A collaboration of major players in public radio (Public Radio Exchange, American Public Radio, NPR and NPR's Public Interactive unit, and Public Radio International) have announced that version 1.1 of the Public Radio Tuner for iPhones has made it into the iPhone App Store. Since its initial launch, tens of thousands of people have downloaded it and over 200 stations have added their streams.
The following is exerpted from an email sent yesterday to NPR member stations:
Not just any application, a *public
radio* application
The Public Radio Tuner essentially allows
anyone with an iPhone or iPod Touch to listen to streams from stations across
the country. It has the features iPhone users expect from any "tuner"
application – search, a favorites list, and fast loading times. What sets this
Tuner apart is how the collaborators' experience and their direct relationships
with stations can create a listening experience custom-made for public radio's
high-quality, diverse content. What does this mean for the listener?
·
The
ability to search by call letters, frequency, city, region, or format
·
The
ability to click once to see all stations near the current location
·
An
ever-expanding menu of content with more streams added all the time
Future plans will make the Tuner even more of
an on-demand listening tool, with features such as a "What's On Now"
list of programs, searchable program audio, and more.
Not already part of the Public Radio
Tuner? Sign up!
People already using the app are asking for
their local stations' streams. (If you have iTunes, check out the reviews here.)
It's not too late to submit your stream for inclusion in the Tuner.
See if your station is in the Public Radio Tuner app»
The Tuner’s station support
services (where you submit and maintain your stream information) are in the
process of moving from American Public Media over to Public Interactive. We'll
keep you posted. In the meantime, visit the Public Radio Tuner page on www.apmstations.org
if you have stream-related questions (you can create a login if you don't have
one already). Please visit the project Web site at www.publicradiotuner.com
to stay up to date on the project and contribute your ideas for future versions
of the app.
A new collaboration for a new media
platform
The January Tuner
update came out of a unique collaboration between American Public Media (APM),
National Public Radio (NPR), Public Interactive (PI), Public Radio Exchange
(PRX), and Public Radio International (PRI). The project is led by PRX and
supported by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. APM, which created the
original Tuner, provided the code to the collaboration's technology team
so that new features could be added quickly and the existing user
base could be maintained. This latest update is the first of several updates
funded by the CPB grant. More releases will take place throughout the spring of
2009.
CPB and the collaborators see this project as
a way to encourage communication and knowledge sharing in order to harness the
collective expertise, talents, and resources of the public radio system. We
believe the Public Radio Tuner is an important way to keep pace with our
technologically evolving listener base and bring public radio to a whole new
set of people, as is the NPR Mobile partnership (https://www.nprstations.org/online/mobilelaunch/index.cfm
). Simply put, our listeners want us wherever they go. A recent
study tells us that they have the mobile tools to find us – we just have to
be there when they look.
Tell everyone about it
PRX will post promotional materials and ideas
to www.publicradiotuner.com; in the
meantime, you can get them from the APM stations
site.
I'm sticking to my wonderful Nokia N95, so I've asked my son, who is an iPhone user, to write a review of it which I'll post here. Trust me, if anyone can speak truth to Dad, it's one of my kids. --Dennis
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