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NPR & The Modern Media Distribution
Isao writes "The U.S. National Public Radio (NPR) network is feeling the pinch between giving their content away for free on the radio and on the internet as podcasts. The dilemma is that some of their audience is turning from the radio to podcasts, not for flexibility, but to either access locally unavailable content or avoid fundraising marathons (NPR is partially funded by listener donations). This has begun to skew their financial model. What's different about NPR's response is that they're not pretending that their old business model will work forever."
I'd happily pay $1 or $2 per show for some NPR shows. This American Life is certainly worth that and more...
I just can't use Audible's DRM nonesense. iTunes aparently has the same issue (I've never used it).
The big difference with the podcasts for me is they're in a format I can use.
Anyone who wants to know what is going on in the world need only tune to their channel. In my opinion, they're taking a stab at eliminating ignorance in our nation by bathing everyone in nearly free (and unbiased) information and I'd consider that more valuable than cable TV.
My work here is dung.
Maybe you should do a little research before posting knee-jerk reactions that do nothing but wave the ignorant-twit flag.
For the record, a whopping 2% of NPR's budget comes from government sources. That money is not given to NPR -- it comes by way of competetive grants that they apply for. My local stations get 0% of their opperating budget from government sources.
Apparently you don't know the difference between the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (government funded), the Public Broadcasting System (government funded) and National Public Radio (not government funded).
Congrats! You now score as high as Rush Limbaugh on the Accuracy of Research scale. Now go spend three minutes on Google before posting again.
Two caveats you should mention or learn that the corporation for public broadcasting is funded by congress and pays for both public content production and local station expenses, which directly supply the budget for NPR (about 50% station fees and about 50% direct grants).
Degaussing scares the bad magnetism out of the monitor and fills it with good karma.
Umm, according to the NPR link you posted, some of NPR's revenues do indeed come from tax dollars. From the NPR site:
"On average, public radio stations (including NPR Member
stations) receive the largest percentage of their revenue
(34%) from listener support, 25% from corporate underwriting
and foundations, and 13% from CPB allocations.*
"(* These figures are derived from the most recent CPB data
available, FY02. The remaining average revenue breakdown is:
6% from local and state governments, 15% from institutional
support, and 7% from all other sources.)"
Looks like a few "red cents" from our taxes are subsidizing NPR after all.
NPR's podcasts are underwritten. Listen to one.
The 13% figure that you quoted as coming from CPB is actually describing where individual public radio stations get their operating funds. NPR (which does not operate individual radio stations) receives less than 2% of its operating budget from competitive federal grants. They compete with any other not-for-profit to receive those grants. Read the page you quoted again more carefully as the information is all there.
You might be interested in reading exactly how NPR works. Check out this link for more information: http://www.npr.org/about/nprworks.html The bottom line is that because individual public radio stations operate independently from NPR, they are (more or less) free to choose their programming. This is why not all NPR content is available on all stations across the US.
To sum up, you can bitch and whine all you want about the feds supporting local public radio. However, NPR itself is a largely self sufficient operation that produced some really great content.
Taft
Why is it that people automatically assume intellectual==liberal?
Only liberals assume that.
The rest of us belive that NPR is liberal due to it's liberal bias, not its intellectual content.
It is not a violation of copyright to record a radio broadcast for personal use. Nor is it a violation of copyright to record a video broadcast. Why are you so determined to give our rights away to media cartels?
Man, you really need that seminar!
There's some evidence that NPR has a conservative bias. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting periodically studies the NPR guestlist to determine if NPR "promote[s] personal growth rather than corporate gain" and "speak[s] with many voices, many dialects" as it purports to do. FAIR has a page dedicated to NPR that includes all their criticism of NPR programming. Was FAIR fair to NPR in their study of conservative bias? NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey A. Dvorkin says "The FAIR study seems about right to me with a couple of exceptions."
Long before podcasting, I ripped NPR programming from their RealAudio streams and crunched it down to MP3s. I stopped giving money to NPR when they killed low power FM. I felt that the corporate sponsors were (and still are) using NPR to greenwash their reputation, but I still enjoyed a lot of the programming. But NPR never strayed far enough from the administration's line for me when they covered the Iraq War, and when they "scooped" the rest of the media with their phony WMD claim, I gave up on them entirely. I turned to Democracy Now, and I use their podcast service. I also contribute more to them than I ever did to NPR, since they're free of corporate sponsorship.