’s FCC launches probe into BBC’s Trump edit (Dominic Preston - The Verge) 
From the Lede: "FCC chair Brendan Carr has reportedly written to the BBC, PBS, and NPR announcing an investigation into whether a controversial BBC documentary with a misleading edit of a Donald Trump speech was ever aired in the US.... In it, Carr asks if the BBC provided ‘either the video or audio of the spliced speech’ to either NPR or PBS, and requests transcripts and video of any possible broadcasts of the program in the US.”
Why It Matters: That actually took longer than I expected, but I’m hoping this doesn’t become the contagion I fear it could be. Watch this space, as they say.
Related: Gilad Edelman's piece for The Atlantic: The 'Easy Way' to Crush the Mainstream Media 

The British TV Industry Is In Such Crisis, ‘Wolf Hall’ Director Says, That ITV and BBC Couldn’t Afford ‘Adolescence’ (Harrison Richlin - IndieWire) 
From the Article: "In a letter written to Members of Parliament on the Culture, Media, and Sport Committee earlier this year, Kosminsky laid out a strategy to bring more financing to U.K.-focused narratives by enacting a 5% streaming levy. The profits from this would then go into a 'cultural fund” for British programming without inherent “cross-border appeal.'"
Why It Matters: Though the piece is from March, I just ran across it this week. It has some interesting BTS facts relative to last spring's Masterpiece miniseries. We've been watching the slow undercutting of British drama by streamer money (Netflix will spend $18B in 2025 on video and games) for a while now. So, it's interesting for them to begin making the "mission" argument for funding something like “The Mirror and the Light.” My love of Masterpiece and Mystery spans nearly my entire life, but I don't think British drama is the future of American public media. I’m not being fatalistic when I type that, I’m just not sure it should be part of our mission anymore. Kosminsky’s funding concerns notwithstanding, our communities will be able to get this type of cultural exposure elsewhere.

Generative Buzz…

Google releases highly anticipated Gemini 3 (Reed Albergotti - Semafor) 
From the Article: "Another example is Generative Interfaces, a new feature Google unveiled Tuesday. A user might ask for a visual aid to help learn about a complex subject, like cellular biology. Rather than spit out text or still images, Gemini 3 is capable of coding an app in the background and then presenting it as an interactive experience with animations. 'You can imagine that permeating a lot of different tools over time,' Woodward said."
Why It Matters: It's rare that I cover a product launch these days. The news is too fast, to furious, and what really matters isn't the tools but what we do with them and what they do to us. What makes this different? Generative interfaces. There's been speculation that on-demand apps, apps that exist for one purpose and then are discarded, are part of the media future opened up by AI, making apps ephemeral the way Snapchat helped make photos ephemeral. This is the first time we're seeing something like that in the wild.
Related: Every's Vibe Check (read: product test) puts Gemini 3 through its paces and is worth a read: Gemini 3 Pro, A Reliable Workhorse With Surprising Flair 
Also related: Will Knight's article for Wired: Gemini 3 Is Here—and Google Says It Will Make Search Smarter 
At the Same Time: Google released an update its image model (yes, called "Nano Banana Pro") and as Evan Armstrong says in his review, its "easy and powerful enough to use that you should assume that going forward all information can be made visual." Journalists take note.

AI + Us…

AI-generated country track ‘Walk My Walk’ tops US Billboard chart (Laura Malloy - NME) 
From the Article: "Meanwhile, audiences are reportedly finding it difficult to distinguish between “real” and AI music, with a new report from French streaming service Deezer finding that 97 per cent of people 'can’t tell the difference' between the two."
Why It Matters: Earlier today I was excited that Spotify suggested a new album by Electronic (a 90s supergroup made up of members of 80s alternative icons New Order, The Smiths and Pet Shop Boys…Millennials/GenZ, go ask ChatGPT). When I clicked on "Hollow Midnight Tune" what greeted me were 38 tracks totaling 2.5 hours of EDM AI Slop. It wasn't even an imitation of the band, whose account was presumably hacked in some way. The give away, other than the vocalist (but hey, they could have added a new vocalist) were the lyrics. AI-generated music isn't all that discernible from synthesizer pop-slop coming out of humans since the 80s. But AI-generated lyrics still have an uncanny valley quality about them. They feel wrong, more than they are wrong. This is true of "Walk My Walk." The individual lines don't fit together as much as they sit beside each other and don't take the listener anywhere.
Related: Aisha Down's article for The Guardian: AI slop tops Billboard and Spotify charts as synthetic music spreads 

AI Is Transforming Politics, Much Like Social Media Did (Chara Podimata & Sarah H Cen - Time) 
From the OpEd: "Perhaps most troublingly, LLMs lack internal consistency. The models calibrate their responses based on demographic cues like ‘I am a woman’ or ‘I am Black,’ and they treat certain groups as more representative of the electorate than others based on the specific phrasing of the questions asked. Models also adjust their responses to questions that contain hints about the user’s political views. For example, when asked about healthcare politics, the same model gave different answers to prompts suggesting that it’s a Democrat versus a Republican posing the question. The facts were often accurate, but the LLMs tweaked their positions based on those signals."
Why It Matters: I was low-key concerned going into the 2024 election season, and by the end of the year felt with dodged a bullet on AI-generated misinformation. Some of that I credited to AI literacy on the part of media consumers. But on further reflection I wonder how much of it was literacy and how much of it was just the heightened awareness of a new, potentially revolutionary technology. By 2026, AI will have faded more into the background (especially once the AI trade on Wall Street finally deflates), and by 2028 will have reached a level of normalization that, combined with the increasing efficacy of deepfakes, may not cause people to question information the way the alien nature of AI caused them to do last year.
Related: You might be interested to read the authors study, Large-Scale, Longitudinal Study of Large Language Models During the 2024 US Election Season, or maybe even drop it into your chatbot or AI-infused browser of choice (I used Gemini via Chrome) and do a guided dive through your own Q&A with the material.

AI + the Internet…

Not all media outlets are worried about declining Google traffic (Simon Owens via Substack) 
From the Substack: "I’ve long believed that a large portion of Google traffic offers little long-term value to publishers and mostly distracts them from building a loyal base of repeat visitors. Google Discover, in particular, delivers little more than a temporary sugar high. It’s not a coincidence that the outlets that spend the least amount of time worrying about their Google traffic tend to have stronger-than-average relationships with their audiences."
Why It Matters: This is a hodgepodge-handful of short examples highlighting big publishers not going quietly into Google Zero. The good news, membership models and approaches seem to be an answer. The bad news, a lot more brands are going to be asking our communities for memberships.

Keyword search dying, video search is future says Sky News boss (Dominic Ponsford - PressGazette) 
From the Article: [Sky News executive chairman David Rhodes said,] 'We talk about being video first. Keyword search is dying. Those economics weren’t that great for publishers like us in the first place, it wasn’t that great for journalism, it wasn’t a great user experience. What about when these chatbot models come for video? We are working with Prorata on a proper attribution model. But what’s better is if video is the answer that you get.... What we all need to be thinking about is not what is going on in the text ecosystem now, but what will the video ecosystem look like in three to five years? And how will that function like a chatbot? That is what we are thinking about at Sky.'"
Why It Matters: The idea that the future is a natural interaction giving you videos as answers to queries is an interesting one to contemplate. I could see that being a more natural interaction for Gen-Alpha in 20+ years. But I feel like more of what is going to happen is that your personal AI agent is going to reply to your query with information digested from the video, offering you the option to see the video. It won't be unlike a friend giving you an answer to a question and the offering to message you the video. Sometimes you'll say "yes," sometimes it won't be important enough to warrant a follow-up view. Either way, its good to ponder and develop your own view for how this future might play out.

LinkedIn adds AI-powered search to help users find people (Ivan Mehta - TechCrunch) 
From the Article: "Earlier this year, the company released a job search tool for members in the U.S., allowing them to search for jobs using natural language queries. Now, the company is extending the feature to people search. Users can use queries like 'Find me investors in the healthcare sector with FDA experience,' people who 'co-founded a productivity company and are based in NYC,” or 'Who in my network can help me understand wireless networks.'"
Why It Matters: I know a lot of you are spending more time on LinkedIn these days than perhaps you'd like. So, I thought it would be useful to touch on some of the ways the company is enhancing its platform. I already mostly just ask Google natural language questions. Now I need to think about how this might work via LinkedIn.

The Future of Media…

ATSC 3.0: 'I Can't Imagine Anyone Defending Our Current Adoption Strategy' (Fred Baumgartner - TVTech) 
From the OpEd: "I can’t imagine anyone defending our current adoption strategy. We just learned a lesson we needed. That in no way takes away from the accomplishments of getting to a standard and lighting up most of the nation with at least one 3.0 signal. But it is time for a real adoption plan, and real product development. It’s not easy work."
Why It Matters: It's been a while since I've reiterated here that I think ATSC 3.0 is a solution in search of a problem. That line is admittedly dismissive though, so I appreciate someone presenting a more nuanced argument for and against moving forward with the technology. I'm still not convinced that ATSC 3.0 isn’t a religion that's all priests and no parishioners. But I agree that there needs to be some product discipline applied to this problem. If the market doesn't want it at that point, then we have our answer and can stop dithering about this.
Related: The responses to the OpEd were also interesting: 'Broadcasting is Too Important to Fail' 
ICYMI: Jared Newman's freelance piece in Current: FCC’s ATSC 3.0 rules would slow transition to Next Gen TV broadcasting 

The Future of Advertising Is AI Generated Ads That Are Directly Personalized to You (Jason Koehler - 404 Media) 
From the Article: "Ticketmaster's personalized AI slop ads are a glimpse at the future of social media advertising, a harbinger of system that Mark Zuckerberg described last week in a Meta earnings call. This future is one where AI is used both for ad targeting and for ad generation; eventually ads are going to be hyperpersonalized to individual users, further siloing the social media experience: "Advertisers are increasingly just going to be able to give us a business objective and give us a credit card or bank account, and have the AI system basically figure out everything else that’s necessary, including generating video or different types of creative that might resonate with different people that are personalized in different ways, finding who the right customers are,” Zuckerberg said."
Why It Matters: Futurists have been trying to predict the advent of mass customization for a while now. In the world of atoms, we're still a way off from that reality, but in the world of bits AI is going to push us across that event horizon. Setting aside the editorial concerns here, think about what this means for the future of marketing our content, but also for what it means for marketing our mission to members.

The Creator Economy…

How a former USA Today columnist launched his own travel channel on YouTube (Simon Owens via Substack) 
From the Article: "Graham straddles two eras: the collapsing world of legacy media and the chaotic, opportunity-filled creator economy. He believes more journalists will follow the path he took — though it won’t be easy. 'The great news is that anybody who loses their job can pick it back up tomorrow,” he said. “If they’re willing to work really hard.'"
Why It Matters: He has a clearly defined hook, travel photography, and that is key (photographer YouTube is a thing). The Creator Economy is not a space for generalists, not at least when you're starting out. A clear voice is key. Climb your wall of cringe, as someone once said.

We’re All Working for the Algorithm Now (Taylor Crumpton - Time) 
From the OpEd: "Yet the creator economy’s reach only grows. Even journalists—long the chroniclers of other people’s stories—are becoming creator journalists, publishing independently through newsletters and video platforms. The logic of visibility has infiltrated every profession: If you’re not building an audience, you’re falling behind." Why It Matters: I was recently at the Daytime Emmy Awards taping (celebrating a friend's Silver Emmy). At the ceremony Inside Edition anchor (and GPB alum) Deborah Norville (Millennials/GenZ, go ask ChatGPT), got a lifetime achievement award. Amongst the clips was one from 1995 where she appeared on-air, in hospital, camera ready, 9 hours after the birth of her daughter (also camera ready). In moment I'm sure I rolled my eyes, but it turns out Norville was just ahead of her time.

Immersive Media

Can’t Make It to The Met? Take a VR Tour Instead (Isa Farfan - Hyperallergic) From the Article: "The Met selected one of its most iconic exhibits, the 1st-century BCE Egyptian Temple of Dendur, and a selection of Oceanic artworks displayed in its newly renovated Michael C. Rockefeller Wing for the institution’s first forays into virtual reality. Based on three-dimensional scans conducted within the museum, Dendur Decoded and Oceania: A New Horizon of Space and Time include realistic, if embellished, renderings and video-game-style missions. Both programs were designed by Met staff and Atopia, a culture-focused virtual reality platform."
Why It Matters: I had to double check the date on this one because, um, public media's been doing things like this for close to a decade. So, to The Met we say, "welcome, we're glad you made it." It is good to see major cultural institutions starting to lean into this type of media though. It's coming back around...slowly.

Media These Days…

How Jeffrey Epstein used SEO to bury news about his crimes (Mila Sato - The Verge (via the Wayback Machine) 
From the Article: "Throughout the documents, Epstein and others discuss how to use technical SEO tactics to bump news articles from Google’s first page of results, cozy up to reporters they perceive as focused more on business than Epstein’s crimes, and how to get a crisis PR machine in motion to launder his digital presence. To those familiar with SEO, these strategies will look familiar — it’s the same playbook used by everyone from restaurants to news publishers to companies selling tennis shoes and photography services online. Everyone knows Google Search is the gateway to the internet; it’s just that this time, these same practices were deployed as cover for perhaps the world’s most infamous pedophile."
Why It Matters: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tactics can be used for evil just as easily as they can be used for good. If you've not spent a lot of time thinking about SEO, you'll find this piece eye opening.

Netflix Rolls Out Real-Time Voting for Live Shows Starting 2026 (The Tech Buzz) 
From the Article: "This real-time responsiveness extends beyond just voting. Netflix is planning similar features for podcasts and cloud gaming, creating what Stone calls "interaction patterns" that keep viewers actively engaged rather than passively consuming."
Why It Matters: I'll admit, the main reason I'm including this has less to do with the news itself and more about the quality of what appears to be an AI-generated article. I'm also really taken with the “People Also Ask” featured on the right rail of the webpage. It's a blatant ripoff of Google's answer-engine feature of the same name, but it appears to remix the content in a way that makes it more digestible for certain audiences…almost like a more interactive set of key takeaways.
Related: They are also looking to make a big investment in video podcasts too, as reported by human writer Caitlin Huston in The Hollywood Reporter.
Also related: And while we're talking Netflix, don't forget that they are also innovating in the video game space, per Julian Clover in Broadband TV News.

The Microdrama Production Gold Rush Is Here (Katie Kilkenny - The Hollywood Reporter) 
From the Article: "These series, also called “verticals” because they are filmed in portrait orientation and are intended to be viewed on cellphones, first took off in China during the COVID-19 pandemic. But in the past few years, upstart platforms like ReelShort and DramaBox have begun building an American following for these typically low-budget, soapy series in a way that Quibi never did. And while most major players have lingered on the sidelines of the growing format...that’s changing."
Why It Matters: This trend feels part and parcel with the clipping trend that turns longer content into artificially shortened vertical videos. If anyone out there is thinking about experimenting with this format for content. Drop me a line. I'm intrigued.

And finally…

AI Is Out of Control (Ashutosh Shrivastava (@ai_for_success) via X)
And finally, if you’re looking for a way to surprise your guests (or hosts) at this year’s Thanksgiving/Friendsgiving feast, this video offers helpful suggestions on how to cook and present Xenomorphs.

Have a safe, rejuvenating holiday week!