Product details

The WGBH Educational Foundation is a not-for-profit organization headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. It serves as the parent for public radio and television stations in both the Boston and Springfield metropolitan areas and also operates a number of related media-based publishing, educational and public service enterprises. As a producer of public broadcast programming, WGBH is arguably the best and most renowned organization of its kind in the United States. It is also one of the first and largest among US public broadcast stations. With its many successes have come both moral and financial support from individual viewers, Federal and state government, foundations and corporations. However, as WGBH faced its 1993-1994 season, the Foundation''s leadership witnessed growing signs of a transforming market place that called into question WGBH''s more traditional (albeit hitherto highly successful) product offerings. At the heart of the challenge faced by WGBH is the question of how the Foundation should manage its assets, specifically its human and information resources, for competitive advantage and long-term survival. Some key personnel within WGBH would argue that the Foundation''s future is intertwined with success at multiversioning. While WGBH has delivered a number of significant multiversioning products, the development process is complex and resource intensive. Can WGBH sustain and expand its multiversioned product line in an effective and economical manner? This case study examines the forces transforming the public broadcasting market place and the potential for change within the WGBH Educational Foundation. Central to this study is an issue that all organizations will face before too long, namely: if information and information management are critical to the success of the business, how is this to be achieved in a world of multi-media information resources?