... was Jeff Jarvis' clever title for a post about a visit he had anticipating his visit, along with other top bloggers, to National Public Radio today. Also included in the invitation were David Weinberger, Doc Searls, Jay Rosen, Robert Paterson, Zadi Diaz and Euan Semple. Read both posts, but in a follow-up post this afternoon about the actual visit (A day at NPR), Jarvis writes:
... I think the reality of today is that it’s NPR’s turn to rescue the stations. But I also wonder whether they can afford such loyalty. The value of broadcast distribution is bound to continue to diminish and some portion of the 300-odd NPR affiliates are mostly distributors, rather than creators. So the question is what an NPR station should become. Like newspapers, it seems they need to find their fate in being local. But what this is is not entirely clear. ...
Update 24 Feb. 2007: Jarvis added this on the 19th, but I missed it then -- What should local radio be?
... I’d start and the end and say that a local radio station must stop thinking of itself as radio. It has the power to develop local communities of news, information, and interest. It can use its promotional power to drive people there. It could, for example, get people in a market to record every damned school board and town council meeting and put them online, served by the station. It could create the meeting place where people share news and information, competing with or even in cooperation with local papers. It could be a home for talk about local issues and news. ...
Link: BuzzMachine.
Comments from others attending (with updates):
Euan Semple asks, When is an audience not an audience? He writes:
... In a connected world the costs of them [the audience] connecting to each other is trivial and this fundamentally changes the relationship between broadcasters and their audiences. ...
Link: The Obvious?
In More public, less radio, Doc Searls writes:
... The big question on the world wide floor is how NPR and its member stations adapt to a world where consumers are now producers, given that NPR is a nonprofit membership organization with no risk capital and when their credo, their revenue model and their 35-year legacy are all about serving their member stations. ...
Link: The Doc Searls Weblog.
In washington d.c. and npr: part I, producer Zadi Diaz adds:
... The more I sat there and listened, the more I became convinced that NPR's future seems to be in opening themselves up to their listeners... and in turn listening to them. They are the ultimate connector. Not only connecting people to great stories, but connecting people to each other. ...
Link: Zadi Diaz. Update 18 Feb. 2007: She adds, washington d.c. and npr: part 2, wherein she talks about "becoming a converstation" [sic]. Interesting thought.
David Weinberger adds comments about NPR.org and news. Link: Joho the Blog. Updated 17 Feb. 2007: Here's another post, A day at NPR.
Rob Paterson said "something magical* happened," but will post more when he gets home. Link: Robert Paterson's Weblog. Update 18 Feb. 2007: He's done that now in a post titled, NPR - Bloggers meeting - The Gift Economy In Action:
... The underlying question for the meeting was this - What is the new relationship that must underpin Public Radio in an emerging world where more and more people will reject being merely a passive consumer/listener but seek to become an active co creator and contributor? ¶ My take away was that the entire meeting "Embodied" what I feel to be the new relationship. I witnessed this new relationship in action. I am now sure that the new relationship must be that of the Gift Economy. It's most advanced application in North America is described here. Please see the Follow on for more. ¶ In the new world, where the listener moves from passive to active and becomes a co-contributor, their gift to public radio extends from a few dollars, extracted from guilt, to a more complete gift based on the supporter offering their story and their whole potential. ...
Link: Robert Paterson's Weblog. Much more to read there, of course. *See the magic. Update 20 Feb. 2007: Hyper Local Radio on the Web - BBC Manchester.
Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth [not] has several posts, some of which are brief videos of the discussion: Bringing Social Media to New NPR Programming, Morning Social Media Discussion at NPR, In a World Where Everyone Creates..., David Weinberger: If I Were NPR, Doc Searls: The Static Web vs. the Dynamic Web, and Social Media Thinkers vs. The Weather. Updated 17 Feb. 2007: Here are three five more posts: Users, Power and Objectivity; David Weinberger: NPR, User-Generated Content and Trust; Rosen, Semple, Jarvis; Jay Rosen: Attention Grabbing vs. Attention Granting; and Zadi Diaz: From the RNC to Nerdcore. Updated 18 Feb. 2007: He adds, Users, Power and Objectivity.
Updated 20 Feb. 2007:
Andy Carvin has now posted the full audio from this two-hour social media forum as two podcasts. Part 1. Part 2.
I'll keep adding to this post as I find other reports. Updated 18 Feb. 2007: On reflection, it's not really surprising to find this conversation happening within public radio rather than in public television. Do any readers want to speculate on why (or if) this might be? --Dennis
It's great to see NPR (and IMA -- a lot of top-shelf bloggers will be at the conference in Boston) actively reaching out to the non-broadcast world for ideas, input and commentary. After a few years in the public media business -- sorry, in the public BROADCASTING business (I was once snippily corrected by my boss on that word, and our Board just rejected a name change that would have used the word "media") -- I'm becoming convinced that most (not all) of the leaders that brought public broadcasting to prominence over the past 20-30 years cannot make the leap to the next model.
Ironically, NPR's and PBS' success in creating a public broadcasting voice over the decades has created, in effect, a monolithic corporation with tremendous inertia. Sure, all the stations are independently owned, but we still pretty much move in a lockstep fashion where it counts. We all carry Morning Edition and All Things Considered, all at the same time, all in virtually the same way. We all have pledge drives and we even use the same premiums and pitches. Indeed, our collective service is so cliched that shows like "The Simpsons" can (lovingly) skewer the entire industry with a quick Garrison Keillor impression and a sleepy TV pledge drive, and everyone instantly gets the joke. How long before the Dr. Wayne Dyer jokes start?
Jeff Jarvis hit upon the core of the problem in his comments: "...it’s NPR’s turn to rescue the stations. But I... wonder whether they can afford such loyalty." Further, he notes, "the 300-odd NPR affiliates are mostly distributors..." Yep. All but the largest and richest stations are just distributors, mine included. We don't generate local content of sufficient quality or quantity nor do we make an intimate enough connection with the audience to warrant high levels of ongoing support. We're the mom-and-pop store watching Wal-Mart come to town. We won't go out of business overnight, but business as we know it is indeed coming to an end.
Will NPR, PBS, APM, PRI, CPB and all the others save us station-distributors? Nope. That's not their mission, and they're already positioning for their next moves. Indeed, just this week our FM manager got word that APM will be distributing PHC and Marketplace on XM Radio. She bemoaned the fact that we weren't warned or given a "say" in this matter. Well, duh. Stations need the content networks far more than the networks need the stations, especially looking ahead to a time when networks can/will distribute content directly to consumers. I already listen to a few public radio and TV shows via podcast even though they're broadcast on my very own stations. What happens when IP radio appears everywhere or I get direct TV show downloads on an iTunes subscription?
Interestingly, a conversation came up at my station recently with a reporter -- someone that wanted to chat about starting a new company that would be a specialty news content creator and distributor, all done online. Even folks outside the "new media" wing of public broadcasting are recognizing it may be time to strike out for new territory. The old model is stuck in gear and we appear to be waiting for the car to run out of gas.
Posted by: John Proffitt | Sunday, 18 February 2007 at 05:59