PBS Pumps More Video to Alternate Platforms

In an effort to grow viewership, the Public Broadcasting Service is aggressively spreading its content to platforms beyond the traditional small screen.

PBS recently boosted its presence on YouTube, adding online-only material, program excerpts and extended previews to its existing channel on the Web video outlet at www.youtube.com/pbs.

Longer segments from series such as “Nature,” “Frontline,” “Independent Lens,” “P.O.V.” and “Tavis Smiley,” will be part of the picture.

“It’s a younger audience and it’s huge,” said PBS spokesman Kevin Dando. “They’re in a mind to watch video and we want to be there.”

Dando said he foresees PBS porting more video content online to its own Web site, as well as others.

Recent interviews of presidential candidates Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich on “Bill Moyers Journal” drew 11,000 views on PBS’s YouTube channel.

Facebook pages pushing clips from Jane Austen films on “Masterpiece Theater” proved successful in drawing attention on that site and driving traffic to the PBS site, Dando said.

In the most recent step in this new media initiative, major market PBS stations WNET in New York, WGBH in Boston, WETA in Washington, D.C. and KQED in San Francisco have begun offering video clips and other educational content to iTunes U. The material is accessible in the Beyond Campus section, which is dedicated to delivering educational fare.

A diverse range of content, from underwater video of a coral reef to lesson plans on Ken Burns’ “The War” documentary is in that mix.