About the WGBH Forum Network
The WGBH Forum Network is an audio and video streaming Website dedicated to curating and serving live and on-demand lectures given by some of the world's foremost scholars, authors, artists, scientists, policy makers and community leaders. These events are hosted by world-class cultural and educational organizations in Boston and beyond. Through this online service hundreds of thousands of people worldwide listen to these talks wherever and whenever they choose. We are proud of the role we serve in our community, of protecting and projecting the public voice; and of informing and inspiring that public voice toward greater civic engagement around the important issues of our time.
The Forum boasts 70,000 unique visitors each month, a highly appreciative audience who has streamed and downloaded over 3 million lectures. It is also part of an expanding national network of public television and radio stations offering online lecture webcasts. Through a two-year grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, WGBH will work with Washington, DC’s WETA, and Public Broadcasting Atlanta, as well as PBS and NPR, to nationalize the Forum Network service. Lectures offered by local cultural and educational institutions will be contributed to our national archive and made available to other participating stations to offer on their local Forum Network Websites.
Learn more about the National Forum Network and the stations currently participating.
We offer three weekly lecture podcasts, listed below, which you can subscribe to through iTunes or the NPR podcast directory. We also offer full-screen videos through iTunesU , which you can download to your computer (search on WGBH Forum Network).
WGBH Forum Network | Public Domain [experts on the issues]
WGBH Forum Network | Book Tour [authors on their latest books]
WGBH Forum Network | Soapbox [those with a cause or concern]
Because we license this content expressly for webcasting, the WGBH Forum Network does not offer transcripts, audio, or video cassettes of these events. However, many of the organizations which host the events do, so we encourage you to click on a partner's logo to link to their website if you are interested in obtaining other materials or information.
Major support for the WGBH Forum Network comes from the Lowell Institute, an organization created to carry out the 1836 bequest of John Lowell Jr., to make free public lectures available to the citizens of Boston, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, PBS, and NPR.
Forum Facts:
- You've streamed 1.3 million lectures so far
- You've downloaded 3 million lectures so far
- We have about 70,000 unique visitors every month
- Tuesdays are your most popular streaming time
- Fridays are your favorite time to download
- 40% of you are from lands outside of the United States
- 49% of you listen to than rather view the lectures
- 88% of streams are via broadband
- 43% of our traffic is MP3 downloads
- 70% of you listen to the entire lecture
- Your favorite lecture is the "Psychology of Happiness"
- Your favorite topics are history, politics, and literature
- Your favorite series is the Top Twenty series
- You also like the Podcasts, and African American series
- More than 1,500 academic institutions access our content
- Our content is mentioned or linked to in hundreds of blogs
- Join our groups in Facebook, Eons, Zaads, or Google
- Our podcasts are in iTunes and the NPR directory
- Our full-screen videos are in iTunes U
- We have over 2,300 lectures and 220 curated series in our library
