NY Times
April 7, 2008
A Comprehensive PBS Documentary on the Iraq War Becomes a Big Hit Online
By ELIZABETH JENSEN
Executives at “Frontline” do not yet know how many people watched their recent four-and-a-half hour documentary, “Bush’s War,” because of PBS’s complicated Nielsen ratings.
Online, however, “Bush’s War,” which was produced for the fifth anniversary of the United States’ invasion of Iraq, has set a record, with more than 1.5 million views of all or part of the program, which was streamed in 26 segments.
“Frontline” has streamed most of its documentaries free since 2002 (
www.pbs.org/frontline), part of an effort to reach younger audiences than typically tune in to PBS. The online viewing to date of “Bush’s War,” which was broadcast in two parts on March 24 and 25, is an estimated “10 times the traffic of a normal show for us,” said Sam Bailey, the program’s director of new media and technology. Viewers are also sticking around much longer than they usually do on the site, typically for 7 to 10 minutes.
David Fanning, the executive producer of “Frontline,” which has been on the air for 25 years, attributed the Web interest in this particular show to “timing, no question,” noting that PBS had been the only network taking such a comprehensive look back at the Iraq war around the time of the anniversary.
But “Frontline,” which is produced by WGBH in Boston, has also worked to improve the online video experience. With the help of a $5 million MacArthur Foundation grant last year, a new full-screen video player was introduced on the “Frontline” site in time for “Bush’s War.”
Viewers watching the documentary, which drew material from more than 40 past “Frontline” programs, also found an interactive, annotated timeline on terrorism over roughly three decades, including 175 embedded video clips and links to full transcripts of more than 400 “Frontline” interviews. The material remains archived on the site, along with many “Frontline” films.
The program is developing an affiliate video player that will allow “Frontline” video to be used on other media organizations’ Web sites, but still be served by the PBS server, so “our nonprofit, noncommercial-generated content can be out there in the marketplace,” Mr. Fanning said. “That’s the real dream.”