Trouble for NPR? While I agree with you the group formerly known as the audience should have been better informed (e.g., the headline news coverage by NPR as well as ATC’s was lacking) let’s give Dennis and his board a chance.

Being an NPR affiliate may not be what it once was nor perhaps as it should be but Dennis seems to more than get that.

My sense is the best solution for NPR going forward will not be found by bringing in someone from the public station community to lead the charge. That may serve to temporarily sate the station folk however it may prove to be exactly the wrong strategic move. What NPR needs is nothing less than an intellectually honest visionary. In this interim they are blessed to have Dennis taking charge.

Among the exceptions is Morning Stories, the weekly podcast I produce from WGBH in Boston. We’ve been at it for four years, since October 2004, with over four million downloads, regular listeners in 200 countries, an active flickr site (flickr.com/wgbhmorningstories), around 80,000 downloads a month from our website (not including a equal number from iTunes and our RSS feed). By any account, these are numbers that should inspire programmers at NPR to think far more seriously about producing original content for the web and attracting the kind of highly motivated and supportive (and interactive!) listeners the web provides.

The costs, by the way, are also far lower.

Why they don’t see it mystifies me.

In the present organization of NPR and the public radio system, there’s lots of room for and need for changes in the sloppy and disorganized way that the system deals with its network … and the way the network deals with its owners. And the point is well taken that NPR can’t compete in a fast-moving competitive marketplace if its governance is slow-moving, lethargic and change-resistant. But revolution is hardly ever the way to accomplish change unless you have the potential to win. Ken Stern seems to have bet the ranch — at least his personal ranch — on that prospect. It and therefore he failed. Now the question is how will the evolution of the system and its relationship with NPR continue and produce real lasting results?

Why do I care? The paper’s internet edition does not even contain all the stories that are in the print edition.

We had a huge snowstorm yesterday.La Presse is printed on glossy paper. The graphics are great. I took some pictures of the storm myself,but I’d like to see their’s .Their photography is great.It just doesn’t look the same online.

That’s local content. As is a story I heard on Vermont NPR the other day about trade between Vermont and Quebec. Even thought NAFTA was never mentioned,that,s an angle of the NAFTA story you hear little about. If they explored issues like this more,they surely would keep their local audience.

There are some many niches that local media can fill. La Presse has increased its weekday circulation (by a mere 700 paper in 5 years)) and its Saturday edition is a growing quickly. Their innovative approach to print content has paid off,even if it is counter-intuitive as we move towards paperless media. Any approach that is based on thinking about what the future may bring has an equal chance of success.

as for the question of public radio, or any radio, it all comes down to content and community. forget distribution, it’s irrelevant. get your content out there and engage your community via any and every technology that’s available or die

fred

It is clear that NPR, at least under Mr. Stern, is aware of the need to embrace new media and is trying to change the paradigm. The affiliates may or may not have the same vision, but they most certainly don’t have the same money to dedicate to exclusive content. more here…

If I were to spend more time listening to “quality” locally produced material it would have to be at the expense of time spent on globally produced content. Personally I’m not willing to make the trade off, but then I’m probably not typical. Even here in the NY metro area, there just isn’t that much of interest happening every day which is why we get auto accidents, crime reports and (in the NY Times) some cultural reporting. After the one hour that covers all this then what?

Even in my car I now listen to satellite radio and get a choice of over 100 stations. There may be a role for local radio, but I’m not sure anyone has discovered the winning formula yet.

For those that don’t know Dennis Haarsager, I can assure you as well that if NPR (or its stations) wanted to kill new media efforts, selecting Dennis to be the interim CEO was a big mistake. Haarsager has promoted development of new media technologies and business models for years from inside the public media system, both for public radio and TV, and at national and local levels. So he’s no Media 1.0 traditionalist. More importantly, he’s the ultimate gentleman, a true friend to the system and its audiences, and is worthy of the deepest levels of trust.

Meanwhile, out here on the frontier, we’re definitely wanting some kind of satisfactory explanation for how and why this turn of events came about. We know you can’t release confidential information, but this kind of abrupt change — mutual termination, no transition to a new CEO as part of a search, a shock to insiders at NPR — looks bad. Large, successful corporations usually make CEO changes with lots of advance notice and even a bit of pomp and circumstance. From out here on the rim of the NPR galaxy, this looks like the equivalent of an executive drive-by shooting.

Of course, the “shooting” could have been entirely self-inflicted by Stern. He wouldn’t be the first executive to write his own termination letter.

For me, I’m with Jarvis insofar as I’m concerned and I hope the NPR / Stern story is either overblown or has nothing to do with new media efforts at the national level.

What a shame…

Sure, it will actually probably take 5 years until the “tipping point” — but why should any of us be supporting radio tower infrastructure? I want to directly support the programming, not the distribution mechanism. To Steve’s point about supporting serious journalism — YES! That is what I want to support. And think how much more money ther will be for serious journalism when we stop paying for local distribution infrastructure!

NPR must wake up or it will just be replaced by the creative destruction of the Internet. Because this kind of fan supported serious journalism will get done — with or without NPR.

Homer on PBS: “Um, it’s an honor to give $10,000. Especially now, when the rich mosaic of cable programming has made public television so very, very unnecessary.”

Huh! Works for public radio too.

For financial reasons, you couldn’t do this overnight, so you’d phase it in, perhaps from the smallest stations first as you worked out the details. And you’d have to figure out how to judge whether a local station is sufficiently and significantly local and engaged. But the core notion is there — NPR focuses on being the best possible national content developer it can be (raising funds nationally), and local legacy stations would focus on being the best local media/engagement companies possible.

Take potshots at this idea if you like, but the notion that local stations can survive by restraining NPR’s ability to innovate and communicate with fans while feeding at the NPR revenue trough is nuts. What self-respecting media executive would want to lead such a dysfunctional organization? Well, sure the NPR CEO money is sweeeeet, but you’re setup to fail from the start.

There is truth, however to the notion that radio does not equal print. The nature of audio vs. text as a medium means that some things translate well into new distribution platforms and some things don’t. Radio, done well, is a companion medium in ways that text can never be. But streamed audio does not require a traditional analog FM/AM radio transmitter/receiver pair.

For the moment, the value of transmitters remains quite high — more so for public radio than any other transmitted program format. And some variation on broadcast media will probably always exist. But the value of the transmitter is in decline as the media universe expands and the distance between content producer and consumer drops to zero.

It’s not a matter of if, but when. The NPR board’s move this week (started in secret well before this week) is a repudiation of reality and sets up the highly successful corporation for several years of confusion as their member stations begin to decline in relevancy across most of the country.