Wow! KQED drops out of news project
January 22, 2010 by John Proffitt · Leave a Comment
Current has the news that KQED is out of the Bay Area News Project and the NY Times is in.
Personally, I’m fairly disappointed in this turn of events. Perhaps KQED will tell its side of the story in the days to come.
So far, all that’s available is speculation and back-room chatter.
MacBreak Weekly explores NPR/station disintermediation
December 23, 2009 by John Proffitt · Leave a Comment
On each MacBreak Weekly — a podcast focusing on all things Mac (and iPhone / iPod) — the host and guests make “picks of the week” in which they highlight hardware or software from every imaginable corner of the Mac and iPhone universe. Some stuff is small, some stuff is big, some is expensive and some is free. This week one of the guests — Alex Lindsay, a videography and special effects pro — picked the tremendously popular NPR News iPhone app (currently #4 in the free News apps category in the iTunes App Store).
In discussing the NPR News app, host Leo Laporte and Alex lavish praise on NPR itself for doing such a great job meeting the needs of Internet users that want access to NPR News and other public radio content and stations. They also rave about This American Life (currently the #2 podcast in the entire iTunes podcast directory) and the heavily revised NPR.org.
But then things get interesting.
Laporte and Lindsay don’t stop with reviewing the app or praising NPR. Together they demonstrate both tremendous insight and notable ignorance of how public radio is architected in the U.S. Here’s what’s right and what’s wrong in their discussion:
Right
- The NPR News app, combined with the new NPR.org, is one of the most advanced distribution approaches in use by a major media company today.
- Livio is offering an Internet-connected radio with built-in NPR branding and features ($200).
- NPR was afraid to offer fully atomized programming elements via the web in an on-demand fashion for many years due to fears of station backlash, and resisted that through the early days of podcasting, despite prodding from Laporte and others in the tech world.
- Donations from listeners are still primarily directed toward stations, not NPR itself, and national producers reinforce that notion currently.
- NPR has done what many media entities have not done: face the future and make significant changes to the way they distribute content, answering the requests of listeners, even if it means stepping on local station toes.
- NPR produces industry-leading audio programming; it’s the “gold standard” in audio production and other professionals use it as a benchmark for their work.
- This American Life includes advertising in its podcast (it may be “sponsorship,” but it sounds to listeners like advertising). Laporte also realizes that advertising in a podcast gets around FCC regulations governing nonprofits and broadcast advertising.
- This disintermediation — content flowing from producers to listeners directly, without local stations — could be “the beginning of the end” for NPR stations across the country.
- Given the way content is produced and distributed in this new model, there needs to be a “reversal” of how the system works, in that NPR should pay local station reporters for news gathering (this is also listed below in the “wrong” section).
Wrong
- Alex says the app is “either free or $0.99″ — it’s free, no question about it.
- All Things Considered is not produced by a network other than NPR — it’s not from APM, it’s not from PRI, etc.
- Lindsay suggests that NPR should be paying local reporters for their reporting. What he doesn’t know is that NPR already does this, it just does it on a pay scale and frequency that’s not sustainable for local journalists.
Given how badly most people understand the public radio system in the U.S., they get a ton of this stuff right. And they instinctively know how the disintermediation game works — Laporte used to work on the defunct cable channel TechTV but today has built his own network of audio (and now video) podcasts and streams, amassing more than $1,000,000 in annual revenues for his 2-4 person multimedia production house. (For the record, he’s also a commercial radio broadcaster.)
“The Reversal”
I was shocked by Alex Lindsay’s suggestion that the economic model on which the network/stations system works should be turned on its head. That’s something I’ve been saying since about 2006, once I realized that the content power rests with NPR, but the radio distribution power and the social relationship power rests with geographically-bound stations.
I’ve been laughed out of more than one conversation when suggesting NPR should pay stations to distribute their content. Or at the very least, NPR should be passing its content to stations for free or for the cost of operating the distribution system (PRSS / ContentDepot).
Today, stations pay anywhere from tens of thousands to millions of dollars annually to NPR for the “privilege” to carry their content (depending on market size and lots of other factors). That’s the bulk of NPR’s income: fees collected from local stations. That’s why you pay your local station and not NPR (although NPR does sell advertising space nationally and they do seek high-dollar gifts from rich donors).
Some think the annual CPB operating grants go straight to NPR and PBS, but they do not. Only tiny bits go to a few specialized programs or services at the networks — the vast majority of CPB’s money goes out to 600 public radio stations and 350 public television stations every year (67% to TV). That model has been in place for decades.
But it’s time we rethink this model. Maybe we don’t need a total reversal of all the flows. But the balance of power has shifted dramatically into the hands of the major national producers at the same time they’ve sucked the life out of most local public media outlets in the country with their incredibly hefty (extortionary?) fees. Money collected locally keeps the lights on and pays the national producers, but it affords precious little local production of any sizable amount or quality.
This has to change. Or we might as well just nationalize the system, a la BBC, and get it over with. Either approach can be made to work, but the current model doesn’t match how the world works in the 21st century.
Listen for Yourself
In any case, check out the conversation to hear these comments and insights from outside the public radio universe. It starts around 1 hour, 20 minutes in the original podcast. Or just listen to the excerpt I’ve clipped here (or click the play button below). The excerpt is about 5 minutes long (MP3).
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Welcome KSKA listeners / visitors
July 30, 2008 by John Proffitt · Leave a Comment
I’m dropping in on KSKA Public Radio’s “Community Forum” program this afternoon (live at 2pm Alaska time) to talk blogging. For visitors stopping by — Welcome!
I’ll be posting links mentioned during the live show over at KSKA.ORG.
UPDATE: You can listen to or download the audio from today’s Community Forum program here.
iPhone 3G sold out… Bad news music radio!
July 21, 2008 by John Proffitt · 3 Comments
The word is out that a little more than a week after launch, the iPhone 3G is now just plain gone from stores across the U.S. — be they Apple Stores or AT&T stores. Indeed, AT&T was sold out nationwide on the first day. Apple Stores have carried the device intermittently ever since and as of Monday morning there were only 3 stores nationwide that had anything — each carrying only one model.
This is bad for music radio.
Okay, a bit over the top, but stay with me…
When the iPhone 2.0 software came out (which works on the old phones, not just the new sold-out ones), I dutifully downloaded and installed it on my own iPhone. Much of the system was unchanged. But the arrival of the App Store made all the difference, allowing the download and installation of applications that extend the functionality of the iPhone.
Two applications in particular were fascinating, in the context of broadcasting. One was AOL Radio, the other Pandora. Both of these services have existed at least for a few years online. But these are the first examples of full-bodied mobile implementations.
AOL Radio
AOL Radio is pretty simple. It’s direct, live streaming access to the “AOL Radio” channels of music, sort of like satellite radio in that they aren’t local broadcast stations and are organized around tons of musical themes/styles. But it’s also an application that grants streaming access to hundreds of local terrestrial stations in the CBS collection. I can now listen, on the iPhone (with a live WiFi signal) to real-time streams of radio stations from coast to coast.
Since the iPhone goes everywhere with you, and given the near-ubiquity of WiFi signals, I now have hundreds of radio stations in my pocket. Sure, you could manage this before with several workarounds, but this is no workaround — this is a real implementation of a terrestrial transmitter threat that’s easy to use for mere mortals.
But that’s just AOL Radio. Forget that. That’s a threat we can obviate by getting our signals on the iPhone, too (not too hard — it’ll be done soon, I’m sure). Let’s get it on with Pandora.
Pandora
Pandora had interested me before, but only in an intellectual way. Now, presented again on the iPhone for free, I figured I’d try it again. It’s amazing, especially over WiFi. Let me say that again: it’s amazing.
A huge library of songs, all gathered for you with the backing of the Music Genome Project. You pop in a favorite album, artist or song and Pandora generates a complete “station” for you of music from that artist and stuff that’s musically similar to the album/artist/song you’ve identified. And it works.
Let me say that again, too: IT WORKS.
What’s surprising is the sheer speed in which tracks pop down to the iPhone and start playing. If you skip ahead the next track pops up nearly as fast as your CD player would find something further down the disc platter. Oh, and the audio quality is easily equal to good FM (over WiFi — less so over 3G or EDGE networks).
I’ve begun discovering music and artists again. I’ve started buying music again. Sunday alone I dropped $30 on new music, buying tracks both from the iTunes Store and from the Amazon MP3 Downloads service. All $30 were spent on artists I’d never experienced before Pandora suggested them and I bought them using links presented by Pandora.
And get this… if the track or album is available on iTunes, you can buy it wirelessly right on the iPhone, no computer required.
Your own music discoveries can be broad or narrow based on how your “stations” are created and configured (which sounds a lot harder than it really is). And you can combine your stations into mix stations, granting you access to more eclectic recommendations.
Then there are more features on the regular Pandora web site. You can do the same thing via the full web that you do on the iPhone, but there are mild social networking features, extending the recommendation engine further. Plus, for more complex “station” operations, the full web site offers better tools. But it’s all one account, synchronized instantly back and forth as you use the service anywhere.
Why Listen to Music Radio?
Perhaps I’m already past the age where music radio makes sense for me, but I have to wonder what happens to music radio when this kind of access to music is virtually ubiquitous. Remember — the iPhone 3G sold 1 million devices in the first weekend and is sold out nationwide a week later. Pandora is a free service and free application — no advertising, no tricks — and it’s easy to use. (I began to wonder why I bothered syncing music to the iPhone — why not just live on Pandora recommendations alone?)
I’m curious if any music station programmers out there have a take on Pandora they’d like to share. I know there are things you can do with radio that Pandora will never match. And I know the Pandora catalog is limited by the licensing deals they can strike with publishers. But really… if you can listen to “stations” tailored to your preferences and discover new-to-you music in a hyper-efficient way, why turn to terrestrial radio for music at all?
If you’re human-hosting your music, you’d better be doing a better job than the Music Genome Project.
NPR’s Thomas goes to Etsy; Surprise — it’s not a conspiracy
April 24, 2008 by John Proffitt · Leave a Comment
Recently I’ve told people I know, especially folks I meet via Twitter, that this here blog is really kind of an “inside baseball” thing for public media purveyors or supporters. It’s not a general interest kind of thing. Well, for this post, I’m going to kick up the inside baseball factor a notch…
In the wake of the Ken Stern departure from NPR, the rumblings in D.C. were audible all the way out here in Anchorage (it helps if you have a former NPR staffer working in the next office). Stations across the country were in a tizzy for a few days trying to read the tea leaves — what did it all mean?
Then a few weeks later we heard about the departure of Maria Thomas, NPR’s digital media guru. As one of the chief architects of NPR’s many digital initiatives, her exit fueled speculation that the elimination of Stern was a rebuke of online activities at the company and Thomas left because her days were numbered.
At least that’s the speculation I heard. But I didn’t believe it.
Thomas came to NPR with solid online / e-commerce experience. She did great work at NPR. But I suspected she basically had achieved all she could in a company that, for all its good intentions, cannot move too terribly quickly, given the distributed nature of its goals and relationships. Plus, her work would have gotten her continued attention in web circles. She was likely hit with a job offers repeatedly.
Today venture capitalist (and uber-blogger) Fred Wilson announced Thomas’ installation as COO of the unique online retailer Etsy.com. While we knew the Etsy part of the story weeks ago, I think the warm welcome she’s being offered tells the real story — that hiring Thomas was a coup for Union Square Ventures and Etsy, not a housecleaning for NPR.
Be sure to check out the introductory video — great stuff. And note what Thomas says when asked why she likes Etsy: “I love that Etsy means connecting with something authentic.” Spoken like the new media veteran she is.
Of course, I could be wrong. Hit me in the comments if I’m missing anything.
Congratulations PRX
April 10, 2008 by John Proffitt · Leave a Comment
The news today that PRX has received a half-million dollar MacArthur grant is fabulous. It’s such a great service in the public media world and it’s gratifying to see good work get rewarded.
They’ve posted all the details here.
Update on NPR / Ken Stern
March 26, 2008 by John Proffitt · Leave a Comment
Current published an in-depth article on the NPR / Ken Stern story this week. I’ve updated my list of articles to include it, and it’s a great read on its own. It summarizes a large swath of the Stern history at NPR and points to several core reasons why things just didn’t work out.
I actually came away from this profile liking Ken Stern quite a bit. Did he fit well into the CEO slot? Perhaps not. But he did some great work for NPR. And to everyone’s credit — except a sour-grapes Bob Edwards — the comments from board members and others were incredibly even-handed.
It’s high time for real-time community engagement
March 24, 2008 by John Proffitt · 3 Comments
Geeks out there probably know Leo Laporte, the long-time commercial radio and TV host, made especially well-known via the now-defunct TechTV cable channel. He continues to develop media, having built the TWiT podcast “network” over the past couple of years, including the flagship This Week in Tech podcast, drawing some 200,000 listeners a week.
In a blog post this weekend, Laporte describes several changes he’s bringing to the core show, centered on live video streaming. I’m recommending the post because he describes both some Media 1.0 troubles he’s had lately and then describes the changes he’s about to make in his Media 2.0 company.
Why should public media folks care?
Because Laporte is doing what many of us in public media are not, and his strategy is especially well-suited to the Media 2.0 economy:
- he’s engaging with his community in a two-way and multi-way fashion that’s meaningful, open and authentic
- he’s increasing his real-time contact hours across multiple digital platforms (he doesn’t limit himself to one platform)
- he’s doing it all himself, on the cheap — there’s no network or corporation pushing him forward or holding him back
Laporte’s example is inspiring. Imagine what a public service media company with a true local engagement mission could do, using similar methods and the same low-cost, low-risk, rapidly-developing technologies. Engaging your community, communicating with your “true fans” is not a matter of holding public meetings or taking pledge calls. I’m hoping to steal some of this TWiT model for use in my shop (assuming we can get past our difficult strategic planning process).
But we’d better move fast.
Because in a world where Content is a commodity with a value approaching zero (or as Robert Paterson described content recently: noise), all we have left is Contact and Context. PBS and NPR can provide content on a national scale and with unrivaled quality. They can even distribute it and gather financial support for it directly. So we, the locals, must do what they cannot: provide authentic contact and develop a contextual service in tune with our local communities.
Take a look again at Laporte’s example. He’s building out in service of his “tribe,” his community. He’s co-creating value with volunteers in his “TWiT army.” He’s using two-way platforms authentically. He’s got real-time contact with his audience. He’s doing it without transmitters or other oppressively heavy engineering costs. We should be so lucky.
We can be so lucky.
Paterson, Mundt, Carvin trifecta on KCUR
March 20, 2008 by John Proffitt · Leave a Comment
Great show today on Kansas City’s public radio station KCUR with guests Robert Paterson, Todd Mundt and Andy Carvin. The topic? Surprise! New media and public media.
Worth a listen, especially if you’re a little confused about how public radio and public TV can engage the world in an online context.
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Total time: about 51 minutes. Download the MP3 here.
(By the way, I’d link to the web page at KCUR, but it appears it won’t be available after this week due to the way it’s published using the Public Interactive CMS.)
Tending the Public Media Tribe
March 18, 2008 by John Proffitt · 3 Comments
If you’re not reading Seth Godin, you’re not paying attention to the future of successful public media. Godin doesn’t address public media directly, but he does address issues of marketing and community and the economics of making money through the products or services a company provides in a new media world.
Godin talks a lot about tending to your “tribe” — that group of people that love your product/service and who share your values or perspectives and interests. If you’ve been in public radio or TV for any length of time, you know these folks. Most likely you’re already a member of this tribe yourself.
Recently Godin gave a talk at a music conference and his comments, while aimed at a music marketing audience, are applicable to all of us in public media — news, music, radio, TV, whatever — because the trends affecting the music business (disastrously) today are the same ones rewriting the rules for all media. And the rules for success in the next generation will be the same: serve your tribe; be indispensible; be the best.
Here are some highlights from Godin’s talk, pointed out by Gerd Leonhard and partially chosen by digitalwaveriding (the boldface highlights are mine):
… if I asked you for the name and address of your 50,000 best customers, could you give it to me? Do you have any clue? [No?] Then what happens every day is you go to a singles bar and you walk up to the first person you meet and propose marriage and if that person won’t marry you, you walk down the bar to every single person until someone says “I do.” That’s a stupid way to get married. A better way to get married is to go on a date. If it goes well, go on another date. Wait to tell them on the third before you tell them you’re out on parole. Then you meet their parents, they me your parents, you get engage, you get married. Permission is the act of delivery. Anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who want to get them.
… The next thing is what I call the Seinfeld curve. The Seinfeld curve shows us Jerry’s life. If you like Jerry Seinfeld you can watch him on television, for free, in any city in the world two or three times a day. Or, you could pay $200 to go see him in Vegas. But there is no $4 option for Jerry Seinfeld. This is death. You can’t make any money in here. Because if you’re not scarce I’m not going to pay for it because I can get it for free. And one of the realities that the music industry is going to have to accept is this curve now exists for you. That for everybody under eighteen years old, it’s either free or it’s something I really want and I’m willing to pay for it. There is nothing in the center — it’s going away really fast.
… The next thing is this idea that people care very much about who is sitting next to them at the concert. They care very much about the secret handshake. They care very much about the tribal identification. “Oh you like them? I like them!”
… It’s really important to people to feel like they are part of that tribe, to feel that adrenaline. We are willing to pay money, we’re willing to go through huge hoops, trampled to death in Cincinnati if necessary, in order to be in the environment where we feel that’s going on.
… I want to argue that the next model is tribal management. That the next model is to say, what you do for a living is manage a tribe, many tribes, silos of tribes. That your job is to make the people in that tribe delighted to know each other and trust you to go find music for them.
… There is a lot of music I like. There is not so much music I love. They didn’t call the show, “I Like Lucy,” they called it “I Love Lucy.” And the reason is you only talk about stuff you love, you only spread stuff you love. You find a band you really love, you’re forcing the CD on other people, “You gotta hear this!” We gotta stop making music people like. There is an infinite amount of music people like. No one will ever go out of the way to hear, to pay for, music they like.
Fortunately or unfortunately, the future for public media companies will involve considerable “tribe management” and will involve a smaller audience than we have today, either locally or collectively — all media will have far more fragmented communities than in the past. Now is the time to identify who’s in and who’s out of your tribe and figure out how best to serve the community that gathers around public media content and values.
This may sound elitist or even fatalistic to the traditional mass media thinkers out there: “But I want the biggest audience possible!” Well, you can’t have it. Large audiences of mildly engaged viewers or listeners or readers are the old model. The new model requires deep and authentic engagement with that “tribe” of people. You can still invite everyone into the tribe, and you should. But in a world of infinite tribes, folks will naturally gravitate to the tribes that best serve their needs and interests (and they will have multiple tribes, of course).
Personally, I think this is an incredibly exciting time for public media folks that embrace this new approach. There’s new opportunity not only for sustainable businesses, but for truly meaningful, impactful and interactive work. The only problem is developing the courage to let mass media thinking fade over time, even though it’s been tremendously successful for the last 40 years.
iBiquity: How a closed-source model is killing HD Radio
March 17, 2008 by John Proffitt · 4 Comments
Chart created by Bridge Ratings (2006). Click for a larger version.
Last week on the PUBRADIO mailing list, the topic of HD Radio came up again. Commenters went one way, then another — all talking about programming and broadcasting as they usually do. Technology didn’t really enter into the equation, yet it’s one of the core issues in terms of consumer adoption patterns.
Why is HD Radio failing to catch on? Lots of reasons easily come to mind:
- Broadcast audio streams aren’t something new — it’s called Radio and we’ve had it for 100 years; why bother to get a new radio when the old one works fine?
- The higher quality audio possible with HD Radio is nice, but in most listening situations (cheap radios, cars in traffic, noisy offices) the improvement over analog FM is negligible
- Multichannel service really hasn’t arrived at most HD-capable stations so far
- While HD Radio signals are less prone to some types of interference, real-world experience suggests it’s a generally weaker signal, especially if you’re comparing devices with internal antennas (clock radios)
- Though most consumers don’t know it, there are software revisions appearing with HD Radio right now, and most radios are not field-upgradable — it’s not “safe” to invest big bucks in receivers yet
- Satellite radio has blunted the multichannel argument and still offers less commercialism than an HD Radio multichannel service would (admittedly, you have to pay for sat radio, but many are willing to do so)
- Internet audio streams have a bigger audience already and are growing faster than all other streamed audio services
Haarsager on NewsGang podcast
March 16, 2008 by John Proffitt · Leave a Comment
Dennis Haarsager, new interim CEO at National Public Radio (NPR), appeared on the NewsGang podcast this past Friday. He spoke fairly openly about the unusual CEO transition and about how NPR may change as it deals with an audience that’s moving to new media distribution channels and interaction platforms.
In addition to Haarsager, the guest list included Stephen Hill from Hearts of Space, Steve Gillmor (the host), and Doc Searls, who also appeared on a panel at the recent Integrated Media Association conference along with Haarsager and others.
UPDATE: Highly Recommended Listening. Haarsager and friends go into depth talking about new media economics and public media’s entanglements — or lack thereof — with new platforms. Money quote from Stephen Hill: “Show the stations how you’re gonna keep them in business and they’ll be very happy to cooperate with [NPR].”
Running time of the MP3 file is about 1 hour, 25 minutes.
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The link to the NewsGang podcast has also been added to my (still growing) list of Ken Stern articles.