NPR Still Lacks Champions of Station Success

NPR now says that the station fees for its new digital services might not be mandatory. According to NPR Board Chair Dave Edwards, the presentation and emails calling the fees mandatory were poorly worded and the pricing model is open for discussion. The news was delivered directly to stations and reported by the industry news service Current.

Current also quotes NPR VP for Digital Services Kinsey Wilson as wanting stations to contribute to the development of new digital services “while they’re still strong in radio.” It is yet another indication that NPR’s senior management believes public radio is, or soon will be, in decline.

Stations deserve better than this. Station audiences and revenues have proved to be resilient, even robust, over the past few years in the face of tough economic times and growing competition from new distribution outlets. It could very well be that public radio terrestrial audiences will not suffer, but be enhanced by offering listeners more ways to find content.

This is the “Both/And” mentality. It looks for opportunity to grow in all possible markets, never conceding ground it owns. Instead, NPR management has adopted the “Either/Or” mentality. It is very limiting. It assumes that one action will cannibalize another. It assumes less market potential for public radio. It would be one thing if the data showed this happening to public radio. But it is not.

NPR is a membership organization. Stations send NPR around $70 million per year in membership fees and dues and directly help NPR raise another $30 million per year by creating audiences for national sponsorships. How can it be that there are no champions of station success at the executive level?

The fuss over NPR’s digital services proposal isn’t about poorly worded presentations or emails. It’s about NPR management lacking a passion for the success of its member stations. You don’t get these kinds of mistakes when that passion is there. In fact, you don’t need mandatory fees when that kind of passion is obvious to the membership.

Thank You Ellen Weiss

By now you probably know that NPR's Senior News VP Ellen Weiss resigned her post as part of the fallout from firing Juan Williams.

The Washington Post has a follow-up article on industry reaction to her resignation and there are several references to her many significant contributions to public radio. Not listed was her role in expanding All Things Considered to two hours each evening and, more importantly, moving the start time of the program an hour earlier, to 4pm.

In the mid-1980s, it was obvious that East coast stations were losing audience by not having All Things Considered on at 4pm. Stations in the Central time zone and west enjoyed good success with the earlier broadcast. For years, NPR News leadership and the staff at All Things Considered turned down frequent requests from stations to start the program an hour earlier. It was All Things But That Considered.

That changed when Ellen was Executive Director of the program and Bill Buzenberg was the News VP. Ellen thoroughly researched the stations' needs, NPR's capacity to make the change, and the cultural shift it required in the newsroom. Though the move would be unpopular with her direct staff and other newsroom colleagues, she came down on the side of... the listeners, and as a result, stations.

The move to a 4pm (et) All Things Considered was one of the most significant steps in public radio's growth as a national news outlet. Hundreds of thousands of new listeners could now hear the program at a time convenient to them. Those listeners then found other programs on local stations and eventually became donors. Today millions of people get their news during this hour. If you're one of them, then you have Ellen Weiss to thank.

I worked directly with Ellen Weiss for several years at NPR and that was how she operated -- in the best interest of the listeners. It is NPR's loss that she will no longer be there to offer her insights.

NPR's loss does not have to be public radio's loss. Significant investments are being made at many public radio stations as they seek to become major players in local and regional news. One of those investments should be in the experience and wisdom of Ellen Weiss.

Will Radio Really Be Dead in 10 Years?

The Internet will change radio. It already has and it will change it even more in the coming decade. NPR President and CEO Vivian Schiller thinks the change will be so rapid that traditional terrestrial radio will be dead by 2020.

The implications for public radio are staggering whether she is right or not. NPR is the 800 pound gorilla in public radio. Its corporate position and planning dramatically affect policy, funding, spending, and partnerships throughout public radio. NPR itself won’t cause traditional radio to go away but this new posture could accelerate the process and damage member stations and NPR along the way.

The next few RadioSutton postings will explore the implications of NPR’s new position and will test some of the assumptions being made by NPR and others on the future of public radio.

Today -- will radio really be dead in 10 years?

A large part of Schiller’s logic rests on the assumption that bringing the mobile Internet to cars will kill the need for broadcast towers. Built into that assumption:

• By 2010 every vehicle – or at least the vast majority -- will be equipped with the technology to receive mobile web services, even if it’s just a mini jack for a mobile phone
• A vast majority of vehicle users will be willing to pay fees to access the those services in every vehicle
• A vast majority of people will replace the 3 to 5 radios they have in their homes with wireless Internet audio devices
• Portable radio use – such as listening on a walk, at the beach, or at a ball game – will occur completely on mobile Internet devices or go away all together

Let’s do some numbers.

There are 254 million passenger vehicles registered in the U-S today. The median age of cars on the road today is 9.4 years. The trend is for people to hold on to cars longer these days but let’s assume the median age of cars doesn’t change in the next decade.

In 2020, half of all cars on the road will be from model year 2011 or older. Put another way, almost half of all cars expected to be on the road in 2020 are on the road today.

A small fraction of cars in 2011 will come with pre-installed mobile Internet devices. All of them will come equipped with radios. That trend will continue for several, if not many, years.

Implicit in Schiller’s vision is that cars will eventually come without radios at all. Why put a radio in a car if there are no towers? That argument assumes there will be a tipping point when listeners across almost all demographics and all radio formats, commercial and non-commercial, will abandon the free radio on the dashboard for mobile content that costs money in the form of data usage. The argument assumes the same behavior will simultaneously occur in the home over data networks and personal wireless networks.

Based on Arbitron data*, some 228,000,000 people age 12 and older use broadcast radio each week. Billions of time each week, they choose to turn on the radio. They spend more than 3.8 billion hours listening to broadcast radio each week.

How much of that behavior has to change and how much of that consumption has to go away to kill the entire radio broadcasting industry? Technology itself won’t be enough to drive the change. Certainly not in just 10 years. The listening experience has to be better too, worth paying for with at least data costs. That’s not going to happen in the next decade either. The overall marketplace will change some, but not that fast. Radio will still be around.

Public radio stations will still operate their transmitters in 10 years. The question now is whether it will be economically viable to broadcast NPR News over those signals. That is in Vivian Schiller’s hands today. More in the next posting.

* Source: Arbitron Radio Today 2009

Public Radio and the iPad

I stopped in my local Apple store to see the iPad today. It's a pretty slick device. In the hands, it feels like an iTouch on steroids. The larger display is a sight for sore, or at least older, eyes.

What stands out most, however, is that the iPad is designed for interaction. It's not all that special as an audio-only device. The speaker is louder than the iTouch, but the quality isn't as good as the speakers on most computers or as standard iPod headphones. Given the size of the iTouch, it's not something most users will want to be tethered to with a pair of headphones.

I'm sure public radio will develop some terrific apps to take advantage of the iPad's interactive features. It would also be a mistake to think that the iPad and similar technology is the key to public radio's future.

Public radio, particularly NPR, excels at delivering content via audio. Our industry might very well have the greatest concentration of worthwhile audio content in the world.

Our audio is our competitive advantage in the new media marketplace. Public radio is valuable not only for the content it delivers but also because it makes efficient use of listeners' time. A listener can learn or laugh and have good companionship all while doing something else like driving, cooking, cleaning, doing the bills, or gardening. Multi-tasking is not a new concept to radio listeners!

Public radio can't afford to lose sight of this competitive advantage as it seeks to serve listeners on new platforms such as the iPad. While there will be opportunities to serve listeners with print, images, video, and social media, public radio doesn't want to compromise what it does best -- audio. Give that up and we accomplish nothing more than making ourselves like everyone else.

Grow the Audience: Priorities

There’s pretty much something for everybody in the Grow the Audience report from the Station Resource Group (SRG) and CPB. According to the report, public radio must:

• Strengthen its current national news programs
• Increase the amount of local news programming and reporting
• Build new and improved classical, jazz and AAA music services locally and nationally
• Build new services to attract Black and Hispanic listeners to public radio
• Do all of the above on the radio and on-line

“Do everything” is not a strategy. And this is partially acknowledged deep inside the Grow the Audience report. Section Six, Develop Market by Market Strategies for Audience Growth, rules out investing resources in growing the audience at stations in markets 51 or smaller.

Even if smaller markets are not included in project, the reality is that there aren’t enough resources to serve the objectives listed above. It would be a waste to spread limited funds across such a large swath of activities. Further prioritization is necessary to make smart, effective investments in audience growth.

The Grow the Audience report is silent on that prioritization process. We believe the difficult decisions about who gets help and who gets left behind should be fully transparent. Hopefully, CPB and the SRG will address this in future reports.

2010: A Defining Year for Public Radio

What happens in 2010 will have a significant impact on what public radio looks like in 2019.

This year, more than any other, will define the future relationships among stations, program producers, networks, and the audience. This is the year where the actions of the networks, particularly NPR, will determine whether the majority of stations will thrive or languish in the new media marketplace. This is the year when CPB, through the Grow the Audience project, will set funding priorities that determine which markets and public radio entities will be targeted for growth and which ones will not.

If the events of 2009 were any indication of what’s to come in 2010, then public radio can expect a further fracturing of the industry between the current “haves” and “have-nots.” Here are two examples:

• NPR’s current revenue strategy for the mobile web excludes stations. In fact, NPR is considering charging stations for the right to offer newsmagazine content on-demand. Put another way, NPR is eyeing station fees as a possible source of revenue for its own mobile strategy. You can read more about it in Current.

• CPB’s Grow the Audience project, which on the surface looks like the “No Public Radio Child Left Behind” program, will out of necessity have to fund relatively few, high impact projects. There’s not enough money to create incentives to get everything done.
  

We’ll explore these and other industry-defining challenges in upcoming posts. In the meantime, stations not wishing to be left behind need to start thinking aggressively if they want to stay competitive on-line and in the public radio industry.

It's Not About Us

This weekend I'm selecting stories for the Best of Public Radio 2009 and one thing is very clear. Public radio is at its best when it tells other people's stories. It's not nearly as good when we turn the spotlight on ourselves.

Update: Best of Public Radio and Fall Drives

The Fall fundraising season is underway and early results are promising. Stations we talk to are making higher goals on time or with a little extra fundraising. Direct mail revenue is up in several markets. Good luck to everyone who has yet to go.

The Best of Public Radio: The Lighter Side did well this summer. About two-dozen stations have used it so far. Others are using it as part of their Fall on-air drives.

As with the 2008 End-of-Year on-air special, some stations did better than others. We're looking at the results and lessons learned and refining our plans for the end of the year special.

The 2009 EOY special will again feature 3 hours of turnkey fundraising programming. The broadcast window will be larger and stations will have more flexibility in where the special can be scheduled. There will be an option for more local pitch time for stations wishing to put more elbow grease into their broadcasts. The 2008 special focused on web giving only. The 2009 special will accomodate web and telephone giving.

As with last year, the EOY on-air fundraising special is part of a package that includes direct mail, eblasts, and on-air spots. Look for a full announcement with more details in the next week. Materials will be available beginning October 23.

The Best of Public Radio: The Lighter Side

A funny fundraising show hosted by two news guys?

You bet.

The second installment in the Best of Public Radio fundraising series will be available this month and its hosted by All Things Considered host Robert Siegel and NPR Justice correspondent Ari Shapiro.

The Best of Public Radio is a turn-key on-air fundraising special for public radio stations. It requires very little effort on their part to broadcast the show and raise money from listeners.
The program features the humorous side of public radio including segments from Car Talk, A Prairie Home Companion, Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, This American Life, and Whad Ya Know.

Unlike last December's inaugural program, this Best of Public Radio show goes beyond web pledging and includes a toll-free number to provide listeners with more ways to give. Station results are expected to increase up to 300% for the same investment they made in December.

Stations can use The Best of Public Radio as a stand-alone special, as part of their fall fund drives, or both. This project is part of a collaboration among NPR, PRI, APM, DEI, Public Interactive, John Sutton & Associates, and Jay Clayton.

More details are coming in the next few days. If you have questions, please write john@radiosutton.com or find John Sutton, Jay Clayton, or Sonja Lee at the Public Radio Development and Marketing Conference in San Diego.