Here’s a direct link for anyone out there that’s interested in this particular post…

http://tinyurl.com/6rcckt

In the mean time, I’d love to hear more about your social media event. Will you be writing more about it on the ConverStation blog (I saw the one post)? I’d like to do the same thing up here in Anchorage but would like to learn from others’ experiences first, if possible.

Your comments republished above are the clearest, most cogent explanation I’ve read to date how the local affiliate-NPR relationship inhibits progress.

They would have made great crib notes at WBUR’s first social media event last evening when the issue of show-specific donations and online innovation was inevitably raised!

PRI and APM definitely have less leverage on the stations and vice-versa. It’s much more like a buyer/seller relationship. That’s why when Faith Salie’s show (”Fair Game”) was canceled, there wasn’t so much of a stink about it. PRI made the show, let it run, tried to sell it, but couldn’t.

But APM’s and PRI’s ability to lead change in the broader public radio market is limited. They don’t have the “tent pole” shows like Morning Edition or All Things Considered, where the bulk of the audience is located. “Marketplace” is probably one of the biggest non-NPR shows in terms of carriage, but that’s still a small show compared to ME or ATC.

Your image of the umbilical cord is a good one — someone has to cut this cord, and it’s either got to be NPR or the stations. But both parties are addicted to the money and can’t change easily without risking, well… everything.

At my station, we’re attempting to devise a transitional middle path, one that reduces the dependence on NPR (and PBS) but doesn’t break the bonds entirely. We’re definitely counting on retaining the core properties like ME and ATC .

The real trick is building community and doing it online. Yet online works on different economic scales, so the legacy infrastructure is too heavy a burden for the new media stuff to bear. It’s a tough nut to crack.

I think the stations and NPR could find a way forward in a new kind of relationship, but it would take vision on a massive scale that only a Jim Jones could produce, and I don’t see enough stations drinking that Kool Aid anytime soon. NPR’s “New Realities” meeting series a couple years ago was positive, but didn’t generate any lasting structural change.

The umbilical between NPR and its affiliates makes change unlikely, unless the member stations willingly reduce their strategic dependence upon NPR programming.

Do you feel that PRI and/or APM are more likely to be change agents, since they have a “looser” relationship with local public radio, with more latitude to go direct to the listener? For example, I hear APM’s “Speaking of Faith” podcast asking for donations, to help keep the podcasts free.