Public service narrow-casting?

In among all the hubbub about Ofcom, public service broadcasting and the future of Channel 4, who would have thought that Patient Opinion would get a mention? What a surprise!

And it's true - already we've had some very valuable help from the folks at 4ip, so far focused on getting the basics of the site right - search engine optimisation (Googliness, you might say) and usability. We're learning lots of good stuff which will soon turn itself into a better site.

But being mentioned in the context of public service broadcasting made me ponder. Patient Opinion is a digital publisher, and doesn't aspire to broadcasting. While we like to think we provide a public service, we also provide a service about a public service - the NHS. And, am I'm sure Paul must have said before somewhere in this blog, although we are looking for an audience, we're not looking for one in quite the same way as BBC online or CNN or anyone else.

For each posting on Patient Opinion, we're looking for a narrow, well-defined audience: those particular people - maybe the NHS manager, clincian or patient activist - who can take a story about their local health service and do something practical and positive with it. This isn't public service broadcasting, it's public service improvement. And we love it.