A public media organization serving a major US metropolitan area sought clarity about what content and services it should be providing in the education space in years to come. The organization asked City Square Associates to conduct research across its service area with the goals of understanding the nature and scope of existing educational needs; gaining insight into the competitive education landscape; and identifying potential gaps in content or resources that the organization might be well positioned to address.

CSA fielded two parallel and complementary surveys across the same geographic area—one among educators and another among parents and other caregivers. Each survey was designed with enough similarities so that results between groups could be compared, but sufficient differences to capture the distinct perspective of both parents and teachers. Nearly 1,200 educator and caregivers in all were surveyed, with respondents asked about their most pressing concerns in the education space, their own and their children’s use of media, and where they believed public media was best positioned to make a contribution to the field.

Among other key findings, the research revealed that both unmet needs and affinity for public media were greatest in the most economically disadvantaged communities in the service area. Parents and teachers from these communities were among the most likely to describe PBS as “my kind of content” and had the most positive response to specific suggestions about things public media could be doing in the community—for example “age-appropriate exposure to the arts” or “concrete ways of improving children’s reading or math skills.” Public media’s status as a trustworthy source of free high quality educational media set it apart in an otherwise vast competitive set.