Hello, and welcome to Beyond The Broadcast.
My name is Seth Resler.
I am the community building consultant at Paragon, and I am also the founder of community marketing revolution.
And this is a series of conversations and virtual events that we have been putting together for public media broadcasters.
We wanted to bring in community professionals from outside the industry and talk to them, find out what we could learn and how we can apply it to public broadcasting.
And I'm excited for our guest today because he is the former director of community and interactive product at CNN.
He has for more than twenty five years been building community focused in interactive products.
Sometimes it's been for household names like CNN and Forbes that you know, and sometimes it's been for small online communities that you've never heard of.
But with a blend of community products and program management, his career has centered around the creation of safe, include of platforms and services, the drive action, grow revenue, and increase retention.
I wanna welcome Patrick O'Keefe.
Hi, Patrick.
How are you? Hey, Seth.
Thanks for having me.
I'm doing well.
How are you? Good.
Good.
I'm excited to have you here for this conversation because You know, we've been talking to a lot of community professionals in this series.
Uh, but frankly, a lot of them come from places like customer success or customer support.
Uh, you know, that's where a lot of brands build their communities.
It's great to talk to somebody who comes from building communities for media outlets.
And, uh, frankly, for media outlets that do journalism because I think we're gonna get into a little bit about, you know, what that actually looks like.
So I'm excited that you're here today.
Uh, let's talk a little bit about the topic.
This is five lessons from building community for CNN.
And can you explain exactly what the community concept was at CNN? What were you doing there? What was it all about? Sure.
So and it's funny to hear you introduce me as someone coming from the news and journalistic side because for years and years, like, um, I applied to a few different jobs in media and at media orgs.
And, um, you know, I could I could never get any headway ten, fifteen, twenty years ago because they I didn't have a journalism degree.
Um, even though I had experience in community moderation trust safety and policy, I just couldn't, um, get past that.
And I was told that, and and, you know, that's just how sort of things shift over time or the industry shifts over time because like the role of CNN was created for me.
Um, and I came into it and had a lot of fun and it was great opportunity.
But, um, yeah, it's just a funny thing to hear that.
Um, you know, I I would say it at CNN to answer your question directly, what, uh, I was initially brought into an ideation team to sort of come up with community concepts, interactive ideas that CNN could then take and build a subscription business around theoretically, like a monthly subscriber, uh, business, and they took different forms.
Um, they one of them was sort of a local video product that allowed you to stitch together local video broadcasts theoretically and have it be curated.
Um, and there were a couple other ones and kinda seen and killed them all.
Um, and they didn't get past sort of that ideation stage.
And then we had one that made it past the ideation stage, which was interview club, which became part of CNN plus, which we'll talk a little bit about.
But, um, yeah, I was just put together with some great, like, we had a great team of people, um, really talented smart people just coming up with ideas that CNN could could build and then sort of, uh, grow their revenue on top of sort of the, uh, the linear revenue, right, the the cable satellite subscription revenue when they get from TV, what could they do in addition to that that wouldn't disrupt that revenue? So we were kind of focused on things that brought people better.
Okay.
You know, you mentioned CNN plus.
Can you talk a little bit about where the idea of community came from and was it, you know, hey, we've got the CNN plus thing, and we gotta do a community aspect to it.
So let's do that.
Or was community sort of this other idea that had been floating out here? And then they got to the point where they're like, oh, we've got the CNN plus thing.
Maybe we we folded into that.
What did that look like? Yeah.
I mean, CNN has had a lot of interesting community and interactive ideas over, you know, their long digital history three.
Um, a lot of smart community builders either at CNN or have worked at CNN working on different concepts and ideas.
So I think it's something they're always sort of noodling with.
Um, with me specifically, um, the idea that came out of that program interview club was interactive live q and a platform where a community of smart question askers could submit questions, vote on them, and then those questions would be asked by a CNN personality to a newsmaker, celebrity, etcetera.
It's not like a revolutionary up.
I was at Yahoo chats with bands in the mid nineties.
Um, so to me, it's, you know, this is just kind of an iterative idea on something that's existed since the dawn of the internet more or less, um, or the interactive internet.
And so we were building that out as sort of a standalone product.
And as that was happening, um, you know, the word from on high, uh, came through and was like, well, uh, we're building a streaming service, CN plus, and we'd like, uh, community and interactive products to be one of the three core pillars that bring people to the service, the first being exclusive live programming only on CNN Plus.
The second being CNN's incredible archive of content that they have from, you know, their, you know, thirty, forty years of producing, uh, news and and interactive and smart content.
And then the third being interactive feature set, and the first one of those was interview club.
Um, so you had to be a CNN plus subscriber to submit questions and voting them and to watch the broadcast.
Um, and so, yeah, it sort of was an idea that was sort of plucked and said, we want it to be one of the core benefits.
You're kind of working on this now.
And so we if there are efforts from a standalone product to being part of a new streaming service.
Got it.
And and talk to me a little bit about some of the things that you had done before your time at CNN.
And were there things that were difficult to bring to either a media organization or a news organization or had to be adapted in any way.
Like, did you have to change your thinking or is community building the same regardless of the type of organization that you're at? Um, you know, I, um, so quick, I guess, quick intro of what I was doing before.
Um, so I started moderating communities for other people in 1998.
Just kinda small independent online communities.
I started launching my own in February.
I registered my first domain name on January '2 k for those who were there.
Um, and I started launching kind of independent online communities that I hosted.
I did that for about a decade before releasing a book called managing online forums that it took me five years to write and find a publisher for.
And then once that book came out and was in a lot of bookstores nationwide, um, it gave me the opportunity to sort of open some doors to companies that were either using concepts from the book directly or that I could help use those concepts, companies like FedEx and Sony and Cisco Systems.
And then, you know, flash forward another ten years.
I was independent doing things for myself and for others, and then I joined a small organization that builds membership programs for media brands like Forbes, uh, kind of paid professional membership communities.
Did that for a couple of years, um, before being recruited to CNN.
Um, as far as like changing my think king.
Um, I don't really think so.
Um, you know, I was recruited by, uh, a friend of mine who's how I have a tremendous amount of respect for incredibly intelligent when it comes to community moderation work and within journalism, bossy Adam, um, and he had a really good sort of set up in place, a really good mindset that I could step into and just sort of contribute the value that I had to offer.
And he was really good about empower me to do that.
So I didn't really have to, like, he wanted me for the way that I was already thinking.
Which I think was really nice and helped to get a lot done in a short period of time.
So, um, no.
Now, of course, I I learned different things.
I picked up different things working in it like CNN is a unique, uh, global beast, um, in the in the litigious sense.
Um, in the size sense and the reach sense, like there's a it's a unique place.
Like when you work at CNN and media, even though I don't have a ton of media experience, I tend to think it's fairly unique, like there aren't that many media orgs that have sort of the reach and the organizational setup.
Um, so So there were things that I had to kind of, you know, fit in with certainly.
Um, I'm not, you know, I have to fit within a team and within a larger structure, but my thinking was it was a validation of sort of good, strong community ideals and thinking that I've sort of tried to build my career around.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Uh, I love hearing your story because it leads right into one of the first lessons that you actually learned.
And that is this.
Small community experience is relevant to big communities, and that's in some ways, your journey, talk a little bit more about what you mean there.
Sure.
So, um, I have a martial arts community that I've been running for, uh, twenty four years in May.
I was there before it launched, and I was there the whole twenty four years as a as we turn 20 May 20 first of this year, and they care about each other.
And they have sort of this amazing rapport.
And if someone comes into the community and is disruptive or disrespectful, um, they self reject almost in a sense.
Not like we don't have moderation emergencies there.
They just sort of get taken care of when they get taken care of because the community culture is so strong.
And so, uh, just over the last twenty four years, that community, uh, it's why I always tell people to launch a community.
Just it's easier than ever, just start something for something you like and build it end to end with no one like supporting you because it gives you this understanding of sort of product and community and managing a community and how it all works because when I'm at CNN coming up with policies that'll be to employed globally or at least within The US at the start of CNN Plus.
Um, you know, and I'm submitting those policies to legal.
I'm writing policies that I wrote for my martial arts community, uh, for the last twenty four years.
When I think about moderation challenges and how sort of things go through a certain workflow to get approved.
I'm thinking through sort of the moderation processes that I design in this small online community for martial artists.
And so I think, uh, it's one of those things where people sometimes think that their community experience won't translate to a large media brands or large mainstream brands at all, but the reality I think is that, um, having that sort of grounding and independent online communities where you're responsible for everything actually serves you quite well, um, and we have so much more in common than we do, uh, dissimilar.
Uh, what does change when you start working at an enterprise level? Um, I mean, I think there are, um, there are just sort of more levels of approvals and scrutiny and how things are looked at.
And some of that can be scary.
Um, at CNN, uh, we had something called the triad.
Um, and it's a public thing.
You can Google it CNN triad.
But when you first get there, it sounds kinda scary.
It's like, are you gonna have to throw on like a gladiator costume? Do you have to get in the arena? Like, what's Triad.
Um, and it's sort of this very powerful group of three uh orgs within CNN standards and practices, legal in the row.
Um, the row are sort of the people who approve like your use of anonymous sources.
They approve sort of death notices.
Like, no one, they had a joke something about like, you know, CNN doesn't kill anyone.
Like, we don't publish fake obituaries.
Like, it has a process to go through.
It doesn't matter how official it looks.
You have to get the approval.
Um, and so those three orgs really decide sort of do you get to report this story this way? Does your product exist? Do you get to survive doing this thing you wanna do? And it could be a community and interactive product like we were building, could be a streaming service, could be news gathering.
Um, and so that seems very scary, um, to people, but you know, so I I sort of had to I would even call it changing, which is sort of understanding the system, kind of thinking about how it works, and then where my strengths lie and what I can offer them.
End of the day, I was friendly with all these people.
And I think they liked me because my, uh, philosophy in small online communities, big online communities is to write things down and document them.
And so once I kind of demonstrated that, they were, you know, they pretty much were like, you're good to go.
Um, you know, the policies I wrote were approved with uh, no notes, um, in one case.
And, you know, these are policies that are that are tied to their removal of content that CNN might fake scrutiny for.
Um, but in some ways, it was a validation.
So it wasn't so much a change, but is this type of the only changes I really had to make were the type of changes you make when you take a new job and you sort of understand how their cadence goes as far as meeting sprints, how they develop a product, who you need to talk to, who's kind of the decision maker on this thing.
Sort of understanding where those lines went.
But, you know, I I I think that good sound community philosophies and policies and procedures sort of translated really well at CNN.
Yeah.
Uh, this leads right into your second lesson because I know that when I talk to community managers.
Uh, one of the things I hear a lot about is the need to get buy in from different stakeholders within the organization.
And I do imagine when you start getting into an organization as large as CNN, there are more stakeholders than ever.
Here's what you said.
Securing buy in might be scarier than it seems, which is an interesting way to phrase it.
What do you mean by that? Yeah.
I mean, uh, just go back to the story.
I just mentioned about the triad.
Like, these are all senior VPs at CNN.
They've been there for fifteen, twenty, twenty five years.
Um, you know, they're just very influential people at the company.
And, um, you know, my experience is they've held their jobs for so long because they're very good at their jobs.
Um, and but to a new person coming in.
Like CNA has a lot of people who have been for a very long time.
Um, it can be very intimidating to sort of read through sort of how the org works, what the triad is, what they can do and who they are.
Um, and so to me, that was sort of, I would say, among the initially scary things to look at and try to get buy in for.
But like I said, um, you know, I went into those meetings with documentation with the ability to explain what I was working on to talk about my experience and how it would help this thing work well.
Um, and really what I found was that they wanted us to be successful.
That was sort of their their sort of MO is like we want you to be successful.
Here's the way that we can do that legally for CNN.
In line with CNN, standards and practices.
Um, here's how we can do that.
And, you know, the concept that we brought to market was the concept that we envisioned, um, for the most part.
And I I didn't really even though it was scary initially, I think, you know, coming into it with an open mind coming into it with all the information made it a lot easier to go.
So that's really what I mean.
I mean, it it it seems scary, but it really wasn't that bad.
Like, my time working with those folks was easier than my time working with, I don't know, other random people that controlled far less, um, in New York.
And I think that's probably why they stand their jobs for so long because they do want you to be successful and they just wanna find a way to get the necessary t's, uh, t's cross and i's dotted so that CNN can kinda cover all bases.
Yeah.
I I will say as somebody who not only works with, but comes from organizations where we are used to creating content and building audiences, which is quite different than building spaces and allowing people to connect in them.
When you control the content and you push it out, you've got a lot of control, and you can kind of keep control of it until it goes out the door.
Mhmm.
And, you know, community is not necessarily the same way because you're kinda letting people come in and and you don't know what's gonna happen.
It's a mindset shift.
And so I have found myself working with media organizations and content creators sort of having to reiterate the message and the mindset shift a lot.
Was that your experience as well? Did you find yourself? You know, what's really helpful was the attorney that we had on our product was very good and especially was very experienced with UGC and user generated content.
So that helped a lot because I came into the meeting thinking, do I have to explain section two thirty? Um, which is a law in US, it'll basically empowers companies, organizations, teenagers to moderate content, um, without being liable for what they leave in place.
So it empowers moderation, uh, versus sort of being overprotected on removing anything that could offend anyone, any billionaire at any time.
Um, you're actually allowed people conversations.
And so I came into that meeting thinking, do I have to explain this? And I and I didn't.
He he kinda knew it.
He was already experienced with it.
He'd been around the block.
So he was like, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's all fine.
Um, your policies look good.
You know, you know what you're doing, and we're good to go.
Just let me know if you need anything overcommunicate.
Um, that helps but if you don't have that, if you don't have someone who's, uh, who's who ultimately you need their approval, um, especially on the legal side of things who is not well versed in UGC online communities, any place where people can talk to one another without you necessarily being involved directly in the conversation.
Um, yeah.
I mean, it's it can be challenging and sometimes it requires some explanation.
Um, and our our political legal climate for online communities right now in The US is I would say at its weakest point in many years, um, to 02:30 is still on the books and it still does empower you to do that moderation work, but, uh, it has, uh, people who dislike it on both sides of the aisle, uh, which is disappointing.
And so for right now, so the law of the land, and we can still moderate content, uh, in a way that is, I would say, um, that fits in line with the kind of communities we're trying to build in The US.
Yeah.
In in your experience, where do the biggest hurdles come from? Do they come from legal issues? Do they come from technical issues? Do they come from, uh, moderation or or just sort of the human side of getting people to pave a certain way? What were the biggest challenge? I mean, I think that so I'll tackle it two things.
So as a professional trying to get things done, um, you know, the biggest challenge is people getting in my way.
Um, you know, it's like I, uh, and I don't I don't mean that like no one obviously I need to be managed and I'm someone that you can check and I'm happy to talk through and defend things that we make and the decisions that I make.
But like ultimately, for example, I had a boss.
It wasn't a CNN.
It was somewhere else.
And, um, they had sort of a way of doing things that they did this way.
And part of that was a process I don't really like, which is tagging a million people in the first reply.
So they would they would be a business community, they would post a business owner or post a question, and then they would come in and tag it with a Facebook group, like 30 people.
Right? And there wasn't any thought about that, like who we're tagging, why we're tagging them? How do we do that? And to me, I don't like that process.
I could talk about why.
Um, but more importantly, they hired me to sort of make things different or make things better.
I sort of refined that process.
And I said, okay.
So we wanna invite people to conversations.
I like that idea.
We do not need to do it in a public tag.
Um, we we we also need to think about who we're inviting.
So we should have a process for identifying people who can actually respond to this conversation and have the expertise needed to help the business who's asking the question.
And so we did those things, and I think it got better.
And I think it was an improved process that everyone benefited from.
But the person who hired me who couldn't keep his hands out of the community would look at those threads and say, oh, there wasn't a public reply fast enough, so I did it myself.
And he's just stepping all over what I'm trying to accomplish here, which is a more thoughtful way to bring people into conversations, and also not an advertisement on every single post that we need to tag, 30 random people in every conversation to make it feel like something is happening.
Like, we don't need to do that, my opinion.
Um, and so he was just meddling in my work and ultimately was sort of hamstringing my efforts and making them a little less like we had great numbers, but they could have been better and they could have been better if he leaned out, which is what he said he wanted to do when he hired me.
Um, so he didn't.
So that sort of I think that to me more than legal is sort of the type of thing.
When your boss or someone who has power in New York can't, like, lean back and actually let you manage and do the job.
That's no fun for me and it makes the job not fun, and that makes me wanna leave.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I understand.
You know, you said some several things there that, pick up on threads that we've heard from other people that we've talked to.
Uh, you know, we had a community consultant, a reliever.
And one of the things she pointed out is that sometimes jumping in and replying isn't the right thing to do because you want the community members to air act with other.
And if you start to set the, uh, precedent that you're always gonna be the one interacting, sometimes it discourages that.
You know, the other thing that you said that, uh, we have heard before is that it's really not about necessarily getting the most people in the room.
It's about getting the the right people in the room.
And it sounds like you were very much aiming to try and and get the right people into the spaces and and what you were doing.
So, uh, I hear a lot of things that you're saying that echo what we've heard in other places.
Uh, let's get to your third lesson that you've learned, which is protect the intent of the spaces.
And before we talk about the intent of the spaces, you've touched on this a little bit, but describe in more detail what the spaces were actually going to be.
Uh, at CNN, where where people could come in and collaborate, were those things that you were using? Were you building them for the ground up, or were you using platforms that already existed? Talk a little bit more about those spaces.
So we were building, um, uh, the spaces from scratch, um, and that was sort of part of my role on the product side, uh, of kind of helping to identify the product to design the product.
There we are designers, but like, participating in the feedback loop for design and and and work with engineers and sort of coming up with this live q and a platform where people could submit questions.
They would go through an approval process, my team owned, and then they would go up for voting.
Uh, they could then be sorted by votes.
And then, ideally, the most popular questions would be asked by the CNN person on to a celebrity.
My favorite example, um, is doctor Sanjay Gupta asking questions to doctor Anthony Fauci.
Doctor Fauci was great.
Uh, repeated community members' names when he answered their questions.
It was really a great thing.
And so, like, but when I when I talk about intent with the space, it's almost more of, um, it's more of a goal thing.
Um, meaning like, so for interview club, the goal wasn't to create a primetime show that looked like what was on scene and at 8PM.
The the the goal was to incentivize people to interact with a streaming service and to tune in live to see if their question was asked or to ask a question that gets answered live, you know, three minutes after they submit it because that was part of the thing that we did.
We staffed the shows with with Pampers of my team who would moderate the question queue live as it was going on, approve it, apply our standards to it, it would go up, and then theoretically, uh, a content team member would select it as a live question.
So we're trying to incentivize interact not just questions submitting and asking, but also uploading questions.
You know, that's your question once you upload it.
You're part of the process of getting it recognized.
So we were trying to do something different.
And to me, if it looked like a prime time show on CNN, that was a failure.
Um, that was not what we were trying to build.
It wasn't supposed to be, for example, like Don Lemon having a conversation with some guests on that Don Lemon wants to have.
And as as you know, as as as engaging as Don Lemon is, that wasn't the goal.
Right? He had show at CNN.
And so what we wanted to do was more of a community centered thing where the CNN presenter was a conduit for the community to ask questions to the person.
Um, now what happened was some, uh, some members of, um, the content team really wanted to program it more like a primetime show.
Like, they wanted to have the this to have more of a script.
They wanted to have more of the questions lined up, uh, far in advance.
Um, they wanted to know where it was going.
And that kind of went against the intent of the program.
What made it interesting? What made it engaging? Was there some spontaneity to it? It's community power.
You don't always know exactly where it's going to go.
And so, um, you know, they would do things like wanting to seed questions.
And I'll be like, we, I mean, we shouldn't be submitting any questions.
Um, we, I mean, even if we disclose it, which we should, that it came from CNN, like, that's not the idea of what we're doing here.
Um, we shouldn't be doing it.
I don't wanna do that unless we absolutely have to because we have no questions and that your interview is going on, then sure.
Let the host ask questions from the host, um, like a normal show on CNN.
Great.
But we don't need to put questions from us in there for people to talk about.
Um, and so just things like that.
That's mindset on that side of things was like, how can we make this show, um, the same as what we're already doing, fit into our existing processes, processes, and that kinda went against the intent.
And so I actively sort of protected against that and was like, okay, we can get you questions, but like a half hour.
Before the show.
Like, how close can we get it to time where you actually lock it in? Like, we'll guarantee all questions are approved in the moderation queue by this time.
What's the SLA service level agreement? What's the time that we're gonna do it in? I'll come up with a standard other than that.
Leave my moderators alone.
Don't bother them because they have a queue to watch.
They're working.
They're not gonna get you early things.
They're also not not doing their job, which was part of the problem.
It's like, have you checked the queue? Of course, they're checking the queue.
Assume good faith.
Assume that we're doing our job over here, you know.
But they were like, go, go.
Go.
Go.
Go.
Go.
Go.
Go.
Go.
Go.
Go.
Go.
Go.
Go.
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Go.
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Go.
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I was glad I was on the tech side of things, the product side and not the content side, kind of more of the journalism side because I remember having a conversation with someone on that side that was like, you know, Christmas Day, I'm gonna give, you know, we should we're off.
This isn't a news critical thing.
Like, when you join CNN, you sign a document that says you're available twenty four seven.
You also sign a one sentence document that says you will agree not to falsify the news, which was one of the funniest documents I've ever signed in my life.
Um, but, uh, you know, they were like, I can't guarantee Christmas day.
I was like, okay.
Well, my my product to tech people were like, of course, we're gonna take Christmas day off.
So I told my team I was like, I'll work Christmas day.
If it comes down to it, we're not gonna, but I'll work it if it comes down to it.
Um, so they just had a different sort of intense um, uh, controlled manner of doing things that did not jive well always with more unstructured to your point about being different, being a little blessed, giving up some control, unstructured way the community can sometimes unfold.
And and, uh, I'm hearing you bang on the table a little bit.
So just be sorry.
Sorry about that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's alright.
Um, let me, uh, I I'm so glad to hear you put it that way because This was actually one of the things that I had sort of the hardest time wrapping my head around when it first came to community building, especially coming from a a media and a content creation background.
I'll never forget.
I had a a good friend who was a is still a disc jockey in Las Vegas, and he was streaming on Twitch.
And I could never understand why people would spend time watching Twitch, watching people just play video games or react to stuff that was happening on the screen, when you could go watch Lord of the Rings or a Marvel movie or something that was sort of this big budget high production value thing.
And then one day he tells me he had a, like, a Howard turn type whack pack of characters, and there was one that just annoyed everybody.
And he said, we have this thing on my Twitch show where if people pay $20, we'll mute that guy for five minutes.
And he said, I have shows where that guy's just muted for three hours.
Doesn't get to say anything.
And what I finally realized is that the value from the audience point of view was not just the high production value of what's on screen, but it was that their actions were impact what happened on screen, and they could take an action, and they could see the the product in real time be shaped by that.
And and the closest analogy I can think of is when I was in high school, I loved Lord of the Rings, you know, big piece of literature, and dude wrote histories and songs, and languages.
And then I love choose your own adventure books, which are nowhere on the level of literature that Lord of the Rings are.
But I like them for a different reason that I influenced what happened to the story.
And I think that's kind of what you're talking about here where Yeah.
The regular, you know, nighttime show on CNN is the big it's the lord of the rings, but what happens in the community is people can take an action and see the impact that that has on the space and on the product, and and that's part of the the attraction Right? I mean, that's what people enjoy about this.
Yeah.
You can still watch the same show at prime time.
We just need to make one more.
Right.
No.
That makes so much sense.
But it is a hard thing to wrap your head around if that's not the universe that you come from.
So I understand why you had to step in and protect that intent and why, you know, it took them a while to get it.
Uh, alright.
Let's get into the fourth lesson that you learned, which is this.
Uh, good ideas sometimes disappear into canceled products.
And this sounds like it hits close to home.
Let's, uh, yes.
Tell me what you mean by this.
So, I mean, CNN Plus was a really interesting, um, uh, product to be a part of.
And Um, I, um, when seen in to tell a story I've seen a closing real quick, seen a plus closing is, um, on, uh, on 04/20/2022 at 09:33PM at Cedar Sinai Hospital over in Beverly Grove.
In LA, um, my wife gave birth to our first child, uh, Patrick James.
And, um, uh, less than twelve hours after that by 9AM the next morning, my phone started to go off in the recovery room.
Um, and I picked it up and they had just announced that CNN Plus was closing on the first day of my parental leave.
And so I was, you know, in that day in the bathroom in the Recovery Room, I started talking to my team who was all set and ready to rock for my eight weeks of parental leave.
Um or was I taking six or eight? I forget.
Um, and you know, it was a surprise and CNN Plus quickly became and rightfully became sort of a joke or a joke because of how quickly it started and failed.
It became a joke on late with late night hosts online, etcetera, and that's justified.
Like, the way that it quickly started and ended is a joke.
It's silly.
It's sort of the but it was a victim of a classic media merger.
Um, where Warner Brothers or Discovery really, more discovery didn't like the idea and didn't want to invest in it further.
And so they had no skin in the game.
So to them, when they came in, they just killed it.
Um, regardless of what had been invested into it already.
And so, you know, one of the tragedies of CNN plus is whatever you might think of the idea.
We actually don't know if it would have succeeded or failed.
Maybe it failed.
Sure.
We had according to reporting 150,000 plus paying subscribers in the first two three weeks, which was ahead of projections and very good.
Um, could it have played out well? We'll never know.
But the thing about the ideas that were within CNN plus is they weren't necessarily bad ideas because the product ultimately shut down or failed or was canceled.
Um, like interview club, for example, that's a very simple concept, like we discussed, not revolutionary.
Um, but it doesn't mean that it was a bad idea for CNN or it doesn't matter that it or doesn't mean that it couldn't have worked.
Um, and so I think that happens all the time.
Like, we see things come and go and we tend to think of things as failing as a whole or succeeding as a whole, but it's just like life's not that simple.
Nothing is that simple.
And so things don't always end because they were wholly bad.
And it doesn't mean that you can't save ideas from things that are ending and move them into something else or that the whole thing needs to go away because the overarching product or their brand is dying or going away.
Um, so yeah.
I mean, I think there's just a lot of things that you can learn always from successful products and also from, uh, ones who are ultimately unsuccessful.
Yeah.
Uh, so you think you'll be using a lot of concepts things that you learned at CNN in some future project down the road potentially.
Sure.
I mean, the concept I use at CNN are the same concepts I've been iterating on for a long time.
So ultimately, like, we were building something that had some good sound community principles behind it, and we wanted to build more things, uh, more products that brought people together on CNN.
Um, you know, from the very simple, I used to half joke, half serious, say that I wanted to bring comments back to CNN+.
com, but only for CNN plus subscribers that it was only a benefit for those who joined the streaming service.
Um, and, you know, they they could have.
They could do more there.
And, um, yeah, so ultimately, like, that's that live community thing is something that I think most journalistic outlets have attempted in some form or another, maybe not as a routine schedule, maybe not three times a day, five days a week, like we were focusing on.
Um, but, like, that's a good idea for the right orgs to bring their community together to involve them in the question asking question forming process.
It's very simple.
You can go so much deeper than that.
But, um, yeah, I think I just think the idea that, you know, I I understand like on YouTube, you know, you get a certain thumbnail style that hits, um, where it's like, this is a failure.
And it's like, there in every failure, there were probably some good ideas.
There's a handful that weren't.
But overall, most failures have a nugget or two that you can really learn from and take and run with.
Yeah.
Um, I I know you can't speak for CNN today, but do you get the sense that even though CNN plus is no longer a thing that the idea of community is still bubbling up either there or in other news organizations? Yeah.
A %.
And, I mean, it sort of, um, uh, yes, because, uh, CNN, uh, is, I mean, kind of the the fifth point that we're gonna talk about sort of ties in well to that, which is that, you know, CNN has tried to, um, uh, has done community things many times.
Um, CNN will do more of these types of of projects.
Um, CNN has done these types of projects before, but we're seeing and suffers is that they they they have had a tough time committing to the long term execution of these ideas, um, where they actually give them the time to succeed or fail on their own.
Two weeks is not enough time to disarm it if a $3,400,000,000 investment most of which is some cost is a success, not when you have a 50,000 paying subscribers from the jump.
That's just not enough time.
That wasn't their goal.
They weren't trying to see if it will be successful.
But, you know, if you talk to long timers at CNN, one of the things that becomes clear is kind of a joke, which is that Um, you know, CNN will just cancel an idea and then try to restart the same idea a week later.
Like, when I was leaving, um, you know, I was invited to stay when CNN plus was canceled and I and a bunch of other people chose to leave And in doing so, we they tore up sort of this great community team.
You know, we had hired people.
We had, you know, bossy is amazing.
I'm there doing whatever I can do, you know, good or bad.
Um, and then, uh, you know, it was like, I heard there were meanies going on while I was still there but heading out the door about how CNN needs to tap into community ideas and concepts and products, uh, to to take the next level of success.
And it's real hard.
Um, you know, a media example that's very relevant to this idea of long term execution and having success without long term execution.
The gold standard ideas in New York Times because in every media org and every news room and every company, you hear this idea of the New York Times and their D to C revenue and their subscriber revenue that they have this direct relationship, and it's so amazing.
And everyone wants it.
They said it at CNN.
They're one of the models is to follow that model.
Think about New York Times.
It's not this simple, but they've had online comments for twenty five years open.
They never took away the ability to interact on NewYorkTimes.
com.
Right? They choose a certain number of articles.
They open them up.
People can participate.
They know the people who participate in the comments.
Are worth more than the average New York Times customer.
They pay more.
They stay subscribed longer.
They have a higher lifetime value.
And so they know that that is a strong wheelhouse of people who pay the New York Times to stay subscribed.
Um, and they never did what so many media orgs did, which was to shut off everything and send it to Facebook to be unmoderated.
Um, and so yeah, you need buy it.
You need a year or two.
Like community products need time.
And if you're not willing to do a year or two on a community product that reach people together on your website or your domain, then you should not do it.
You should do something else with the time.
Start a newsletter, build the list of people you can contact the care about what you're doing.
Just do something else.
Yeah.
Uh, well, that leads right into your fifth and final lesson, which is this.
It's hard to have success without long term execution.
And we had the author of Carrie Melissa Jones, uh, on one of our discussions.
And I remember her saying it takes at least eighteen months for a community to come together and I suspect that that's if you really know what you're doing and everything is is working properly.
Um, yeah, talk about that.
I mean, set some realistic expectations here for broadcasters, you know, how long is it going to take to get community efforts up and off the ground? Like I said, a year or two.
I think a year or two is safe.
I I think six months at minimum.
Um, but realistically, if you're going to invest the time to choose a platform to build a platform, um, to grow something that people are going to talk to one another on and spend time on, you kind of have to give it some time.
And maybe that means that you kind of keep the investment in check, sort of recognize what you're spending, um, and sort of have a runway to grow over that six months to twenty four months if you can swing it.
Um, before you really start to make judgments about how successful this is, whether or not you should kill it, what you should do with it, um, etcetera.
I think it's it's tough to do that, but that's what it takes to build really strong enduring community products is that time investment.
And if you can't do it, that's okay.
I understand.
Um, but it's it's you never wanna start something and invite people unless it's temporary and it's very nature, like you're doing an event or you're doing some sort of singular event, you never wanna start putting something and invite people to your space and then kill it in three months.
Like, it's just there's no point.
It does more harm than it does any potential gains.
So I think you wait until you're ready to actually invest in something, and you can measure it so you can see who the people are for participating in those spaces and what they mean to your organization or what they're giving you, how they're spending money, how often they renew and retain.
And then you can determine if it's if it's really worth it.
Yeah.
Uh, you mentioned measurement.
Are there some early signs you can see that will tell you whether you're on the right path or, you know, are there red flags that you might see early on that tell you that you need to do some course correction.
I think, um, so I always look at two buckets of metrics.
One are community health metrics.
That's what I care about as a community builder, things that I wanna see.
And then the second bucket is business metrics, uh, tying the community health to revenue, and that's the how you can get further by an investment, keep your job, keep things growing in a certain way.
So the goal is to tie the two together.
So community health would be something like active member versus a very basic one.
So you have your number of people who are actually active in the community and active at certain levels, maybe beyond visiting, posting, replying, things of that nature.
Um, and then you, you know, I think active members is a good one to to kind of focus on the understanding that there's an ebb and flow to it, like things are not always up in communities.
Things do go down on this conversation I've had with multiple bosses is like this is not a never ending mountain.
I'm not building a unicorn here.
I am building a community and those ebb and flow and the ebb and flow at different times a year and around holidays and all sorts things.
Um, and then once you find, like, one or two, again, active members is a good one to sort of focus on at the start tying that to sort of how people support whatever you're doing.
Um, so if you're a nonprofit, you're looking at sort of and sort of fundraising.
If you're a subscription service, you're looking at sort of retention revenue, as an example, um, at one product that was a, uh, a business community product where people paid to subscribe.
Um, we found that year over year, people who were active in the community, the online forum we had beyond an introduction, meaning they talked in the community beyond saying hello, for 18.
46%, we're likely to retain than someone who didn't.
And that meant about $1,800,000 in additional revenue for that organization in retention revenue.
The 18.
46% gain in renewals was $1,800,000.
And so, you know, that's an example you need to find something that works with the people who you have to convince, um, and the people who will continue to support and invest in the thing you're doing.
So you gotta not only build these metrics out, but you gotta talk to the people who you want them to influence and make sure that they're actually convinced and they believe in those metrics too.
Um, that's the fun of the work.
Well, so.
Uh, alright.
What advice have you got for public fraudcasters who may be, uh, you know, I I think a lot of them are at the very beginning of their community building journey.
They're just really starting to think about it.
You know, where would you tell them to begin? I always tell people to talk to the people who are using their thing right now.
Um, so you're listener, subscribers, readers, whatever it might be.
Um, I I think you have to talk to people before you decide to take an initiative.
So in other words, I would find the people who are most interested in what you're doing and either ask them a question that leads to a goal, meaning like trying to build a service like this, would they use it? Or if you have a specific idea in mind, ask them about that idea specifically.
This doesn't have to be like a 200 person survey software powered email marketing campaign.
They can be 10 people, 10 email addresses that you send manually and say, hey, you know, we know you're a subscriber.
Thank you for your loyalty.
We're thinking about doing this.
Would you use it? Would you help us get it started? Um, and I think that'll help you kind of fine or ideate around some idea.
Again, a simple example, if you're doing conversations in some form where people talk with one another, I think ideally what you wanna have is not only people saying that they would like to do it, but that they'll help you start it so that you can start privately behind the scenes, let them in, have sort of some activity going with real people, not phony activity.
And then you can invite the wider, um, group of supporters in later.
But yeah, start with start with five to 10 emails, find five to 10 people you think would give you some honest feedback, share with them what thinking.
Listen to what they say.
Change based upon that.
Ask again.
You know, it's not 10 questions.
It's like two or three.
So that's a good, just kind of starting point.
Yeah.
And that brings us full circle.
Start with that small community experience, and then you can grow it from there.
Uh, Patrick, the last question that I ask everybody is this.
I I want you to recommend a resource for people who are interested in community building.
And this can be a podcast you listen to.
It can be a book that you've read or a blog you follow or somebody that you follow on social media, what is a community building resource that you would recommend? Um, gosh.
Who would I recommend? What would I recommend? I would recommend I like, uh, Marjorie Anderson on LinkedIn.
Um, I would follow her.
Um, I don't think I don't think she's blogging anymore, but you can find her Marjorie Anderson.
She posts on LinkedIn.
Um, I like her a lot.
And, um, if you're looking for a newsletter, I'll throw on a bonus one.
There's one called everything in moderation.
Um, that covers sort of content moderation in the legal side of online community building, which is maybe a little heady for, um, the listeners you said are tuning in.
Still, it's an important topic and knowledge helps to, um, deal with fear that one has.
You kind of express sort of the fear of losing control, but knowledge around sort of what the law allows and what what's happening in the world I think is is a is a solve for that fear.
Alright.
Uh, Patrick, thank you so much for coming on and and sharing all of your insights and your wisdom and your experience with us.
Uh, this has been absolutely fantastic.
I really appreciate you taking the time.
My pleasure.
Thanks for having me.
I'm Seth Resler.
This has been Beyond the broadcast.
Thank you so much for listening.
You are invited to our virtual events anytime.
If you are a public media broadcaster, and of course, we'll always have the conversations here as well
