Hulu Plus members, I hope you’ve got some free time this weekend because approximately two hundred PBS episodes have now been added to the service, including episodes from Ken Burns library, PBS Kids series like Arthur and Wild Kratts and more.
Launch a social media campaign that will build your brand and deliver results in our online Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting June 7. Speakers include Abigail Cusick (Bravo Digital), Gregory Galant (Sawhorse Media), Alex Leo (Thomson Reuters Digital), Jim Tobin (Ignite Social Media), and many more. Read the reviews. 
Augmented Reality (AR) has made its way to elementary school. PBS Kids released a free app for the iPhone and iPod touch this week. The app is based on the PBS Kids TV show “FETCH!” which combines at animated dog (Ruff Ruffman) with real kids and science and math education.
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Ken Burns fans—if you don’t have an iPhone or iPad you’ll want to get your hands on one ASAP because the king of documentary is debuting his new film ‘Prohibition’ tomorrow on iPhone and iPad.
comScore reports during the month of June U.S. viewers watched over 145 million videos across all of PBS’s web and mobile platforms. The non-profit broadcaster is now the 15th most popular online property for video. Undergoing a major revamp in its video offerings with a new web redesign last year, PBS continues to branch out in what it says are “two important ways.” The first way is adding pre-roll sponsorships to its video streams, and the second is launching a digital channel in the U.K.
PBS has found that digital has broadened its audience. With the advent of videos online, an audience has arrived and it is time to deliver the goods. Jason Seiken, SVP for PBS Interactive and Product Development, told paidContent in an interview, “Just to put our progress into perspective, about 3 years ago, we had roughly 2 million streams a month.” Seiken added, “And now, we’ve reached 145 million a month. With that as a foundation, we’re looking for revenue to offset our costs, and video is expensive. So that’s where the focus is now.”
Seiken says much of the growth is driven by video and the net income is up 110 percent. It is very likely both the audience and revenue growth will continue to grow.
Interestingly, the bulk of the web video has been on kids’ programming for two reasons. Kids’ digital programming costs less because productions are on the simple side. Secondly, education is very much a part of PBS’ policy. Kids prefer longer-form webisodes, while adults want clips and highlights.
PBS can be viewed via Android where users can just watch the programming through the broadcaster’s website. However, PBS has no plans to develop an app for the mobile device.
Last week, PBS endured an attack from a hacker with the culprits posting false information on a couple of the news sites. PBS, Frontline and NewsHour were affected by the attack. In order to take a causative approach to the violation, PBS Newshour continued delivering transcripts and video via their Tumblog without a hitch.
Here’s the upshot for Yahoo! News’ The Upshot: People are leaving.
Just a little over one week after the departure of The Cutline‘s Michael Calderone, who left to become senior media reporter at Huffington Post Media Group, The Cutline managing editor Andrew Golis (pictured) is leaving to take the post of digital media and senior editor at PBS’ Frontline.
Deputy managing editor Chris Lehmann, previously a writer and editor at CQ, New York magazine, The Washington Post, and The New York Observer, will replace Golis.
PBS rolled out an iPhone app that streams full episodes of its series including Frontline, NOVA, POV, Austin City Limits, Independent Lens, Antiques Roadshow, and Nature, Techland reported.
The free app also allows users to share episodes via Facebook and Twitter; bookmark episodes; access schedules; set reminders in iCal; and make donations or purchase episodes, according to Techland.
The Economist and PBS NewsHour teamed up on The Economist Film Project, a Web site that will showcase independent documentary films from around the world.
The Economist Film Project will accept submissions on a rolling basis starting Jan. 10 and running through Jan. 2012, and at least three winners per month will appear on the site, alongside related articles from The Economist, as well as airing on PBS NewsHour and being presented on Hulu and YouTube.
From The Economist Film Project’s About page:
The Economist Film Project is an initiative by The Economist, in partnership with PBS NewsHour, to showcase independent documentary films from around the world. From Abu Dhabi to Albuquerque, from astronomy to agriculture, the project will showcase films that offer new ideas, perspectives, and insights that not only help make sense of the world, but also take a stand and provoke debate. Segments from selected films will appear in a national primetime feature airing regularly on PBS NewsHour through 2011-2012.
PBS president and CEO Paula Kerger spoke with paidContent about the focus on local and hyperlocal content from PBS affiliates as PBS.org undergoes a redesign and the public broadcaster prepares to release an iPad app. Highlights:
Original local content like that should tie into the interests of PBS’ wider national audience. That’s something we’ve done for 40 years on television. The Web-site relaunch will enable us to push people more aggressively into the individual station sites by serving as a larger portal that will send viewers great content, whether it’s from their local PBS station or not.
We’re helping the stations build up capacity, which is something we started last year when we introduced a new media player. Some stations, like WNET, have a great interactive department, and they’ve built a lot of stuff that’s used locally but appeals nationally. At the same time, I’ve got a station in Wyoming that just hired their first webmaster. They don’t have a lot of resources, and it’s hard for us and them to carve out the money to invest in new-media work in addition to continuing to keep the core broadcast end strong.
We’re at this critical decision point: Do we build up content for TV or for the Web? How do you make the dollars stretch? The only thing we can do is figure out how much we can build for them at scale and then what advice and tools we can give them so they can quickly do the work themselves.
The updated PBS NewsHour iPhone App is now available free-of-charge via the App Store, and it offers HD-quality video, multimedia content, updated news, and customizable news feeds.
The app is compatible with iPhone or iPod Touch devices with operating systems 3 or 4, and it syncs via Wi-Fi to download the most current news directly to devices.
PBS NewsHour host Jim Lehrer said:
The iPhone App is just the latest step in the NewsHour move to extend beyond the hour and offer our signature brand of journalism, MacNeil-Lehrer journalism, anywhere, anytime. Although the technology may have changed, our commitment to in-depth reporting, balanced analysis, and civil discourse is as strong as ever.
Executive producer Linda Winslow added:
The app is the latest in a series of digital offerings that have helped us extend the NewsHour‘s personal relationship with our audience. Online features of our oil spill coverage, including a widget, streaming video of the spill, and interactive interviews via YouTube and Google were all extremely popular, earning the Web site over 14 million views and expanding the NewsHour‘s growing community of fans and followers on Facebook and Twitter.
