JMS

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?

There are definitely some challenges in mapping the learning and experience of how stations have nurtured giving relationships with listeners to how the new interactions are taking place.

If public radio is successful at syndicating its programs through digital channels we may gain a sizable but not very loyal audience. This is particularly true if much of the interaction with programming happens on third-party sites and spaces like iTunes and mobile phones, where the context and flow of the experience is dictated by the user or the platform provider.

There may be millions of downloads and exposure to public radio programs along with appeals to support them but to achieve the equivalent “average 3-5 years of listening before someone contributes” would be really difficult.

For channels and spaces that are governed by public radio or supporting entities - such as stations sites, continuous Internet radio sidestreams, and national sites such as NPR.org there are many more opportunities to create a unifying experience that could anchor this sense of reliance.

The question John asks about “on whom is the listener relying? A station? A network? A producer?” is important as well. My guess is that the top choice would be host/show/producer followed by network/station. For many stations the NPR identity is conflated with the station’s, which is not really the case for APM and PRI. A haphazard analogy to the music business is that most people identify with the artists not the labels (who goes to the store for the latest EMI release?), with the exception of a strongly defined sound like Motown Records.

I suppose in this analogy stations are the retail record stores, and unless they launch their own labels or artists they have to become uniquely valuable curators to stay relevant once access to the music itself is ubiquitous (many cities have a few thriving local record stores that have survived through innovation and localization).

Today, many public radio listeners hear the same news stories, talk shows, and entertainment programs in roughly the same time frame. They talk about what they heard and relive the experience together. That won’t be as common in an on-demand world. There will be more individual and fewer “communal” listening experiences.

Since stations have been the sole holders of the relationship with the giving public there is a big challenge in expanding these relationships to new points of access. Who should manage the relationship with listeners that are finding public radio programs through iTunes, including many network and independent shows that offer zero station presence in the audio? Should NPR solicit donations from “listeners like you” and start building a membership database based on the millions of downloads each month?

I think the “personal importance” test that John describes as another essential step on the Stairway is one that digital media can serve well - speaking directly to individuals into their headphones and in ways that mass appeal broadcasts can’t support. Podcasting represents a great opportunity on this front and also one that public radio has so far done very little to explore. Mostly public radio has used podcasting as a way to time-shift and offer on-demand versions of existing programs, sometimes edited for length. There is very little experimentation with the new form and little attention paid to the attributes that propelled amateur podcasting to the front of the pack when the technology first began.

The sense of community is another one that is best approached when you can be the context-setter for content and audience, not if you’re in syndication mode trying to express all of that in atomized files in third-party sites. Stations have a unique opportunity to foster community spaces online, and if they do it well it’s another differentiator and value-add (the local indie record store having in-store concerts, meetups, listening sessions, customer recommendations, etc).

If users learn at the outset that someone else will pay for their web-based public radio, it will make it more difficult for public radio to get their voluntary support when it is needed. Public radio should start cultivating those future donations now with appropriate marketing and messaging.

John added a good question in the comments: “would public radio become less attractive to potential underwriters if it succeeded at diversifying its audience?”

My answer is ‘yes’ on the radio, but ‘no’ on the Internet where the long tail turns niches and diversity into an aggregate plus. The radio dial is a zero-sum game and a more diverse audience (read less educated/affluent, as referenced in the comment) for limited channels could indeed result in fewer upscale and pricey sponsors. Managed efficiently a long-tail strategy could serve diverse audiences better and reap the rewards of sponsorship across the spectrum.

To tie it back to the top, the broader long tail Internet reach may result in a higher cume but lower loyalty, which in turn may further support the push for a sponsorship model over a voluntary support model.

Would an all-sponsor supported digital public media still be noncommercial and ‘public’?

Maybe we should run a paralell project with no underwriting messages - the listener-supported public podcasting project - and see what kind of response it generates.