What's the problem with NPR?
NPR has doubled its audience in less than ten years, and yet it's in crisis -- crisis enough to fire CEO Ken Stern last week.
What's the problem?
In (very) brief, NPR is largely a member organization -- its board, in large part, is composed of member station representatives. These member stations are freaking out as the national organization distributes more and more content directly to listeners via the web, satellite and podcasting. Ken Stern was a (relatively) aggressive advocate of this direct distribution, and so he got canned. (They said he left by "mutual agreement.")
The question for NPR is pretty simple: how do they satisfy listeners and stations?
Here's how I see it...
Public media's first responsibility is to serve the public. That's absolutely A#1. So both stations and national organizations should most certainly pursue any technology that makes their content more useful or convenient to the public. Making things harder for listeners is a terrible, terrible idea. So that means podcast every fucking thing, and think of any and all other things you can do to serve the public better.
If I was a station right now, I'd do a couple things. One is accept that radio use will decline slowly over the next 10-20 years. That's just reality. One is create programming that sustains itself, whether it's hyper-local, national or niche-oriented, then put that out into the world. The last is the one that I don't hear from NPR, which is that if NPR is making money from podcasts of their shows, and stations are making less from the radio broadcasts, stations should pay less.
I'm not really a public radio insider, so I can't suggest equations. And obviously, stations are a HUGE part of my own strategy for TSOYA for the forseeable future. But it feels like this whole debate is built upon a bizarro-world disconnect. Yes, the situation is tough. So be entrepreneurial.
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What's the problem?
In (very) brief, NPR is largely a member organization -- its board, in large part, is composed of member station representatives. These member stations are freaking out as the national organization distributes more and more content directly to listeners via the web, satellite and podcasting. Ken Stern was a (relatively) aggressive advocate of this direct distribution, and so he got canned. (They said he left by "mutual agreement.")
The question for NPR is pretty simple: how do they satisfy listeners and stations?
Here's how I see it...
Public media's first responsibility is to serve the public. That's absolutely A#1. So both stations and national organizations should most certainly pursue any technology that makes their content more useful or convenient to the public. Making things harder for listeners is a terrible, terrible idea. So that means podcast every fucking thing, and think of any and all other things you can do to serve the public better.
If I was a station right now, I'd do a couple things. One is accept that radio use will decline slowly over the next 10-20 years. That's just reality. One is create programming that sustains itself, whether it's hyper-local, national or niche-oriented, then put that out into the world. The last is the one that I don't hear from NPR, which is that if NPR is making money from podcasts of their shows, and stations are making less from the radio broadcasts, stations should pay less.
I'm not really a public radio insider, so I can't suggest equations. And obviously, stations are a HUGE part of my own strategy for TSOYA for the forseeable future. But it feels like this whole debate is built upon a bizarro-world disconnect. Yes, the situation is tough. So be entrepreneurial.
Labels: public radio
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posted by Jesse Thorn at Thursday, March 13, 2008
4 Comments:
I can't speak for the rest of the country, but here in Memphis, after raising thousands and thousands of dollars to build new transmission towers to broadcast shows like TSOYA, our local NPR affiliate decided that "Hi-Def" radio was the wave of the future and discontinued those affiliate stations. Those of us who wanted to hear that type of programming in lieu of classical music outside of drive time are required to buy additional equipment.
Or, alternatively, bypass the local NPR affiliate altogether, download podcasts, and listen at will with the benefit of time-shifting and no additional costs, donating money that might have gone to the local NPR affiliate as a pledge directly to the shows that interest us.
I don't know how much Ken Stern was involved in my local affiliate's decision to abandon stimulating intellectual broadcasts on its local affiliate stations, or how much the manufacturers of HD radios were, but I think it's probably driven more iPod sales than the folks at WKNO realize.
Jesse,
And to what extent do you think this is a problem for PRI, APM, and our fellow-travelers at Pacifica? If not this, then can you identify what their respective problems are?
-JAK
As far as HD Radio goes, yeah... there was a big federal grant for systems upgrades, including HD Radio, but I don't believe it'll fly, even with the equipment in place. There's only a marginal effort to get it into cars, and that's where it needs to be.
As far as PRI/APM/Pacifica... well, Pacifica is a whole other boat, and they've had a lot of drama lately... they also don't really have much national programming, relatively speaking. For APM and PRI, they're much less station-driven in their management. NPR is at least theoretically a group of stations, PRI and APM are independent actors. So it's less of an issue.
The other thing is that NPR makes the tentpoles of public radio - ATC and ME. Those are where the conflict lies in large part right now.
Clearly one-to-many radio is at its peak or nearing for everything but shows that have interaction or timeliness. There will always be some market for one-to-many (since not everyone wants to always have to make an editorial choice) but it is going to decline. And with most things in decline it will loose its prestige and following that the ad and sponsorship dollars will decrease.
I did see an interesting discussion that NPR could get the sponsorships, insert the ads into the shows and then pay the locals to carry the show rather than make them pay...that might make the locals more happy.
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