"Legacy business" or not, I believe that listening to local public radio makes me a better citizen of my city. NPR needs to do everything it can to keep the local stations alive because it's not just the nationally popular programming that matters. Honestly, my local NPR station, WNYC, is the only remotely intelligent source of local news. Where else am I going to hear Andrew Cuomo, Bill de Blasio, and other influential people having a frank discussion on important local issues? The only alternatives are random internet blogs, NY Daily News, and Fox 5, and some crazy right wing talk shows in Jersey.
I don't see any problem with doing what it takes to keep these stations alive, even if it means that Ira Glass can't tell me to download this American Life using iTunes (which I already do).
I'd agree with you for the most part. But podcasts have a huge advantage in many ways over listening to radio.
What would be nice would be a system where NPR bundles stories, and fundraising appeals, from the listener's local public radio station into the podcast. To give the same experience as listening to Morning Edition or All Things Considered locally. I suppose this would be a nightmare to implement but it's worth consideration.
I don't know a ton about public radio in America, but I'd bet that WNYC is one of the most well funded (they produce Radiolab, among others). As discussed in the article, most local stations are just republishing NPR content, not creating the kind of great content you're talking about.
> As discussed in the article, most local stations are just republishing NPR content, not creating the kind of great content you're talking about.
All public radio stations I know of do republish NPR content, and that's usually the bulk of their programming, but I live in a very poor, conservative state and the local public radio station has local news and many other local programs. I can't imagine it's different elsewhere.
In fact, a quick look at the schedule shows all the programming from 8:30-12 on weekdays is local programming, with different shows on different days. If the affiliate in my state can afford that, I can't imagine others can't.
I've listened to WNYC for years but I have also lived all over the States except the Northwest and nothing can touch the quality of WNYC. I now live in PA but I stream the station all the time with my phone.
Why don't they tie the local stations into the apps so revenue can be tracked by either sposorship or geolocation? As well as locally relevant content?
I would imagine that would open a whole can of works for clearing licensing for clips used on shows produced at the local NPR stations. Right now, you can be pretty well assured that there's a limited audience for these based on signal propagation. The moment that you take a local station and put it online the agencies through which you clear these clips are going to squeeze you for more money because the potential audience size is larger.
We're still stuck in that in-between zone where legacy businesses from the last century are in the fight for their lives while everyone with half a sense can see the future is digital distribution.
This struggle is a generational one. Older people are used to their TVs, radios and newspapers and seem as a group unwilling to transition. Institutions on the wrong side of this fight like cable companies and cable TV stations, radio stations, movie theaters, local news TV networks and local newspapers haven't made it easy for them. Younger people on the other hand don't even bother.
And that's how you can see the writing on the wall for these obviously legacy businesses. By being unwilling to fully commit to the future, because they'll make less money, they'll upset existing relationships, they'll die. Blockbuster died a quick death. The transition from video rentals to online video was sudden and quick, because Blockbuster didn't control the content and couldn't lock in viewers. This kind of end will come for all these other places too though as younger generations have different expectations. They want their content on demand, and they want it on any of their devices and they want it without having to subscribe to expensive bundles of junk they'll never consume.
The problem for how to provide the same high quality local content that these legacy businesses can sometimes provide is a real problem that hasn't been addressed yet. AOL's patch was a very innovative and high quality way but it lacked adoption and was unsuccessful. I think we may have to see the old guards die and endure a short period without high quality local content before it can rise again.
I don't disagree with your overall point, but I don't see how cross-marketing is a requirement for a media organization to be "with it" in your book. Honestly, radio is a shitty channel through which to market your podcast. A) you already have a captive listener, and b) they're probably driving, or are at work, in which case they're not really well positioned to subscribe to a podcast. Their hands are probably full.
I don't see what's wrong with tailoring your marketing strategies. Market a podcast in the venue where people are looking for podcasts: on their phones, in social media.
> radio is a shitty channel through which to market your podcast
Maybe I'm just not the average NPR listener, but any time I have terrestrial radio playing, I'm highly subject to interruptions (eg., the end of my drive, a meeting during my workday, etc.) I always almost find an opportunity to resume the broadcast (via podcast) helpful.
Right, the benefits of podcast over radio are easy to explain.
The parent post's point is not that it is hard to market over radio, but rather that it is hard to action on the advertisement, since the listener likely has their hands full.
They don't need to drop what they are doing and go online and find the podcast. But they might do it later when they are home. The point is to spread awareness of it. Especially NPR's app, the listeners of NPR are the primary market for it, and now they can't advertise it to them.
The app will probably die without the ability to get listeners to use it. How many people just scroll for random apps in the app store and happen to stumble upon it? Instead of searching for it because they heard about it.
Radio, TV and newspapers are still good channels for entertainment. The internet is another, different one. We're still in a transition phase, but I think the respective strengths are beginning to show of each medium. In my own case, I'd mostly abandoned newspapers, but now I've gone back, as the information density is just so much greater, and I find myself reading more diverse stories than I otherwise would on the same publication's website.
I listen to local NPR station often and I had never ever heard of NPR One. So I went to one.npr.org and I'm no wiser. It's a white page with a logo and a completely undocumented audio-play widget. I'd say the "don't talk about NPR One" rule extends to NPR One.
Try downloading the app. I was very pleasantly surprised with it. Actually, that's an understatement: I really like it, although it may come down to a matter of taste.
Thanks for the suggestion. However, it is not my habit to listen to stuff with my phone. I have an iPod Nano that I use to listen to music and podcasts while running (much lighter as well as less breakable and stealable than a phone); and when not running, I'm at my computer with iTunes running. But clearly anyone's MMV.
Thank you. That is the _second_ item in the DuckDuckGo search results. Guess I should have looked a millisecond longer. But why the one.npr.org does not at least have an "about" link to it...
I listen to a number of NPR podcasts and don't live in the US.
I used to live in the US and donate to my local NPR station.
It's strange that on every podcast episode they don't suggest a way for me to contribute. Other successful podcasts like The Guardian's highly entertaining Football Weekly podcast also suffer from this.
I'd like to contribute something sometimes. I've bought t-shirts from podcasts that suggest that (Planet Money, 99% Invisible) and am happy to do something.
Also, the ads on podcasts are not well targeted. I've heard of Squarespace...
It's remarkable that there isn't a good clean way to put ads into and better monetise podcasts.
> It's strange that on every podcast episode they don't suggest a way for me to contribute.
On NPR one app, they do occasionally have a "donate now" opportunity and their pitch ends with "we're looking forward to connecting with you...". If you're not using that app, then you might be hearing content that NPR syndicates but if they raised money it wouldn't be for your local station.
You can tell NPR went to some pains to integrate local broadcasting in their app.
If NPR-one hassled you with every item, it would get old fast -- some of the news clips are just over a minute or two long.
@Sien, completely agree with you. This is a solution Awesound (currently in YC Fellowship) is building: a good, clean way to dynamically put targeted ads into podcasts. We also enable publishers to accept payments from listeners. Say hi! (email mark@awesound or twitter @awesoundapp)
What this article doesn't seem to explain is how NPR is supposed to monetize its content via podcast or NPR One - currently monetization is handled by the local affiliate via pledge drives, then paid for by subscription upstream. It seems to me that promoting NPR One would draw revenue from local affiliates - without replacing it elsewhere.
>NPR has advertisements on their podcasts, usually at the beginning and/or end of a show.<
I would love to see all advertising done this way--announce who makes the content possible, then get out of the way of the content...remind us again at the end where the funding came from if you wish...tasteful, dignified, makes the point, and grants recognition...
When advertising annoys people it's almost always because it gets in the way of the content...it distracts from what one is there to actually "see"...
Something so simple you'd think almost anyone could grasp the concept, yet so many advertisers get advertising completely wrong...web pages are chock full of garish flashing click-bait nonsense...
Disclosure: I am a long-time NPR listener and local station supporter...
I think public services in general have a different concept of what advertising means, compared to the private sector. It's almost like the advertiser is a donor rather than a client.
With private sector advertising, I almost expect the ads to be garish. If the only goal is to make money, then market forces push for the ads to become more and more invasive until you basically can't view the content thanks to all the ads.
I'm sure I'm echoing what many people have said before, but we need to find a way for content to stop being a cost center and start to become the actual source of revenue.
The Reply All podcast, and maybe all by Gimlet media, play a very specific background song when a paid advertisement is running. It's a very clever way of helping listeners differentiate.
Problem is it's the same few companies every time in every podcast. There are apparently only 3 companies that podcast listeners are interested in, or at least that care to advertise to podcast listeners.
I agree but for things like TV shows they need a lot more than one mention right at the top. Many budgets are a couple million dollars for an hour of TV.
They all do, but for the most part they're much better-timed and less crass than ads on commercial radio. Usually just a simple, "programming this hour is brought to you with help from our listeners and from the fine folks at Bob's Bicycle Barn."
I just want to say as an NPR-junkie of 20+ years, the lady that currently reads the promotional announcements makes me want to smash my phone, so I now mute quite often.
Aren't local affiliates an artifact of an outmoded content delivery system (terrestrial radio)? I understand that it's sad to have the local affiliate hurt, but I think the age of affiliate broadcasting is drawing to an end. It's something that will become a larger issue in the mid-term future, IMO.
Local affiliates are independent stations with their own production departments. Some shows get picked up for national syndication (e.g. Car Talk from WBUR, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me WHYY, On The Media WNYC, Prarie Home Companion by Minnesota Public Radio ) while other shows might target the local market which won't make sense as a national broadcast.
Local affiliates can cross license content directly between each other, or from NPR, PRI, BBC, American Public Radio, and Public Radio Exchange, etc.
Local affiliates are not simple repeater stations, as you seem to believe.
I am always delighted when a story from our small town's affiliate gets picked up by one of the nationally distributed news programs like All Things Considered.
I understand that local affiliates produce their own content, especially local content that's not interesting to bigger outlets. I was calling the delivery system outmoded, the need for local broadcast affiliates to facilitate distribution. It's a cost that doesn't need to exist in the age of saturated 4G, and I think that in the medium-term, this issue will become larger, especially as more and more cars get cellular modems.
Unfortunately, just saying "We produce Car Talk/Fresh Air/whatever" is going to be enough to salvage the affiliate as presently composed; if they have a show of value, they'll have to make it available independently and will just be the Fresh Air company, not WHYY in Philadelphia.
In the Southern California market, we have two big NPR stations (KPCC and KCRW). Both stations actually produce a lot of their own radio shows, and supplement some nationally syndicated content.
When I visited Oregon, I noticed most of the shows were nationally syndicated, and I suspect that might have to do with how much money they can get from their local regions.
Radio is extremely cost-effective in reaching a large audience, and the equipment's pretty bulletproof. NPR's current CEO, Jahrl Mohn has made this point in interviews.
A 100W trasnmitter can cover a small town, 1 kW - 50 kW is (very roughly) the range of many larger FM stations, and can reach an area 100-200 miles in diameter, though usually less given geography and competing stations. Doc Searls (an old radio head himself) fairly frequently posts stats about various stations, and their reception areas.
The best thing about broadcast is that more listeners don't cost you, and there's no last-mile problem. It's particularly well-suited to mobile uses (especialy cars).
The downside: what's on is what's on. This increasingly is my frustration, and the more I'm used to on-demand services, the less viable I find this. There are alternatives, such as a DVR type service which records over-the-air broadcasts for later playback, and there are some concepts along these lines, though most prove pretty fickle and annoying, with little uptake.
I suspect there'll be a place for radio, though that may shift a bit with time.
If cost effectiveness is a concern, why are they not using BitTorrent? You can imagine why Hollywood doesn't like it as a matter of politics, but you would think the likes of NPR and the BBC could see past that.
The stream is already free-as-in-beer, what is somebody going to do to it?
That's one possibility, but while it addresses in part the cost element -- largely by externalising it and spreading the distribution load about -- it doesn't address the complexity element.
It's possible to make a radio out of a couple of crystal diodes. A tuner and FM receiver are slightly more complicated, but a 9-volt battery or very small solar cell will run a receiver, and transmitters, as noted, are pretty bog-simple.
Another quite probably underappreciated element is security. It's exceptionally difficult to hack into a radio, or into a radio transmitter, through the radio itself (there are of course other pathways to hacking a modern computerised radio broadcast operation, but there's no reason such an operation need be computerised).
Bittorrent is wonderful stuff, it's a brilliant hack, I use it myself. It's more useful at distributing large files than small ones, and benefits greatly by large audience (saturating many sources). As part of a samizdat information distribution system, it's great.
But you need servers, recipients need computers, you need a network, with last-mile connectivity, everything needs power, there's security issues, there's authenticating who's what, and more.
> But you need servers, recipients need computers, you need a network, with last-mile connectivity, everything needs power, there's security issues, there's authenticating who's what, and more.
Sure, you need all that stuff, but you already have all that stuff.
Do you? Really? In all cases? Where radio works now?
Rather than argue the point further, as you seem bent on denying the point, I'll suggest you list out as many counterexamples of your claims as you can.
I have all of that stuff, but does an out of work coal miner in Appalachia have that? Does a street kid in New York City?
Radio is a technology that connects communities much more than television or Internet access can, especially during times of natural disaster or crisis.
I know bandwidth quotas are becoming a thing in North America, but they're getting worse in Australia - both upload and download usage is counted on fibre and ADSL connections, and mobile (cell) metering has always worked that way.
I want to be a good seed, but not if it costs me hundreds of dollars a month.
If you live in a country with excessive quotas (and you can't lobby your government to put a stop to it), you can always stop seeding after your ratio is 1:1 (or 2:1 if you're feeling generous), which should hardly have a huge effect on your bill. That's all the network needs to be healthy if everybody does it, and if you live in a country with a terrible quota you can leave making up for the jerks who don't seed at all to people who don't have that problem.
Most serious torrent users rent a "seedbox", which is a colocated system with rtorrent installed. You get access to at least 100Mb up and down and it's often unmetered. You seed everything from there. They can be reasonably cheap since multiple tenants can share the same hardware.
I'm not sure what you mean by outmoded here. Most listeners to public radio programming are listening over the radio, not by podcast. And I would argue that radio is a superior delivery system for most of the programs (everything but the weekly or bi-weekly in-depth shows).
"And remember folks if you'd like to support public broadcasting visit our donate page, or shop.npr.com when shopping on Amazon to help keep these podcasts on the air."
Wow. Those are some seriously self-righteous tweets.
There's a delicious irony in people using the canonical example of unprofitable social media to criticize NPR's decision(s) to prioritize its lucrative distribution network over the free-media flavor of the moment. Say what you will about NPR, but the affiliates pay their bills.
I don't know if this is the "right" decision, but I'm willing to wager that NPR will be around long after Twitter has filed for bankruptcy. Distribution the top challenge for any product, and NPR's distribution -- and therefore, primary value generator -- happens because of its large affiliate network. It isn't a "tax" to invest in that system. Unless digital distribution is self-sustaining, it's the other way around.
(Edit: I just got a downvote before my comment was visible. Not sure how that's possible, unless someone is systematically down-voting my comments...)
Recently I've enjoyed the "NPR News App". TFA didn't mention it, but it is really well done. That sort of app could easily be a neglected afterthought. (Example: pretty much any other app with an "old media" brand.) It's obvious that skilled people care for this app. It looks good, it's not complicated, it has a large variety, and you get to the audio content quickly.
If the public pays for NPR, why doesn't the public own the output? ie, why no Creative Commons licensing? Plenty of stuff on the internet is free; NPR is not free, we ALREADY paid for it.
I would appreciate comments about the Creative Commons aspect of this, not quibbles about line items in the budget.
You are making a strawman argument, I didn't say "the public" meant taxpayers, I was talking about the "the public" in National "public" Radio and the "public" Broadcasting System, and the federally funded Corporation for "public" Broadcasting.
And in any case, your clarification is baloney, you are either being fooled by NPR's accounting sleights of hand, or you are helping to propagandize it. Federal money does in fact flow through public broadcasting's network of "shell" companies such as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to local stations to and then to NPR. Here is an article on PBS.org about Congress potentially cutting funding to NPR. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/us-house-votes-to-cut-np... Yes, that was 2011, but the same baloney about NPR not receiving direct federal funding was the story back then too.
In any case, my argument that the works of public broadcasting belong under a creative commons license is referring to the same public that the stations bray about endlessly, "you the listener".
> According to the 2009 financial statement, about 50% of NPR revenues come from the fees it charges member stations for programming and distribution charges. Typically, NPR member stations receive funds through on-air pledge drives, corporate underwriting, state and local governments, educational institutions, and the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). In 2009, member stations derived 6% of their revenue from federal, state and local government funding, 10% of their revenue from CPB grants, and 14% of their revenue from universities. While NPR does not receive any direct federal funding, it does receive a small number of competitive grants from CPB and federal agencies like the Department of Education and the Department of Commerce. This funding amounts to approximately 2% of NPR's overall revenues.
So, still a small (10%ish) portion of their budget even if you count the government/CPB-derived portion of the revenue from member stations.
If a small amount of federal funding meant they had to make everything public domain, they'd probably just give up that funding and make some cuts. No one wins there, IMO.
"If a small amount of federal funding meant they had to make everything public domain, they'd probably just give up that funding and make some cuts. No one wins there, IMO."
Well, except the public, but they are never a concern in these decisions. Just a cash cow to be milked.
Not just picking on NPR, PBS has exactly the same problem. The folks who want to educate the world want to upload entire legal episodes to youtube, but the business folks in charge of the local stations don't want to go out of business, so...
"The public" funds McDonalds, then. My buying a hamburger doesn't mean I get the rights to the McDonalds trademark.
People donate to NPR of their own free will with the complete understanding that they're doing it as a donation, not as a "make our content public domain" licensing agreement. A pledge drive donation isn't a purchase, you haven't paid for anything, for the same reasons donating to Obama's campaign didn't buy you a night in the Lincoln Bedroom.
You are not coming close to understanding what I'm saying.
I don't think it's instructive to compare public broadcasting with McDonalds (a for profit company), I'd compare them to Wikipedia. Wikipedia goes to great pains to maintain NPOV, and they give away their information product. I think public broadcasting should be more like Wikipedia; Wikipedia sets a higher standard for operating in the public interest.
How about you take a look at their current licensing terms [0], which seem reasonable to me, and tell us what you think Creative Commons would accomplish for NPR and the public? It might go a long way in answering your question.
My local NPR station plays nothing but classical music. I think because it's the cheapest stuff to broadcast, just filler content. They do the news at certain hours, but most the time it's music.
It's funny you say that, because my local NPR station actually stopped playing classical music entirely. They spun it out into a standalone classical music station in order to focus on providing more news programming.
I like NPR so I donated once. From that day forward they sent me dozens of letters in the mail asking for more money. I suspect they spent my entire donation amount spamming me.
I didn't want to agree with you. But you're not wrong.
You almost certainly did not donate to NPR, but rather to your local public radio station.
Those local stations run the gamut of sophistication. My local public radio station for instance (WBEZ in Chicago) is very, very good about not sending mail you don't want. They have an easy to use internet enabled monthly giving program and a pledge drive free internet stream for donors during the pledge drive.
But they are one of the biggest stations in the country and have the production dept. to back that up. Other stations are little more than adjuncts to the local college's telecomms program.
The difference between NPR and your local public radio channel is not understood by most people, but it gets to the heart of the point of this article.
They need to make the payroll, though, and that's how the system works currently. What I'm hoping will happen is a transition approach where e.g. the radio might still be interrupted but users of apps like NPR One could continue uninterrupted after paying, and they'd work out some revenue sharing deal to pay for local news, etc.
I'm not holding my breath on any of that happening quickly since you're talking about renegotiating into a new business model with a bunch of different parties.
WNYC chooses to shorten the pledge drive the higher over the goal they run. So a two-week pledge drive has gone as short as ten days from people front-loading donations.
Our local station is working on that. They do a week or two of gentle announcements that one's coming up, the goal, and where to donate online. They also stress that as soon as the goal is met, the drive ends, even if the goal is met online before the drive starts.
Thus far, it seems to be working. The week-long drives have dropped to 1-3 days.
KNOW (Minneapolis/St Paul) have been pushing "Sustaining Membership" for a few years now. While it hasn't eliminated the need for the member drives it has reduced the number of days they run them for.
I don't see any problem with doing what it takes to keep these stations alive, even if it means that Ira Glass can't tell me to download this American Life using iTunes (which I already do).