Comments on: membership

By: Jake Shapiro » Ooh, it makes me wonder

Jake Shapiro » Ooh, it makes me wonder — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 12:04:01 +0000

[...] Here’s a post in response to John Sutton’s post about the “Stairway to Given”, which in turns was partly inspired by my earlier post. Gotta love this blogging thing. I’ve interspersed some quotes from John’s but recommend reading the whole thing and the comments too. Will listeners use public radio podcasts or streams more than any other source of Internet audio? Will they use them 10, 12, 15 times per week? Will they use them consistently over years, not just weeks or months? Can public radio create in listeners the same level of Reliance on its podcasts and streams as it does on its station broadcasts? [...]

By: jake

jake — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 15:24:49 +0000

Thanks for the comments, I’ll respond to a couple points in a new post soon.

- Jake

By: Jonathan Sack

Jonathan Sack — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 14:17:26 +0000

It’s so true that membership is regarded by many as a “necessary evil” and this makes no sense. The distiguishing characteristics of public radio are that it’s a non-profit (more trustworthy) and accountable to the people (members, listeners) of the local community (more trustworthy).

Not only does membership represent public radio’s mission and symbiosis with the local community, it generates the largest source of net revenue for many stations…

It’s what makes the public radio business model work. If public radio were only to generate revenue from underwriting, it would essentially be commercial radio, dependant on for profit companies. Voluntary membership support is what distinguishes public broadcasting from other media.

And its pretty easy project what would happen if public radio moved to a subscription model — if 1 in 10 supports voluntarily, don’t expect many more to pay for the subscription at a higher price point.

It would cripple underwriting: fewer listeners and the expectations of paid subscribers for a commercial-free zone does not make for a very underwriting-friendly environment.

One needs only to look as far as XM and Syrius to see the subscription model in action. Some day they’ll make a profit, but for the time being they are losing money hand over fist.

Lastly, thanks Jake, for the terrific idea about podcasts as premiums. Our company produces the public broadcasting MemberCard for a great many stations. A podcast reviewing the local museums, restaurants, B&B’s, performances, etc. that it connects members to is the perfect complement.

By: John Sutton

John Sutton — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 02:04:32 +0000

Great topic Jake. If the end-user must pay, it’s not a public service. Period. One of the reasons I strongly dislike the “1-in-10″ number (besides the fact that it is not true) is that is suggests the listeners are “supposed” to pay for public radio. They aren’t. It’s supposed to be voluntary. If you must pay, then it is subscription radio.

I don’t know exactly how this model plays out on-line, but I think our past provides an important insight. We must become personally important to the end-user. The donations won’t come from individual podcasts any more than they currently come from listening to individual newscasts or single episodes of Car Talk. But they will come from accumulated experiences with a public service provider they trust. That might be existing providers such as individual stations or NPR. It might be some new entity.

We would do well to pursue some “federated” identity on-line. We would do well to consolidate the back-room business aspects of this. That’s because the other lesson from our past is that the cost of fundraising at stations is too high. We haven’t realized the economies of scale on the business side that we have on the programming side. We should jump at that opportunity while it still presents itself in the on-line world.