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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?
This might be part of their ethics policy, but that's not where it belongs. As much as people have wined and complained about it being unfair for companies, like Google, to advertise their own products there's nothing unethical about it.
It's a competition issue. NPR gets a significant chunk of its money from radio stations. That's why not all NPR broadcasts are available as podcasts. This whole thing is merely about appeasing those radio stations who are worried about competition from podcasts that are more convenient and available.
So lets pretend that we've just completed writing this code, as opposed to having just completed sabotaging it -Altera
I keep my finger hovering above the skip forward button when I start listening to CBC(Canada's sort of NPR) podcasts. They pretty much inevitably promote insider (politically powerful) shows on shows that appeal to a specific and different audience. The promotions are for podcasts that are highly irrelevant to the podcast in question. A science show will promote an arts show, a business show will promote an arts show, a news show will promote an arts show, etc.
To make it worse, the shows they are promoting are often long out of date when the podcast in question is something that is ageless and thus will be listened to potentially for a decade or more.
I have a strong feeling that the CBC is deeply unhappy with podcasts because with listeners choosing what they want to listen to it is in complete opposition with how budgets are being distributed and how by putting certain shows in prime slots it then confirms that those shows are "popular".
I would love to see the stats on podcast listening compared to what the CBC claims is the number of listeners to the live show.
I have a sneaking suspicion that if the CBC was 100% driven by its listeners that the lineups, budgets, and shows would be wildly re-prioritized.
Instead the CBC is driven by some mental image of what they should be doing.
I don't see anything anachronistic about local radio. You're stuck in the car and want to listen to something, so just flip on the radio. It works. No need to stream, pre-download the songs you want, pay for subscriptions, use up your bandwidth, etc. Nation wide radio conglomerates aren't that interesting, I want to listen to the local news not some clearchannel all-justin-all-day crap. My local stations have local news and regional news and local traffic reports and local advertisements and local sports. Almost everyone on the freeways trying to get to work are listening to the radio. It's not dying off.
Podcasts are just time shifting for NPR, similar to VCR, and not sucking up much revenue. The problem comes because some podcosts (all?) are self funded rather than being funded from NPR. So some people will fund the radio station which doesn't fund the podcost costs, and others will fund the podcast which doesn't fund the content. They just need to add a "support your local station" announcement at the front, which would replace the "listen to my friend's podcast too" announcements that are already there. NPR isn't centralized, shows are produced from many places in the country and broadcast elsewhere. The only thing many stations have in common are the news casts at the top of the hour, there are places where the local NPR station is also the local classical or jazz station.
The basic problem, as I understand it, is that NPR programs, which NPR member stations pay to carry, are spending too much airtime talking about how the listener can cut their local member station out of the picture and access all NPR program streamed over the internet.. That's a reasonable complaint by the member stations.
The issue is that NPR wants to promote what it sees as The Future of NPR, specifically direct-streamed podcasts.
The simple answer is for NPR to use the same tools as other companies do and run advertisements for their streaming/podcast/apps - paid advertisements.
Simply put, NPR should figure out a pro-rated advertising rate (so many $ per minute), then refund the member stations every time a host promotes the podcasts, streaming service, smartphone app. That way broadcasters aren't paying NPR to educate consumers how to "disintermediate" member stations
Ken
This is EXACTLY the same argument used to help ram PPACA (Obamacare) and it's non-participation fees/taxes.
And I'm just curious, what the heck does this mean:
How are those "not actually utilizing NPR" actually "utilizing" NPR?
Ken
I feel unctuous. And a little sore.
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
The problem is that people listen to the app, rather than the local radio station. The local radio station then sees a decline in donations, and goes off the air. NPR then sees a decline in revenue from local stations purchasing the content they provide, and the service as a whole dies.
That's probably not what would actually happen, but it's the argument being presented.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
The summary seems a bit misleading. If you read TFA (I know, I know), you'll find:
"Informational, not Promotional: When referring to podcasts, and the people who host, produce, or contribute to them, we will mention the name of the podcast but not in a way that explicitly endorses it."
Still a bit odd, but not as bad as the summary makes it look, I think. No mentioning sites, but it's fine to mention the podcasts themselves.
I admit, I'm left with mixed feelings. I can partly understand it. If it were, say, a book publisher, I can see why they might not want people to promote Amazon, since a lot of book sales still happen through local, indy booksellers, and I'm a fan of local indy booksellers myself. But of course, the podcast sites aren't a big for-profit corporation, so the analogy isn't perfect, but there are similarities.
Another interesting quote:
"No NPR One: For now, NPR One will not be promoted on the air."
(Emphasis mine.) I'm a little reassured by that "for now". That implies that this policy may be subject to change in the future. That maybe things are still a bit in flux, and there's people in the organization who aren't 100% sure about this approach.
So, yeah, I'm not entirely sure what I think about this. If they couldn't mention podcasts at all, I'd be strongly against it, but as it is, I'm kinda neutral. Not a fan, but I can't bring myself to care all that strongly one way or the other.
Bull. Local programming is of huge interest to local audiences. That older technologies were only capable of reaching a local area is just a happy coincidence. In any case it's still a whole lot easier to access FM radio in your car than some internet streamed service.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Obviously you never listen to local PBS radio stations.
If you did you would note the wealth of... wait for it... LOCAL NEWS
Local news is something important to people that want to know what is going on in their local community, city and region.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Trump 2016
Suddenly I feel this aura of safety leave the room... Perhaps it's some musings left by python enthusiast ;^)
NPR has something like 10 of the top 50 podcasts at the moment, most of which are ad sponsored. I think that they probably doing better than the public radio stations are which buy NPR programming, which still have to resort to those annoying fundraising drives every few months.
I understand this, as far as if they listeners are getting the feeds from the podcasts, the local stations can't tack on their begging for donations at any point. This could cause them to lose revenue.
Unfortunately, this is short sighted, since you can't expect listeners to not take advantage of something which makes their life better.
I use podcasts so I can listen to my favorite shows at my own pack, not only when they have them on the air. That would be insane to go back to that way of listening.
They should have NPR tack on a quick ad blurb during the show of "and if you liked this show, let your local station know/consider becoming a member...."
The only people this will keep in the dark is their listeners who don't know how to connect an iPod to their computer. Eventually, they will realize their life will be easier on their own schedule. Keeping them in the dark won't stop progress.
It's either that or getting back to work.
Hmm... I'm going to out on a limb here and assume that you've never actually listened to NPR...
I feel like its Social Justice Friday.
"His name was James Damore."
NPR is far from fair. If you believe that it is, then you live in an echo chamber. Sorry to have to call you out on this, but it's true. NPR is very, very left- and progressive- leaning on their programming.
I'm not saying that this is necessarily bad. Some people enjoy that point of view (like you, obviously). But to claim that it is a fair and balanced source of information is completely incorrect.
Love sees no species.
NPR/PBS leans leftwards ... somewhat.
However if you're claiming 'Far from fair' you're discounting how many conservatives they have on air, entirely conservative based shows like Tucker Carlson, The Editorial board of the WSJ, the 60%-80% conservative panel of the McLaughlin group, Religious programming, local politics, et al. And that's before even talking about the number of conservative guests and think-tanks on the 'Liberal' shows.
So
A) NPR/PBS bends over backwards to make sure conservatives have a voice
B) When's the last time you heard NPR/PBS cut someones a conservatives mic because they were winning the argument?
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media