AR 21 PGS FNL - Flipbook - Page 3
‘The Engagement Station Serving
the Most Important City in America’
That is how we like to think of ourselves
at Detroit Public TV.
In its earliest days, public television was generally
regarded as a platform for national content – children’s shows like “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,”
“Masterpiece Theatre,” nature documentaries and
other quality programming.
Timothy Nicholson
Chair
Board of Trustees
But over the past decade or so, DPTV increasingly
realized that this was not enough. Our community
needed more, for a variety of reasons including
the shrinking resources of commercial media, a
renewed focus on social issues around race and
gender, and the need to improve the educational
outcomes of our children.
We had to become the essential communications
partner for the diverse communities we serve.
We had to redirect our focus homeward, become
hyper-local and engage all the people of Detroit
and Southeast Michigan as never before.
In this annual report, which we have kept refreshingly short, we talk a lot about engagement. That’s
become a buzzword in the media industry. There
are many definitions of the term.
Rich Homberg
President
and Chief Executive Officer
We have a simple one – engagement is everything
we do. The local coverage of our One Detroit and
Great Lakes Now bureaus is engagement.
So are the family workshops our Education team
conducts in neighborhoods far and wide.
The events we hold, many now virtual – engagement. Our relentless commitment to diversity –
also engagement.
We spend a lot of our time getting to know Detroit,
talking one-on-one with people or gathering them
in small- and large-group discussions. That’s a pure
form of engagement.
We can also apply numbers to it – 2 million weekly
viewers, 95 million streams across our various
digital platforms and 28 million impressions and
1.6 million engagements on social media.
But what truly counts is knowing our community,
understanding its needs and providing the kind of
engagement that makes this a better place for all
of us to live.
The pandemic made this vividly clear. Families,
educators, business leaders, artists, kids, nonprofit
organizations needed someone to inform them,
to enlighten them, to tell their stories and their
struggles. We stepped up, but we did not do this
alone. We needed partners, many of them.
Fortunately, we have been building relationships
throughout the community for years. They were
essential as we chronicled and confronted the
challenges Southeast Michigan has faced in
recent months.
But we promise that we won’t stop here. Like this
great city, we will keep moving forward. Together.
There is nothing like the power of partnerships.
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