Technology360

NPR API: The GillmorGang interview

Steve Gillmor interviewed NPR digital media directors Zach Brand, Daniel Jacobson and me July 17th on NPR's release of its Application Programming Interface for his GillmorGang podcast.  Although it's a little technical, it should give you a good overview of what it's doing.  It's now been posted.  Link: GillmorGang.

NPR API is Live on NPR.org

Blog posts here have been scarce of late since my interim CEO job at NPR, that began in March, has been so consuming.  However, as a long-time bit-head, I'm very proud of the work Daniel Jacobson, Zach Brand and others [see below] have done in the very progressive step of opening up NPR's API to wide usage.  To see what it can do, scroll down the left side of this page below the Files section to access NPR stories in three categories that I've chosen as relevant to the topic of this blog.  There are dozens of other categories.  Quoted below is Daniel's description on the NPR.org weblog:

... we launched our new API today. To find the API, you can either go directly to http://www.npr.org/api/ or you can follow the new link called "Tools / API" on the NPR.org left nav under the Services section.

In order to use the API, you will need to register using our new registration engine that Zach mentioned in a previous post. Once registered, you will need to generate an apiKey by clicking the Generate Key button on the API tab of your account profile. The apiKey is used to authenticate all requests to the API. After you get your apiKey, you can read our documentation or just go straight to the Query Generator, which is a comprehensive tool that allows you to easily create your API requests and see what your results would look like.

There were quite a few questions that we addressed when developing the API, but one thing that was not really in question was the need to open as much of our content as possible. As a result, almost everything that you can find on NPR.org that we have the rights to redistribute is available through the API. This includes audio, images, full text, etc. That said, there are elements, series and programs that we could not offer due to rights restrictions.

We also discussed in depth which output formats we would support. For launch, we are supporting RSS, MediaRSS, Atom, JSON, JavaScript Widgets, HTML Widgets and our custom tagging structure called NPRML. We would like feedback on what other formats we should support, although as of now we are planning to extend it to include NewsML. Which of the existing formats are you most likely to use from our API?

There were a ton of contributors to this new API with the primary technical architect being Harold Neal. Other major contributors include Joanne Garlow, Jason Grosman, Tony Yan, Ivan Lazarte, Stephanie Oura, Ben Hands, Shain Miley, Lindsay Mangum, Sugirtha Solai, Todd Welstein and Vida Logan, and others.

Finally, we would really like to get as much feedback from the community on the API, particularly on what you think you will use and what is missing from the offering. We will continue to post here with more thoughts and questions.

--Dennis

P.S.: Zach, Daniel and I want you to know the following:

Key contributors included members from [NPR] News, Strategy & Partnerships, Legal, and Business Development.  Technical work was done by Harold Neal, Joanne Garlow, Jason Grosman, Tony Yan, Ivan Lazarte, Stephanie Oura, Ben Hands, Shain Miley, Lindsay Mangum, Todd Welstein and Vida Logan and a host of others. 

The End of Customer Service

The March 24th issue of Time has a feature, "10 Ideas That Are Changing The World," one of which is "The End of Customer Service" by Barbara Kiviat.  This is presented as an inexorable and vaguely positive thing, but I don't know.

A trip (two, actually) to a Maryland Ikea store this past week to buy some furniture for my new apartment sure brought this home.  Ikea has features nice design, inexpensive prices, and great Swedish meatballs with lingonberries for $5.  Well, maybe I should reverse the order of those attributes.  They make it easy for a decorating doofus to match things. 

I swear that every time I go to an Ikea store, which is only about annually, I see fewer employees.  The ones that are left are always very helpful, but sometimes you have to look a bit to find one.  This time, all the check-out lines were self-service.  A single employee worked all the lanes to assist people like me who couldn't find the barcodes and to keep us from scanning both Box 1 and Box 2 when they're part of the same item or you'll pay twice.

I wouldn't be surprised if a few years from now, you'll walk into Ikea and see only customers.  There will be a couple of guards on the way out, Costco style, to check your receipts against your cart, and maybe some people behind the scenes converting dollars into kronor.  Go to the cafeteria and hold your plate under an opening and your dozen meatballs will drop out.  Rotate the plate quickly and you'll get a splat of lingonberries and a blob of mashed potatoes (or is it the other way around?).  Can't find something?  Go to a kiosk and talk with a helpful operator named Bruce or Christine from Bangladesh (unless you're in an Ikea in Germany, in which case they're named Helmut and Helga).  I'd rather they automate their self-service furniture pick up so I don't have to go for the Advil when I get home.

Bringing this back to media a minute... It's probably not too far off the mark to say that self-service is one of the defining characteristics of new media vs. old media.  The legacy media are full service media.  We think about what programs you want and when you want them so you won't have to.  Just turn on your radio and television and sit back.  New media are self-service.  Search for this podcast or that video or that streaming link.  Decide both what you want to consume and whether it's MP3 or Real or Windows Media or QuickTime.  Which of the several players I have do I want to use?  Want to use one of the new IP radios?  Then sometimes be prepared to manually enter the URL of your favorite audio service.  You get the picture.

So we who want to succeed with distributing programming over emerging platform choices need to design those services to make them simulate the full-service environment as much as possible.  --Dennis

CBS O&Os Get Broadband

Of CBS's 29 O&O TV stations, Will Richmond writes:

... CBS TV Stations drove 89 million video views from their own sites in '07, an average of around 8 million video views/mo from their own sites, a 71% increase over '06. It's gaining an additional 10 million video views/mo through syndication partners. The primary current contributor to syndication is Yahoo, with whom CBS TV Stations partnered in Oct '06. To put this in context, today's WSJ carried the adjacent graphic of select broadcasters' video views. Putting aside CBS TV Stations' 10 million monthly syndication streams, its '07 monthly average traffic would appear to rank it in the top 5, right around Discovery.com.  ¶  In addition, video clips are a big part of CBS TV Stations' success, as it is posting around 520/day and now offers a searchable library of 350K clips.  ¶  Meanwhile the Yahoo deal has been so successful that CBS TV Stations has clearly gotten syndication religion, with several significant announcements planned for the coming weeks. Leess explained how these syndication deals drive unprecedented consumption from out-of-market viewers while also creating valuable ad inventory. For pre-rolls, CBS is getting between $28-75 CPM, with banners fetching $8-18 CPM. Importantly, CBS TV Stations are aggressively bundling on-air/online/broadband packages, having sworn off broadband as a pure "value-add" some time ago.

Link:  Video Nuze.  --Dennis

BBC iPlayer usage prompts concern from service providers

It wasn't too long ago when web commentators were criticizing the BBC iPlayer, which uses the same distribution engine as Open Media Network, developed by former Kontiki chairman Mike Homer and recently gifted to U.S. public broadcasting.  Now it seems that iPlayer is so successful that it's causing ISPs some traffic problems.  According to informitv.com:

... In January, more than 2.2 million people used the BBC iPlayer, streaming or downloading around 11 million programmes, reaching up to half a million shows in a single day. In addition, there were nearly 16 million radio downloads in the same month.  ¶  That represents a significant increase in the 5.6 million hours of audio and video that was streamed by the BBC in the whole of 2006-2007. ...

Kudos to the Beeb.  With a different production structure and internecine rivalries, it's hard to see how American public media will ever collaborate enough to duplicate the UK's success for national programming, but I'm optimistic about its success at the local station level if we're willing to develop content partnerships with community non-profits, schools and universities, government agencies, etc.  --Dennis

T-Mobile and Orange to test 100-channel mobile TV

Richard Wray writes:

T-Mobile and Orange will today announce a partnership to run a commercial trial in west London of a new mobile TV technology which could allow handset users to tune in to up to 100 channels.  ¶  The technology, TDTV, has been developed by US-based NextWave Wireless at its British unit in Chippenham, Wiltshire, and could provide a cheaper and more efficient way to get broadcast TV on to mobile phones. The trial, due to start in late summer, will see several thousand Londoners given either a new handset - made by a far eastern manufacturer rumoured to be LG - or a wireless receiver, no bigger than a matchbox, which will transfer the channels to their mobile phones. ...

Link:  The Guardian.  --Dennis

Toward an Embarrassment of Niches

This clever title from Skip Pizzi, who writes:

... One recent study, conducted and reported by a respected music industry publication, The Lefsetz Letter, compared the overall music sales — both physical and digital — of the calendar year 2000 (the peak sales year to date for the industry) with sales in 2007, and found that the 2007 figures were down about a third (–36%) from the 2000 sales.  ¶  Then Lefsetz compared the individual sales of each of the top 10 selling records for those two years with one other (i.e., sales of the #1 record of 2000 compared to the #1 record of 2007, #2 with #2, and so on), which you would expect to approximately reflect the same one-third drop — but they did not.  ¶  Instead, the records that occupied each of the top 10 slots for 2007 were off from over 50 percent to nearly 70 percent compared to the sales for the records in those same positions for 2000.  ¶  This substantially disproportionate drop for the bestsellers of 2007 indicates that music sales are clearly trending toward greater diversity and choice. ...

... Consumption patterns are shifting, and these may significantly affect radio formatics, particularly for music.  ¶  Here are the high-level bullet points that influence any course corrections that terrestrial radio might consider:

• As blockbuster sales decline and niches grow in importance, music promotion will move away from traditional radio formats and seek more specialized outlets.
  
• As big names sell fewer records but continue to receive most terrestrial radio airplay, music labels will seek increased compensation to make up for sales losses through new royalty payments from broadcasters.
  
• Metadata matters, particularly for less well-known artists.
  
• One-to-many is giving way to many-to-many, and unilateral purveyors of taste (e.g., radio programming gurus) are giving way to “communities.” These virtual communities are defined along multiple axes, one of which is geographical. Terrestrial radio’s limited coverage can be turned to a strength for such localized communities.
  
• A potentially controversial point, but worth considering (at least academically): In terms of maximizing competitive agility, terrestrial radio ownership limits may be inverted. ...

Link: Radio World.  Thanks to Kerry Swanson for the tip.  --Dennis

TV Stations Seek Shows to Put Online

Brian Stelter visited the National Ass'n of Television Program Executives (pronounced "GNAT-pee") conference in Las Vegas and writes:

... As broadcast growth flattens, local stations are increasingly looking to their Web sites for new sources of revenue. Some stations are creating original programming for the Web, but it is far easier for them to purchase the online rights to syndicated shows. This week, for instance, 200 television station Web sites introduced “Big Shot Live,” a national online talent competition promoted through “Entertainment Tonight.” Some stations, under an agreement with Warner Brothers, are now showing the syndicated sitcom “Two and a Half Men” on their Web sites.  ¶  If ventures like these are successful, local affiliates may wind up playing the same role online that they do on television, in which they buy up what is essentially used programming from producers. As Oprah Winfrey and Alex Trebek can attest, syndication is a backbone of local broadcasting: affiliates purchase the local rights to specific shows and sell ads alongside the content. ...

Link:  New York Times.  --Dennis

KCRW Launches Amped-Up Internet Radio Player

Eliot Van Buskirk has a post about public radio station KCRW's new (in beta) player.  A number of such efforts are underway in public broadcasting.  He writes:

Santa Monica College's KCRW, which has already attracted a relatively large online following for its webcasts, doubled down on its digital strategy with a new web-based streaming application that lets users choose mix and match radio segments into their own customized stream.  ¶  The service has a slick, easy-to-use, multipane interface with components that slide out of your way as needed.  Segments and mixes can be embedded on blogs and social networks, which should help KCRW's reach grow significantly. ...

Link:  Wired.  Thanks to Arthur Cohen in PRPD News for Programmers for the tip.   --Dennis

Open is King - The Future of Meida Beyond Control

... is the title of a lecture that Gerd Leonhard gave at the European Centre for the Experience Economy in Amsterdam earlier this month.  Lots of good stuff here.  Link:  Media Futurist [PDF].  --Dennis