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Slashdot Asks: Should NPR Stop Promoting Its Own Podcasts and NPR One App On Air? (boingboing.net)
A new "ethics" policy from NPR details new rules to stop promoting NPR One and its podcasts on the air, to ultimately please local station managers who pay the largest share of NPR's bills.
Chris Turpin, V.P. for news programming and operations, writes: As podcasts grow in number and popularity we are talking about them more often in our news programs. We are also fielding more and more questions from news staff and Member stations about our policies for referring to podcasts on air. To that end, we want to establish some common standards, especially for language in back announces. Our hope is to establish basic principles that are easy to understand and allow plenty of flexibility for creativity. These guidelines apply to all podcasts, whether produced by NPR or by other entities. No Call to Action: We won't tell people to actively download a podcast or where to find them. No mentions of npr.org, iTunes, Stitcher, NPR One, etc.
Basically, NPR won't promote "the lauded, loved app that is basically the future of NPR" to listeners who would be most interested in it. How do you feel about NPR's new policy?
Chris Turpin, V.P. for news programming and operations, writes: As podcasts grow in number and popularity we are talking about them more often in our news programs. We are also fielding more and more questions from news staff and Member stations about our policies for referring to podcasts on air. To that end, we want to establish some common standards, especially for language in back announces. Our hope is to establish basic principles that are easy to understand and allow plenty of flexibility for creativity. These guidelines apply to all podcasts, whether produced by NPR or by other entities. No Call to Action: We won't tell people to actively download a podcast or where to find them. No mentions of npr.org, iTunes, Stitcher, NPR One, etc.
Basically, NPR won't promote "the lauded, loved app that is basically the future of NPR" to listeners who would be most interested in it. How do you feel about NPR's new policy?
I don't believe your statement to be true. The local public radio (at least here) gets the majority of its money from "underwriters" (local business) and member donations. This funds both local programming and NPR subscriptions. There are other states where public radio is funded by local universities. In other regions that don't have as much money - Corp for PB helps subsidize operations so that "everyone" has access to public radio.
"More than 90% of VPR's funding comes from the local community." and "Less than 10% of VPR's funding comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting government"
Others have pointed out that tax deductible donations are a form of gov't funding. But even then it is estimated to be 25% - not 50% (even Fox news quotes 25%) Using the same math - Religion is costing taxpayers $71 billion / year. I don't think one can compare NPR total $166MM budget to $71 billion / year.
http://digital.vpr.net/support...
http://www.americanthinker.com...
https://www.washingtonpost.com...