PBS To Premiere The "American Experience" Via Facebook

Public broadcasting, specifically PBS, is making a historic move, premiering “Earth Day” on Facebook. The full-length documentary, chronicling the growth of the environmental movement in the United States, will air April 11th on Facebook, and be broadcast on PBS eight days later.

The reason? A Facebook debut will hopefully generate viral buzz and reach a younger audience attracted to the content but not necessarily devotees of PBS or appointment-viewing television. According to Mark Samels, executive producer of the “American Experience” series, "It's an opportunity, we think, to engage with a new audience, an audience that we may not be bringing to PBS Monday nights at 9 o'clock."

The Facebook event is being promoted as a community happening, and live interaction between the audience and the documentary makers is being made possible by Brand Network’s proprietary social screening app: a video player that is integrated with Facebook’s comment box and a web polling feature. Users of the tool can post questions during the film and choose for all their friends to see them, or limit visibility to those watching.

Brand Networks, based in Boston, bills itself as a Social Solutions company, and has a Social Application Studio in Rochester, NY. Jamie Tedford, CEO commented, “The powerful message and images of Earth Days are perfectly suited for a social viewing experience. Amplifying the voices of event participants through the Facebook platform gives new meaning to 'social media' and will demonstrate its ability to create real change.”

In addition to being a historic social media milestone, this event underscores the heated current debate about the optimum way to reach younger audiences today – traditional broadcasts vs. social networks.

Feedback from the Facebook experiment is eagerly anticipated, as it will afford the filmmakers unprecedented immediacy and reaction. “It’s such a distancing medium that we work in, in television,” said Samels. “You put all this work into something, and then it goes into this black hole, the ether."

And now, on April 11th the "American Experience" will feature an audience communing virtually in the ether of social networking – another bold step for digital media, and giant leap for public television.