NPR Out-Promotes Stations on Their Own Airwaves

For years, NPR has used millions of dollars of member station airtime to promote the NPR.org website. Now NPR is using millions of dollars of member station air time to promote its own mobile apps.

If only there were a comprehensive network plan for helping stations carve out their own space on-line and in the mobile marketplace. If only there were some sort of revenue plan to compensate stations for the station airtime NPR is using to build its direct audience.

But there are no such plans. NPR -- and the other networks -- are driving listeners directly to their sites. That's good for network on-line advertising sales but not necessarily good for station sales or listener contributions.

It doesn't have to be this way. Stations can offer players and apps that are competitive with any of the individual networks. Stations can offer listeners a greater range of programming options by helping listeners access content from all of the networks carried by the station plus locally produced programming.

And stations have to be as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than the networks in promoting web-based services.

We're advising clients to promote their website or mobile app immediately after NPR embeds one of its promos in the news. The same holds true for web-services promos from any other network. Every time listeners hear a promo for a network app or website, they should hear about an even better app or website experience from the station.

To the listeners, this might sound as if the station and NPR are in competition with one another for the their attention. That would be unfortunate but, from the station perspective, it is unavoidable. On-air promotion is one of the best ways to create new mobile and web listeners. NPR understands that. So should stations. And stations should never concede those new listeners to NPR on their own airwaves.

Still Not As Big As Public Radio

The experts were wowed by Sex and the City's box office take last weekend. Nearly $60 million in ticket sales.

At $10 per ticket, that's about 6 million movie goers.

Which means that more people listen to public radio in a single day than went to see Sex and the City over the weekend.

Just another reminder that public radio, and radio in general, has incredible reach and influence. Yes, we should be mindful of the changes that new technologies bring. But we should also stop selling ourselves short. If we don't believe in the power of radio, why should anyone else?

Radio Rocks... and Swings... and Twangs

An observation about last night's Country Music Association awards from public radio consultant and colleague Jay Clayton:

"Nearly all the winners thanked country radio, not the country Internet."

A Brighter Outlook

On one side there are those who are forecasting that on-demand and user-generated content will put an end to radio as we know it. On the other side there is the recent Bridge Ratings study which projects the weekly number of listeners (Cume) to all terrestrial radio will drop just 8% over the next 13 years.

The Bridge numbers seem optimistic given the prevailing mood in public radio. Several bloggers reporting from the Public Media conference in Boston a few weeks ago referred to a sense of gloom and doom. Then again, that could just be the industry’s scarcity mentality. Public radio has always had a low opinion of its potential.

Seldom do we look at the coming change and talk about doubling the number of weekly listeners to public radio. In fact, we’re often told these days that we shouldn’t think of them as listeners. That’s absurd, of course, because there will be billions of opportunities per year to provide public service through people’s ears.

If anything, the number of opportunities to provide public service is increasing several times over. The Bridge Ratings study reports that Internet radio is expected to have a monthly audience of 197,000,000 in 2010, a gain 140 million new listeners. It projects that 109,000,000 people will stream content over mobile phones. Every one of those people will be able to access any terrestrial radio station that streams it programming.

This is an important point. New delivery platforms are increasing, not decreasing, the number of potential listeners to public radio. That’s true even if the Bridge Ratings projections are off by 100%. Weekly Cumes will grow if we manage our resources well.

The danger ahead is lower Loyalty to public radio across all platforms. Winning as much of someone’s combined terrestrial radio and Internet radio listening as possible is essential to keeping listeners in the donor base. This listening can be won if we choose to compete for it.