URBANA – WILL AM-FM-TV wasn't cutting it.

Sure, the public broadcaster has AM and FM radio stations. And yes, television is made and shown on screens around the area and the country.

But the title didn't reflect all the other activities going on at WILL – the hundreds of thousands of people around the world going to its Internet site, the hundreds of children taking advantage of programs like Youth Media Workshop and adults using the Radio Reading service, which helps get content to people with visually impairments.

So on Monday, WILL is opening a new umbrella, taking on the name Illinois Public Media.

"We were getting confused, saying 'This is WILL World, WILL Digital,'" said Mark Leonard, the station's general manager. "Just from a practical standpoint, it was becoming difficult."

The name "WILL" will still be around, but refers to specific parts of Illinois Public Media, rather than the whole, said marketing director Kate Dobrovolny. The "Illinois" in the title helps convey to people outside the region where content comes from, and that the station is affiliated with the University of Illinois.

And the "Public"? "We don't make profits. We exist basically to serve our community," Leonard said. "That is, at its core, what we think Illinois Public Media is all about."

The "Media" part implies "that we are across platforms," Dobrovolny said.

The name change has been about six years in the making, she said. "We could see that we were moving into digital TV, digital radio," she said. "WILL is still the signature brand under Illinois Public Media."

An increasing Web audience from around the world added to the impetus to move. "Everything that we produce locally, radio and TV, has a significant Web presence," said Jack Brighton, the director of new media and innovation. "Everything we produce locally gets archived online."

Over the last few years, Brighton said, Web hits on www.will.illinois.edu have skyrocketed, where the site now gets about 60,000 users a month and about half a million mp3 downloads a month. Only three years ago, he said, there were about 4,000 downloads a month.

"The Internet audience is the fastest growing," Brighton said. "It's going to get bigger and bigger. We're just at the point where we're going to get very good at doing sites."

One goal is to turn the site into a hub for what Leonard calls "community listening sessions," to look at issues within the community and find ways to address them.

"We're using those to inform us about community needs and community aspirations," Leonard said. "We may not be a social service agency ... but we can be the (link) that brings it together."

So, for example, the perspectives of participants in the Great Schools Together planning process for Champaign public schools were filmed, and then community members could comment.

"We wanted to facilitate, not just being the storyteller, but enabling people to be the storyteller themselves," Brighton said.