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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 grew up in Minnesota where the land is flat and it would take me three and half hours to drive between my parent's house and the University of Minnesota. My car was a complete junker and therefore wasn't worth the two hundred or so dollars it would take to equip it with a CD player. So instead, I listened to the many programs that NPR and MPR had to offer.
Two of my absolute favorites were This American Life and Car Talk. Oftentimes, I would find myself in a parking lot listening to Ira Glass as the episode he was doing had me hooked and I couldn't even get out of my car to buy groceries.
My senior year of college found me looking up TAL episodes online and using Total Recorder to compress the Real Audio feeds directly to MP3. Was I stealing from TAL? I didn't really feel like it, I was a poor college student and I had heard the program on the radio--I just wanted it on my computer to listen to it time after time.
I'll never forget the time I heard the two part series of Come Back to Afghanistan and it's sequel. What really happened and is happening in Afghanistan never hit home until I heard it through the voice of a young teenager named Hyder Akbar.
I have made a few contributions to NPR since I've graduated but I can see where they'd be strapped financially. I think NPR could take advantage of the modern media formats that all of us seek. I have purchased Car Talk CDs and I'd purchase TAL CDs too. Even more importantly, I'd be more than willing to pay a dollar through iTunes or Napster or whatever service you choose to have a random episode of TAL or Car Talk on my MP3 player. They seem to have the audio book version of Poultry Slam but not every episode, correct me if I'm wrong but I don't have any kind of service to check on hand.
My work here is dung.
Couldn't one simply add the marathon-style begging for financial assistance to the start of each podcast? Many people listen to podcasts on the go (jogging, for example) where they aren't about to manually fast-forward. Some simply won't fast-forward out of laziness. Surely that sort of advertising, as long as it is short and to the point, could be effective.
To be honest, my sciences teacher (Yes, that's right, Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Principles of Tech teacher :P ) is an absolute NPR junkie. I would say the reason he uses the podcasts and other materials available on the website is that it's easier to present to the students than telling them to listen to something in advance on a Friday of all days! (I've recently started listening to NPR on the radio on the way to and from school and I can see why people like it, but it's too bad its only a 10 minute drive.)
My UID is prime... is yours?
My prediction is that NPR will be acquired by the AFN and be their "liberal" station.
The old business model is also far worse, so radios should really welcome the new era. Adding coverage used to require a huge investment in equipment. Content can now be distributed to the entire world in the form of podcasts and streams, which are much easier to scale, making the number of potential listeners and therefore revenue sources much much larger. Good content can now pay off far more handsomely. For example, my favorite station is outside my state, and it would have gone through very hard times without out-of-state contributions.
Yes, it is a new era, yes we need to face these challenges. Since NPR is our radio station, they owe more to the people than they do to their affiliates. If you look at their 2003 Annual Report you can see that they derive less than 3% of their annual revenue from members and that their internet initiatives account for 5% of their annual expenses. I say it's time for a paradigm shift in radio and let's see public radio lead that charge. Is there a chance that the affiliates will go under? Absolutely. Are we required to support those affiliates even as the world changes around them? No. Sure, my grandmother may not be able to listen to Prairie Home Companion until I come over and set her up with the podcast, but she is in the minority at this point in my opinion and that minority is getting smaller by attrition every year.
"What's different about NPR's response is that they're not pretending that their old business model will work forever."
A content provider in this day & age not trying to screw their end customer? That's inconceivable!
Agreed on the spend,spend,spend part. However:
c le/2005/06/09/AR2005060902283_pf.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti
Personally, I like the pay-for-play model so I donate to both NPR and PBS every year. Programming like Cartalk for me and Arthur/Cyberchase for my kid are well worth the dollars. If Congress succeeds in shutting down funding then I'll double the donation and hope that there are enough other people in my financial situation to do the same.
This suggests to me that the local stations are no longer adding any value to the situation. If they can't generate enough listeners for their local content, then their primary purpose is as a distribution mechanism for the national content. But the podcasts are turning out to be a more efficient mechanism for that distribution. Which means that the local stations aren't necessary.
I see a couple of options for the local stations all based on this assumption: if an entity is adding cost to the supply chain without adding value, that entity can and should be removed. In this case, the local station is no longer providing a valuable delivery of national content, so here are the options that I think the locals have:
Is this wrong? If so, wouldn't it invalidate the oft use argument around here that the RIAA should be removed because they're also no longer providing value?
Key to financial independence: Spend less than you earn. Save and invest the difference. Do it for a long time.
From the article:
"She says she's seen few new donations from out-of-market listeners but that the expanded audience helps her sell larger underwriter sponsorships."
Selling larger underwriter sponsorships is the key here. If people are switching off during pledge drives, or fast-forwarding through them on MP3 players, they'll end up dying a slow death. I don't know about your local NPR station, but ours always seems to be on the ragged edge of dropping a lot of programming, at least to hear them tell the story. They might be able to keep up with a few CD sales here and there, and perhaps people will pay a buck or two to listen via legal dowloads, at least for a short time.
But as we've already seen, if people can download it for free, they'll do it instead of buying those CDs. People might not like the idea of sponsorships, but it's what is going to keep them on the air.
I didn't notice it in the main posts, but McDonald's Corp.'s founder's wife Joan Kroc left NPR $200 million back in 2003. AND NPR has practically shifted to an all-sponsorship model. You can't hear more than 10 minutes of radio during drive-time without hearing a thinly veiled ad. But it's the best thing going. Here's a NYTIMES article that explains what NPR's management is going through right now http://www.freepress.net/news/14516/ From this article, it looks like NPR is doing pretty well for itself.
(Why is it I never have mod points when I need them :) )
This is the obvious answer. In the old distribution model, local stations held membership drives to raise funds, which were used to "purchase" distribution rights to the national shows, and pay the staff for the local shows. In the new distribution model, the national "station" would collect subscription fees, which are used to pay for distribution rights of the national shows, and a portion would/could (maybe opt-in your local PubRadio station) be diverted to the local station to pay the staff for local shows.
Most PBS stations are already set up to do 12-part (monthly) draft payments for donations, as well as one-time collections, so set the membership fee to, I dunno, $5 per month or $50 for the year. Change the Podcast availability to such that you need to have an account to be able to download. Free/non-donating accounts can only download 2 'casts a week, donating accounts get unlimited access.
I think that most people who listen to NPR feel that they get more than $5 worth of information out of it a month, especially if they listen to more than one show...hell, I'd probably pay $5 a month just for "Prairie Home Companion", let alone "Car Talk", "Marketplace", "All Things Considered", and "Talk of the Nation", just to name a few off the top of my head that I listen to regularly on the radio.
This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U
Biased or not, I remember watching mostly PBS as a child, as it was the only channel that wasn't full of sugary fluff. It actually offered information and education instead of vapid celebrity talk shows and shock-driven babble. I discovered NPR a few years back thanks to the internet and fell in love again.
Every channel has a biased program manager, and every network has extremist supporters, it doesn't take a genius to figure it out. Often times just from watching a few minutes of any major network you can guess which one it is, they each have their own "feel" as to how content is formatted, edited and scheduled.
A popular thing to do for university students is to compare TV networks, sometimes just the daily news to see how many minutes are devoted to military/economy/schools etc. I've seen one study where they just looked at the movies being played on each channel and looked for various forms of discrimination.. which channel degrades women, or black people, or the french (grrr!). They find so many things that just slip under our noses, it's no surprise these networks have so much power with their brainwashing.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
>and when they "scooped" the rest of the media with their phony WMD claim [npr.org],
Funny, I listen to NPR and it was the only media source that was actively presenting information and speakers who remained skeptical of the WMD claims, very early on. This information (cherry picking intel, optional war, lack of ties to anything 9-11 related, aluminum tubes, etc) is now common knowledge years later. My experience is the opposite of yours.
Err, as far as FAIR goes, they have trivial complains for just about everyone. God bless them, but they're pretty anal. The big NPR complaint is being elitist (because guests are from positions of power, instead of your man on the street) and FAIR's constant 'taking corprorate money' axe grinding. Neither which are very valid concerns. Right now, I'm sure Chevron is calling Ira Glass to soften up on some story, eh? Let's not go overboard here. Going overboard is precisely FAIRs problem. Worse, their agenda and ideology is so fargone they can easily equate NPRs excellent work with Fox News because of "corporate money and elitists." Christ, FAIR is like meeting that one guy in college who just discovered that politics isn't all fair and George Washington actually told lies.
As far as replacing the entire NPR lineup with one political show, Democracy now, goes, well it seems like you haven't paid much attention to the other programming either.
>since they're free of corporate sponsorship.
I love the defeatist attitudes here. The righties complain about the tiny amount of federal funds NPR radio stations gets. The far lefties complain about the sponsorships. These invalid complaints are amusing to the rest of us in the real world.