Exploration #153

Hi all. For our final newsletter of the year we’ve got a 2026 NiemanLab Prediction from Hawai’i’s Meredith Artley, the declaration of the “post-news era,” the next frontier of AI, the Disney-Sora deal, a new AR experiment from BBC R&D, a recap of our AI Search webinar, and finally, Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year.

But First…

Registration is now open for our January 15 webinar, Innovate with Current: The Future of Public Media. Suffice to say, this year didn’t go as many of us had planned. So, now what? How can public media position itself for a successful 2026 amid ongoing uncertainty and change? This session will feature a panel of four leaders from across public media sharing their perspectives on where the industry finds itself today and what may be coming next. This conversation is designed for anyone thinking about the future of public media strategy, audience, and sustainability and looking for candid perspectives on what comes next.

What You Need to Know about AI + Search

We had a great turnout for last week’s webinar. If you missed any part of it, or want to share it with colleagues, you’ll find it above. As I was listening to Richard and Emily present a few themes jumped out at me.

First, Google is turning search into answers (not clicks). The AI Overviews (AIO) that sit above organic and paid results, are increasingly driving “zero-click” behavior and shrinking the visible real estate for everyone else. “AI Mode” is - everyone seems to agree - Google’s near term endgame. Even though current adoption is uneven we’re increasingly looking at a future where Google does the researching, then summarizes. But how do you track performance to affect improvement? Measurement is the core pain. AIO referrals are logged as organic in GA/Search Console, and paid reporting also doesn’t clearly show when/where ads appear around/inside AIO.

But something are still constant. Even though we must now contend with a search landscape clouded by Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), Search Engine Optimization (SEO) still response best to authentic, authoritative, human-generated content. And the best way to show up in AIO is still: rank well traditionally (page-one visibility strongly correlates with AIO inclusion).

It’s also worth noting that video is getting pulled into AIO—mostly via YouTube. So, if you don’t have a YouTube strategy in play right now, it’s more important than ever.

And keep in mind that priorities around tune-in KPIs and discoverability are different from priorities around the dissemination of information or sharing of knowledge via content (e.g. news, civic information, local stories).

It’s still early days for AI and search…if search is even the right construct. Paraphrasing a comment I saw on LinkedIn, “Ask” is the new “Search.” The impact of Google and it’s competitors (both AI-infused browsers and Chatbots with search capabilities) is playing out in real time.

About that Comment to the FCC

2025 showed us repeatedly that politics and media are intrinsically intertwined, and on that front this year just keeps on giving. This time it’s a recent comment filed with the FCC that argues for stripping PBS/NPR stations of their broadcast licenses.

If there’s a silver lining, it’s that PBS is only a small part at the end of the 15-page, double-spaced, Empowering Local Broadcast TV Stations to Meet Their Public Interest Obligations - Initial Comment of the Center for American Rights. But even though we seem like an afterthought, you should check it out. If Project 2025 taught us anything, it’s that great storms announce themselves with a simple breeze.

The overarching argument of the comment is that coastal elite media companies (who have a lot of O&Os in politically blue cities and states) make content decisions that financially disenfranchise affiliate ownership groups primarily working in politically red states. This amounts, they seem to argue, to government regulation forcing red-state oriented affiliate groups to fight with one hand tied behind their back because these groups are contractually obligated to offer a product that cannot be maximized for local pricing power due to poor product-market fit. The Kimmel matter is their case study of choice. (There’s also a section about how sports is too damn expensive, but I’m skipping over that here.)

So, what about us? We're noncommercial. With PBS (and the focus here is PBS, though “NPR” does also show up in several sentences) the argument is that since we foretold of our own demise with the anti-rescission argument that defunding could equal the death of public media, we should now be obligated to prove that we have “a viable long-term business model, and…tell the Commission how [we] plan to increase donor support while maintaining editorial independence.” (p.14) Or else we must surrender our licenses to those who can make a profit off the spectrum, presumably with content that is defined earlier in the comments as “values-aligned, faith-inspired, family-friendly, and patriotic.” (p.4) There are no suggestions as to where this content might originate.

Reading the comment through, you get the impression that we almost got out of the draft unmentioned and unscathed. Then someone watched The American Revolution.

"...[T]he Commission should ask whether PBS (and NPR) stations are fulfilling their public-interest obligations as licensees when the public’s elected representatives have just chosen to cut off public funding because of their failure to serve the public well. That question is especially pressing after PBS’s big brand reboot, the Ken Burns documentary timed to America’s 250th birthday, was “a woke mockery of America’s founding.” Ken Burns’ credibility and patriotic Americans’ interest in their nation’s history, especially at this 250th birthday, prompted many who may not watch PBS otherwise to tune in. PBS blew its chance to reboot its brand with the American people at large: the choice to heavily promote a controversial, politicized version of America’s founding story suggests PBS has not learned the lesson from its defunding." (pp.14-15)

Lots of entities can make comment (for and against issues) to the FCC during the open comment periods, and this one hit my radar because Ars Technica reported on it. There may be others on both sides of the issue. I’d much rather end the year on a more positive note, but clearly the fight to justify our existence will continue on new fronts in 2026. Be aware.

Okay, on to the links.

Webinars and Resources…

Innovate with Current: The Future of Public Media (2026) 
(Thursday, January 15, 1pET/10aPT)
Join Public Media Innovators and Current for our second annual conversation about what the year ahead holds for public media. Suffice to say, 2025 didn’t go the way many of us hoped. So, now what? How can public media position itself for a successful 2026 amid ongoing uncertainty and change? This session will feature a panel of four leaders (two from last year, two new for ‘26) from across public media sharing their perspectives on where the industry finds itself today and what may be coming next. This conversation is designed for anyone thinking about the future of public media strategy, audience, and sustainability and looking for candid perspectives on what comes next. Register here!

Here's a 7-part 'Context Engineering' framework that gets consistently better AI results. (Beginning-Willow-801 via r/ThinkingDeeplyAI) 
From the Post: "The idea is simple: an AI is like a brilliant intern. It can do incredible work, but only if you give it a phenomenal briefing. The richer the context, the better the output. It's not just me saying this. AI legends like Andrej Karpathy (founding member of OpenAI) and Tobi Lütke (CEO of Shopify) have said the same: the quality of the context you provide is everything."

The Complete Guide to Nano Banana Pro: 10 Tips for Professional Asset Production (GoogleAIStudio via X) 
"Here's what you'll find in this article: 0. The Golden Rules of Prompting 1.Text Rendering, Infographics & Visual Synthesis 2. Character Consistency & Viral Thumbnails 3. Grounding with Google Search 4. Advanced Editing, Restoration & Colorization 5. Dimensional Translation (2D ↔ 3D) 6. High-Resolution & Textures 7. Thinking & Reasoning 8. One-Shot Storyboarding & Concept Art 9. Structural Control & Layout Guidance 10. What's Next?"
Related: Here’s another set of Nano Banana prompts courtesy of ZeroLu on GitHub.

Thoughts on Public Media…

The walls around public media keep coming down (Meredith Artley - NiemanLab) 
From the Piece: "The support system for public media can silo the people within it from the rest of the media and technology landscape. There are resource groups, consultants, conferences, and webinars just for public media....These groups exist to help, not to isolate....But the downside of local stations spending so much time in the vast public media support network is that a large, disparate group of hundreds of stations are absent from many larger conversations where there is much to learn and to share."
Why It Matters: Hawai'i Public Radio's GM weighs in with the first public media prediction for NiemanLab this year (I’ll feature more in the first exploration of the new year), and I appreciate her perspective. I've said it here before and I'll repeat it again, for me the best conference of the year is South by Southwest. We'll see if that's still true next year now that they are under new management, but they did book Paula to keynote, so that's a good sign. I know it can be easier to pitch for travel budgets when it’s for conferences from within our systems, but you should try to go to at least one conference outside the system a year if you can (even if that's the only travel you get to do). The fresh perspective is vital.
Related: See all of NiemanLabs contributor predictions at Predictions for Journalism 2026.

The Hard Choices Public Media Institutions Are Facing Every Single Day (Leslie Fields-Cruz - IndieWire) 
From the OpEd: "The United States is at its best and most prosperous when creative freedom rings, knowledge is shared and intolerance finds no shelter. Preserving these ideals requires more of us to be willing to do the hard things."
Why It Matters: I have a lot of respect for Leslie, BPM and the wider multicultural alliance that helps keep public media innovative. We tend to focus on local stations or the national brands, but I wanted to surface this piece as a reminder that the public media community is both broad and deep.

Media These Days…

Axios CEO: US is in ‘post-news’ era (Max Tani - Semafor) 
From the Article: "In order to survive, he wrote in an internal memo shared with Semafor, newsrooms will need to rethink the role they will play in an information landscape dominated by artificial intelligence and algorithmic, personalized video feeds. 'Your reality — how you see the world — is no longer defined by "the news."' Jim VandeHei wrote. 'Instead, it’s shaped by the videos you watch, podcasts you hear, the people you follow on social media and know in person, and the reporting you consume. We’ve entered a period where everyone has their own individual reality, usually based on age, profession, passions, politics and platform preferences.'...Axios believes its largest area for growth is in local coverage, much of which has been left behind by national media."
Why It Matters: Whether I like it or not, I see considerable evidence of what VandeHei describes. In fact, while he offers an important perspective it hardly seems revelatory. To me, the last line above (which I pulled from later in the piece) is the real kicker. While the smaller markets may be safe (for now), as profit margins get squeezed elsewhere in the larger markets, many mid-sized markets with news droughts feel ripe for Axios' strategy.

Google announces AI deals with publishers (Dominic Ponsford - PressGazette)
From the Article: "On Wednesday, 10 December, it also announced a series of new features which it said ‘will help connect people with the sources they value’. Preferred Sources is a new feature in search which allows users to customise the “Top Stories” they see in search prioritise favourite outlets and sites. This is now being rolled out globally. Google said: ‘When someone picks a preferred source, they click to that site twice as much on average.’ A[nother] new feature highlights links to sites which users subscribe to “making it easier to spot content from sources you trust and helping you get more value from your subscriptions”. Google said it will also now prioritise links from subscribed publications in search as well as the Gemini App, AI Overviews and AI Mode."
Why It Matters: It's been at least a month since I've complained about the fact that PBS and NPR don't seem to have any deals going with AI companies that might benefit local public media organizations. Hopefully something is happening behind the scenes that will yield some benefits. But in terms of what we can do ourselves, at the very least getting audiences to list us as a "preferred source" seems worthwhile. And if there was a way to sync "subscriptions" with memberships I think that could be a boost for us as well.
Related: Google's blog entry on How to select your preferred sources in Top Stories in Search.
Also Related: Wikipedia seeks more AI licensing deals similar to Google tie-up, co-founder Wales says by Deborah Mary Sophia and Krystal Hu at Reuters.

MS Now to launch membership-based subscription product next summer (Sara Fischer - Axios) 
From the Article: "The membership is heavily focused on building moments where MS NOW's progressive community can engage online, a reflection of the success it's had in bringing its audience together for ticketed live events. The subscription aims to connect fans with the network's biggest stars through interactive features. It will also give consumers 24/7 access to the live MS NOW linear network."
Why It Matters: From the ashes of MSNBC, a membership organization emerges. My gut tells me that the economy and the annual cycling off of rage-giving members from this summer will create headwinds for us in 2026. Surely, this move from MS Now will put pressure on some renewals as well. But don’t lose site of the message that high-touch experiences seem to work when it comes to cultivating loyalty.
Related: For more on the communities angle, check out PressGazette's How Forbes CEO Sherry Phillips is responding to Google challenge 

AI + Us…

Spatial Intelligence Is AI’s Next Frontier (Fei-Fei Li - Time) 
From the OpEd: "For humans, spatial intelligence is the scaffolding upon which our cognition is built. It’s at work when we passively observe or actively seek to create. It drives our reasoning and planning, even on the most abstract topics. And it’s essential to the way we interact—verbally or physically, with our peers or with the environment itself. When machines are endowed with this ability, it will transform how we create and interact with real and virtual worlds—revolutionizing storytelling, robotics, scientific discovery, and beyond. This is AI’s next frontier, and why 2025 was such a pivotal year." Why It Matters: Li is considered the godmother of AI, and this think piece gives you a more macro view of the AI industry, and the hurdles that could soon be overcome to make AI even more akin to human intelligence. But across a number of emerging media disciplines space is the final frontier. We've talked about spatial media before in this newsletter (a term that loosely encompasses VR, AR and xR experiences). And space is a key consideration when it comes to games. When you open a game engine, you are not confronted with an empty timeline, you are confronted with an empty sphere.
See Also: Li’s longer post (from which this editorial was derived) on her own Substack, From Words to Worlds: Spatial Intelligence is AI’s Next Frontier
Related: On LinkedIn KQED’s Tim Olson posted a creation he made with Li’s new World Labs tool. Check it out.

AI + Journalism…

AP launches verification dashboard for publishers to meet ‘demand for authenticity’ (Alice Brooker - PressGazette) 
From the Lede: "Associated Press has launched an AI-powered tool to help journalists verify text, photos and videos in one place. The AP Verify dashboard will let subscribers access several verification tools on one centralised platform. It includes an AI chatbot assistant, geolocation, object and landmark recognition, AI text detection, transcription services and an anti-duplication tool to alert users if colleagues are verifying the same content. The aim is to help journalists verify content purporting to show major news events in a world where AI is making it harder to tell what’s real and what’s not. AP Verify has been used by AP journalists for the past year and is now being offered to other publishers."
Why It Matters: AP was one of the first news publishers to do a content-for-development deal with OpenAI, so I wonder if this is a product of that collaboration. Regardless, we need more sources of truth in the AI era, not less, and I hope public media can contribute in some way to that objective understanding of reality.

Washington Post’s AI-generated podcasts rife with errors, fictional quotes (Max Tani - Semafor) 
From the Article: "But less than 48 hours since the product was released, people within the Post have flagged what four sources described as multiple mistakes in personalized podcasts. The errors have ranged from relatively minor pronunciation gaffes to significant changes to story content, like misattributing or inventing quotes and inserting commentary, such as interpreting a source’s quotes as the paper’s position on an issue. According to four people familiar with the situation, the errors have alarmed senior newsroom leaders who have acknowledged in an internal Slack channel that the product’s output is not living up to the paper’s standards."
Why It Matters: I feel for the Post on this, because I think they are just on the bleeding edge of the curve here. We are moving toward a future where those who want such a product can get a daily briefing from AI (see the comments from Axios’ CEO above). The future of the newspaper or of the daily podcast is likely to be an automagically generated readable or listenable summary. And as publishers we should be terrified of being frozen out of that space. But the lesson from the Post is that technology isn't "there" yet to be automate and sustain the level of trust we must maintain with our publics to generate this ourselves. That said, it could very well be good enough for our communities a year from now.

AI + Education…

Purdue unveils comprehensive AI strategy; trustees approve ‘AI working competency’ graduation requirement (Phillip Fiorini - Purdue) 
From the Press Release: "Now and in future, Purdue students will need to possess the requisite critical thinking skills to understand, evaluate and effectively use AI technologies and to keep pace with their future changes — all as informed by evolving workforce and employer needs. To this end, the trustees have delegated authority to the provost, working with deans of all academic colleges, to develop and to review and update continuously, discipline-specific criteria and proficiency standards for a new campuswide “artificial intelligence working competency” graduation requirement for all Purdue main campus students, starting with new beginners in fall 2026. Some of the underlying educational resources and innovations will be made available as soon as next semester for currently enrolled students, too."
Why It Matters: Maybe there are other instances of this happening, but this is the first I've seen. And I assume there will be many in the coming year. I think that baking in AI competency to degrees makes a lot of sense, although it would seem that many college students are already highly competent in the use of AI if they want to be.
Related: At one elite college, over 80% of students now use AI – but it’s not all about outsourcing their work by Germán Reyes in The Conversation 
Also related: The Case Against AI Disclosure Statements By Julie McCown in Inside Higher Ed 
Still Related: Learning with AI falls short compared to old-fashioned web search by Shiri Melumad in The Conversation 

Generative Buzz…

The Walt Disney Company and OpenAI reach landmark agreement to bring beloved characters from across Disney’s brands to Sora (OpenAI) 
From the Announcement: "As part of this new, three-year licensing agreement, Sora will be able to generate short, user-prompted social videos that can be viewed and shared by fans, drawing from a set of more than 200 animated, masked and creature characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars, including costumes, props, vehicles, and iconic environments. In addition, ChatGPT Images will be able to turn a few words by the user into fully generated images in seconds, drawing from the same intellectual property. The agreement does not include any talent likenesses or voices. Alongside the licensing agreement, Disney will become a major customer of OpenAI, using its APIs to build new products, tools, and experiences, including for Disney+, and deploying ChatGPT for its employees."
Why It Matters: In prior years we saw numerous deals with journalism companies while creative companies with massive IP libraries sued AI model creators or sat quietly on the sidelines. In 2025 we've see deals are settlements around imagery, music, and now video. This was always inevitable.
Related: Tied to Disney's deal with OpenAI was Disney's takedown of IP infringing content generated by Google’s Veo3 (as reported by Ted Johnson in Deadline)...which meant the death of my beloved storm-trooper Vlogs from YouTube channel Artificial Cheese. It was the best bit of Star Wars to hit the web in a long time. I hope Disney read the writing on that wall and that something like it comes back as canon somewhere down the line.
Also Related: Falling behind Google and Anthropic, OpenAI quickly introduced GPT 5.2 to keep themselves in the peloton.

Adobe Ramps Up Firefly Video Tools Including New Firefly Video Editor (Andy Stout - RedShark News) 
From the Article: "Adobe has added a whole load of new video-first features into its Firefly generative AI platform, including precision text-based video editing, camera motion controls, third-party upscaling via Topaz Astra, and the public beta launch of a new browser-based Firefly video editor.... To encourage experimentation with all these new AI features , Adobe is offering unlimited image and video generations in the Firefly app until January 15 for users on Firefly Pro, Firefly Premium, 7000-credit, and 50,000-credit plans.... The offer covers Firefly’s own commercially safe image and video models, as well as partner image models including FLUX.2, Google Nano Banana, and OpenAI’s GPT Image. After January 15, standard credit limits will apply again."
Why It Matters: This is the latest move in Adobe's bid to be a one-stop shop for creators working with AI in the video space. In theory, this should allow us to make certain types of public media content more cheaply...if we're willing to embrace AI-enhanced tools in the production process.
Related: Going in the other direction, you can also now Edit with Photoshop in ChatGPT 

Immersive Media

'Paw-gmented’ reality: Developing an AR Pudsey Bear for BBC Children in Need (Claire Buckingham - BBC Research & Development) 
From the Blog: "This augmented reality (AR) experience is presented to people when they donate money to the appeal online. After making a contribution users can scan a QR code on their donation certificate to access the mobile experience. Then, as if by magic, an adorable 3D Pudsey Bear will appear in the space in front of you to deliver a personal thank you."
Why It Matters: I haven't seen a cool R&D project out of the BBC in a while, and this is an interesting one to potentially emulate if you have some local, original IP at your disposal. Yes, the execution feels like it could potentially come across as bit of a 'gadget gimmick,' but it is R&D, and understanding why it might not hit is a good way to hit on what might make a future iteration work.

And finally…

2025 Word of the Year: Slop (Merriam-Webster) And finally, in hindsight this seems inevitable. From the Article: “Like slime, sludge, and muck, slop has the wet sound of something you don’t want to touch. Slop oozes into everything. The original sense of the word, in the 1700s, was 'soft mud.' In the 1800s it came to mean 'food waste' (as in 'pig slop'), and then more generally, 'rubbish' or 'a product of little or no value.'"

See you back here in 2026. Have a safe, rejuvenating holiday break!