NPR tries something new and goes back to tried-and-true by Simon Houpt
Source : Globe & Mail
July 21, 2008
So much for a bold step into the future.
Four months ago, I wrote in this space about the Bryant Park Project, a new two-hour current-affairs morning show on National Public Radio that was as much a radio program as a new media experiment.
Like CBC Radio, NPR has been struggling to attract younger listeners (in this case, those in their 40s and below) and attract a significant audience on the Web. So it built some shiny new studios overlooking Bryant Park in midtown Manhattan and stocked it with 14 editors, producers and hosts, all passionately dedicated to their calling, who hit the air last October amid a PR campaign about a changing of the guard.
The BPP was the first new show NPR had launched in more than 10 years. Reflecting the attitudes of its core demographics, it had a sly, knowing tone and a free attitude about revealing the personalities behind the show. It covered stories in a fashion that was smartly skeptical. Like many listeners, I was instantly won over.
But NPR, like PBS, is not so much a network as a collection of more than 800 fiefdoms spread across the country: Each member station controls its own airtime, which it programs with shows distributed by NPR that are paid for from local donations. And member stations had no interest in ditching NPR's most popular show, the Washington-based Morning Edition, for some upstart out of New York produced by a bunch of hipsters in their 20s and 30s. (Hipster is a relative term: They still worked for NPR.) Only five over-the-air and 19 HD stations signed on; the feed was also carried on the satellite radio service Sirius.
So the majority of listeners accessed the BPP through an online stream or by downloading a daily podcast, which was posted two hours after the show concluded at 9 a.m.
It wasn't as convenient as flipping a switch on your bedside radio, but the online-only approach built extraordinary audience loyalty, since the show's home page was stuffed with content that you felt compelled to follow: a regularly updated blog, video snippets of the staff in action, outtakes such as songs that were performed by visiting bands but not broadcast on-air, a heavily trafficked message board, and a feed on the instant-update service Twitter through which staffers offered a sort of Talmudic take on what was going on behind the chatter you heard on air. (Er, online.)
When the host Alison Stewart left for maternity leave, she posted occasional items online about the challenges she faced as a first-time mom.
But despite the hype, it slowly became clear that NPR - which is an old-media organization - didn't have the intestinal fortitude for a new-media experiment.
Two of the executives who championed the show, including the woman who had been named NPR's senior vice-president of digital media only last October, left for jobs elsewhere.
And general managers at member stations complained that they feared listeners who downloaded podcasts directly from the main NPR website would have no reason to donate to their local stations.
Last Monday morning, loyal BPP listeners woke up to the news that NPR had strangled the infant in its crib, cancelling the show after only nine months. The final edition will air this Friday. In its official explanation, NPR cited the weakening economy.
But the show's uniqueness may prove to be its salvation. Unlike any other NPR broadcast, which wouldn't mention its own demise, the BPP has amped up its normal self-referential pose and covered the story extensively.
Last Monday, it placed the cancellation story at the top of its rundown - thankfully, its treatment was ironic and stoic, rather than self-pitying - and then came back to the story on Tuesday for an interview with a digital media consultant who said the show had far surpassed every benchmark NPR had set.
Through the rest of the week its host, Mike Pesca, (who has been filling in for Stewart during her mat leave) made frequent cheeky references to the show's impending doom. The staff has played up the story all across its website and Twitter feed.
Since the announcement, hundreds of fans have flooded the show's website and the main NPR switchboard with mournful declarations of love. Parents wrote that the BPP was the one NPR show they and their teens listened to together; others said they couldn't believe this was happening to a program they had only just discovered.
Many listeners are frustrated over their inability to directly demonstrate their loyalty with financial support, as listeners can do with every other show on NPR by calling in during pledge drives. (Maybe that's one reason I enjoyed the show so much: no pledge drives.) Someone started up a Facebook page in hopes of saving the show, and bloggers have weighed in about NPR's shortsightedness.
All of this has led to rumours that NPR, like a TV network unexpectedly besieged by irate fans of a newly cancelled cult hit, is suddenly reconsidering its decision. Under the rumoured survival scenario, the show wouldn't remain an over-the-air offering but rather become a less-polished Web-only program.
If so, I'm in. NPR's main current-affairs shows like Morning Edition and All Things Considered, which airs in the afternoons, don't offer full podcasts, which is the only way I have time any more to listen to radio - or, ahem, "radio."
The major current-affairs shows on CBC Radio also aren't available in their entirety via podcast. That's a shame, because younger listeners aren't the only ones moving away from live radio. My sixty-something mother just learned to download podcasts, and now she's addicted.
© Globe and Mail
Four months ago, I wrote in this space about the Bryant Park Project, a new two-hour current-affairs morning show on National Public Radio that was as much a radio program as a new media experiment.
Like CBC Radio, NPR has been struggling to attract younger listeners (in this case, those in their 40s and below) and attract a significant audience on the Web. So it built some shiny new studios overlooking Bryant Park in midtown Manhattan and stocked it with 14 editors, producers and hosts, all passionately dedicated to their calling, who hit the air last October amid a PR campaign about a changing of the guard.
The BPP was the first new show NPR had launched in more than 10 years. Reflecting the attitudes of its core demographics, it had a sly, knowing tone and a free attitude about revealing the personalities behind the show. It covered stories in a fashion that was smartly skeptical. Like many listeners, I was instantly won over.
But NPR, like PBS, is not so much a network as a collection of more than 800 fiefdoms spread across the country: Each member station controls its own airtime, which it programs with shows distributed by NPR that are paid for from local donations. And member stations had no interest in ditching NPR's most popular show, the Washington-based Morning Edition, for some upstart out of New York produced by a bunch of hipsters in their 20s and 30s. (Hipster is a relative term: They still worked for NPR.) Only five over-the-air and 19 HD stations signed on; the feed was also carried on the satellite radio service Sirius.
So the majority of listeners accessed the BPP through an online stream or by downloading a daily podcast, which was posted two hours after the show concluded at 9 a.m.
It wasn't as convenient as flipping a switch on your bedside radio, but the online-only approach built extraordinary audience loyalty, since the show's home page was stuffed with content that you felt compelled to follow: a regularly updated blog, video snippets of the staff in action, outtakes such as songs that were performed by visiting bands but not broadcast on-air, a heavily trafficked message board, and a feed on the instant-update service Twitter through which staffers offered a sort of Talmudic take on what was going on behind the chatter you heard on air. (Er, online.)
When the host Alison Stewart left for maternity leave, she posted occasional items online about the challenges she faced as a first-time mom.
But despite the hype, it slowly became clear that NPR - which is an old-media organization - didn't have the intestinal fortitude for a new-media experiment.
Two of the executives who championed the show, including the woman who had been named NPR's senior vice-president of digital media only last October, left for jobs elsewhere.
And general managers at member stations complained that they feared listeners who downloaded podcasts directly from the main NPR website would have no reason to donate to their local stations.
Last Monday morning, loyal BPP listeners woke up to the news that NPR had strangled the infant in its crib, cancelling the show after only nine months. The final edition will air this Friday. In its official explanation, NPR cited the weakening economy.
But the show's uniqueness may prove to be its salvation. Unlike any other NPR broadcast, which wouldn't mention its own demise, the BPP has amped up its normal self-referential pose and covered the story extensively.
Last Monday, it placed the cancellation story at the top of its rundown - thankfully, its treatment was ironic and stoic, rather than self-pitying - and then came back to the story on Tuesday for an interview with a digital media consultant who said the show had far surpassed every benchmark NPR had set.
Through the rest of the week its host, Mike Pesca, (who has been filling in for Stewart during her mat leave) made frequent cheeky references to the show's impending doom. The staff has played up the story all across its website and Twitter feed.
Since the announcement, hundreds of fans have flooded the show's website and the main NPR switchboard with mournful declarations of love. Parents wrote that the BPP was the one NPR show they and their teens listened to together; others said they couldn't believe this was happening to a program they had only just discovered.
Many listeners are frustrated over their inability to directly demonstrate their loyalty with financial support, as listeners can do with every other show on NPR by calling in during pledge drives. (Maybe that's one reason I enjoyed the show so much: no pledge drives.) Someone started up a Facebook page in hopes of saving the show, and bloggers have weighed in about NPR's shortsightedness.
All of this has led to rumours that NPR, like a TV network unexpectedly besieged by irate fans of a newly cancelled cult hit, is suddenly reconsidering its decision. Under the rumoured survival scenario, the show wouldn't remain an over-the-air offering but rather become a less-polished Web-only program.
If so, I'm in. NPR's main current-affairs shows like Morning Edition and All Things Considered, which airs in the afternoons, don't offer full podcasts, which is the only way I have time any more to listen to radio - or, ahem, "radio."
The major current-affairs shows on CBC Radio also aren't available in their entirety via podcast. That's a shame, because younger listeners aren't the only ones moving away from live radio. My sixty-something mother just learned to download podcasts, and now she's addicted.
© Globe and Mail
