
Podcast sponsorship revenue continues to fuel NPR’s financial growth - smollett
https://current.org/2019/09/podcast-sponsorship-revenues-continue-to-fuel-nprs-financial-growth/
======
e1ven
I love NPR. I'm glad they're doing well, and hope they will continue to make
quality programs.

But one of the major advantages which has set them apart for me is that they
aren't as advertising dependent as so many of their alternatives.

Avoiding ads makes it easier for them to be independent, and able to report
without fear of corporations withdrawing their support.

It's also just much more pleasant to listen to. I try to avoid advertising as
much as possible, and it's sad that they are one more place it's invading.

I know they've had corporate sponsors for some time, but the podcasts really
feel like an escalation.

I don't blame them; I'm sure they felt this was the best choice for them to
grow and survive, but it feel like a disappointing loss.

~~~
pembrook
> _I try to avoid advertising as much as possible, and it 's sad that they are
> one more place it's invading._

It's unfortunate that internet people have been falsely conditioned to believe
the people who create the media we consume shouldn't be paid.

Oh, but you will gladly pay for quality, ad-free content, you say?

Unfortunately, based on the numbers I've seen at media companies I've
freelanced for, this only works out for a tiny minority of creators. Unless
you are the NYT (housing 1000+ journalists) or Ben Thompson (an outlier with a
super high income audience), the number of listeners/readers/etc willing to
pay is astonishingly low.

When people say they will pay in surveys, most of them are flat out _lying._
Here's a recent example:

[https://tim.blog/2019/07/11/why-im-stopping-the-fan-
supporte...](https://tim.blog/2019/07/11/why-im-stopping-the-fan-supported-
podcast-experiment/)

It turns out, a vast majority of people who complain about ads will not put
their money where their mouth is.

I say bravo to NPR for looking out for the sustainability of their excellent
work. I happily listen to ads to sustain their content. I have full confidence
they will continue to report with the same independence they've always had.

~~~
Dylan16807
> It turns out, a vast majority of people who complain about ads will not put
> their money where their mouth is.

Not quite.

If the baseline is that ads can provide enough revenue, and you're
specifically paying to remove the ads, then that's a much smaller number. He
has what, two ad slots, repeated at start and end? If that's $30 CPM at two
per week, that's 26 cents a month.

The minimum subscription was $9.95 a month.

As somewhat of a tangent, I would like a way to pay $5 a month in a single
spot and have it be apportioned to all the podcasts I listened to in that
time, but that doesn't really exist as a service. Even though that's _much_
more money than my listens are worth in ad revenue.

~~~
NickNameNick
I think your tangent is describing youtube red. Assuming all your favorite
podcasts are also on youtube.

~~~
Dylan16807
Yeah, if they were on youtube. Youtube red is a good model, and there's a
reason I've complained in the past about how the very broken 'google
contributor' should just copy it.

------
nashashmi
I used to love NPR but then I realized their content is exclusively liberal.
Now I am disgusted by how partison they are. It's like if you listen to the
news you don't get a fair report on things but a one sided view, mainly those
who suffer under conservative government.

~~~
nabla9
It can be argued that large majority of Americans have liberal values. Many of
them have non-liberal identity that makes them think they are non-liberal.

For example:

61 percent of Americans, 42 percent of Republicans, approve of labor unions

66 percent of Americans think money and wealth should be distributed more
evenly.

80 percent of Americans think some corporations don’t pay their fair share of
taxes.

78 percent think some wealthy people don’t pay their fair share of taxes.

76 percent believe the wealthiest Americans should pay higher taxes.

60 percent of registered voters believe corporations pay too little in taxes.

87 percent of Americans say it is critical to preserve Social Security, even
if it means increasing Social Security taxes paid by wealthy Americans.

67 percent of Americans support lifting the cap to require higher-income
workers to pay Social Security taxes on all of their wages.

[https://prospect.org/power/americans-liberal-even-
know/](https://prospect.org/power/americans-liberal-even-know/)

~~~
yostrovs
Amazingly, when voting time comes, the country tends to appear center right.
Could there polls be wrong?

~~~
scarface74
No the polls are correct. Many people’s overriding concerns don’t show up in
any of the parent poster’s numbers. Poll after poll shows the majority of
Republican voters concerns are for more “cultural” than economic. Especially
when you take into account how electoral votes are distributed.

------
xref
If you want a contrary take on NPR and particularly how their political
coverage is awful, Erik Loomis, a professor of union labor history and about
as far left as you can get, has a number of articles on how NPR fails the
national discussion

[http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2019/07/our-worthless-
me...](http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2019/07/our-worthless-media)

~~~
viburnum
I think the main problem with NPR news is they always play dumb. If somebody
tells them "2+2=5," they just repeat it, if even it's been proven a lie, even
if they've been saying the same lie for 30 years. It's not objectivity, it's
just enabling liars.

~~~
colordrops
Yes. Recently they've been corrolating the deaths from bootleg THC cartridges
with the banning of flavored nicotine vapes, which is nonsensical but they've
parroted it multiple days in a row. There's clearly a propaganda campaign
against vaping by big tobacco, with anti-vaping ads everywhere, Trump speaking
about it, etc. they are playing along.

~~~
rwmurrayVT
Big tobacco owns a hefty minority share of the major nicotine vape companies.

~~~
fkdo
They could just be hedging their bets.

------
GWSchulz
Listening to NPR with my dad on the weekends growing up in Tulsa was my
favorite thing on the planet and basically the reason I wanted to become a
journalist.

But like everything else in digital disruption that seeks to “make the world a
better place,” there are unintended consequences.

NPR’s immense success with podcasting could come at the expense of local
public radio affiliates around the country. They pay great sums of your
donated dollars to NPR (and American Public Media and Public Radio
International and BBC, etc — NPR is sort of the Kleenex of public radio in the
United States) for the rights to shows a whole lot of Americans still listen
to the ol’ fashioned way in their cars or at work over the air.

Eventually we’ll listen to only streamed or internet-based content, I’m
assuming. So the question is what happens to the affiliates most people are
far less familiar with than the NPR brand?

(“I heard it on NPR.” You technically heard it on KQED, or KUT, or WGBH, or
whatever.)

One suggestion for their future is to take advantage of the strong community
trust and ties many of them enjoy and beef up local coverage where newspapers
are fading away. Stream the content and broadcast it over the air.

Share resources between stations like several have done in Texas for the
morning program Texas Standard. There are numerous stations in other states
doing this or attempting to do it. And of course, be savvy with social, and
even consider experimenting with targeted ads and paid (or donated) search.

Support these efforts, or better yet, join them. Digital affords an enormous
amount of local potential with a relatively small team and budget where
newspapers traditionally faced gargantuan printing and operational costs.

~~~
war1025
As far as I can tell, IPR (Iowa Public Radio) is doing basically exactly what
you are suggesting. Their big thing during pledge drives is that they are
currently growing their team rather than cutting back like traditional news
media.

I think IPR used to maybe be several different stations that conglomerated a
decade or so ago. Not sure.

------
duxup
NPR is such a national treasure.

Here in Minnesota, Minnesota Public Radio is one of the few places that does
detailed stories on rural area outside the cities.

~~~
TylerE
That's MPR, not NPR. NPR is basically just a content provider, much like when
you read a national AP story in your local paper.

~~~
war1025
Isn't that like saying that CBS is a content provider? Obviously the big
parent company is the one providing content for the local stations.

~~~
wahern
NPR isn't the only content provider. There's also Public Radio International
(PRI) and American Public Media (APM), both of which were apparently founded
by several public radio stations. And many public radio stations produce and
syndicate their own shows independently.

Suffice it to say, NPR doesn't own any of these companies or stations.

~~~
dredmorbius
Just to fill out the confusion roster, there's CPB, NPR, APR, PRI, and PRX, at
least:

CPB: Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

NPR: National Public Radio.

APM: American Public Media.

PRI: Public Radio International.

PRX: Public Radio Exchange.

I won't go into histories and distinctions, but those are the major
organisations within the US.

------
glenvdb
I've been thinking for a while that the podcasting business is ripe for
disruption in terms for revenue models.

From my understanding, podcast creators have to track down and get potential
sponsors to sign on (if you're lucky and already have a big audience maybe
they come to you). Then you splice in the audio of their ad into your podcast.

Whereas I've thought that an easier model for everyone would be to have an ad
service that automatically serves ads into your podcast. Similar to how web
site advertising currently works. As a creator you simply tag locations in
your podcast where you want ads to appear and the duration of the ads. You
also give the ad service a set of key words it uses to serve the most relevant
ads to listeners. No chasing money and negotiating payments. Just sign up to
the service, tag the audio stream, and provide relevant keywords.

An argument against this way of using ads in podcasts is that you lose control
over the content and quality of the ads. I think we've all seen the broad
range of quality in ads seen on websites...

The other revenue model is a packaged subscription model through some kind of
syndicate. It's difficult to get people to pay for a single podcast, but if
you packaged up a few under a small monthly fee maybe keen podcast listeners
would be more willing to pay. Could be a good way to capture people who want
an ad free experience, but don't want to pay for each podcast individually.

Perhaps I'm not aware and these models have been tried already?

~~~
masklinn
> I've been thinking for a while that the podcasting business is ripe for
> disruption in terms for revenue models.

Don't worry, your widely known ideas for making podcasts bad have already been
considered and implemented.

> Perhaps I'm not aware and these models have been tried already?

Yes. The former is DI / DAI through podcasting platforms (rather than the more
artisanal and self-hosed podcasts, whether it's baked-in or DI). The latter is
subscription platforms like Acast Access, Spotify (which bought several
podcasting studios like Gimlet and Parcast) or Luminary, or "premium podcasts"
features (with either subs or one-off buys).

~~~
glenvdb
Spotify bought Gimlet? Wow. I haven't listened to podcasts for a while. Sounds
like a lot has changed.

~~~
scarface74
Gimlet has become NPR lite. Overly scripted, no spontaneity and everything is
over produced.

------
domenicd
I really wish there was some option to pay for ad-free NPR podcasts. I do this
with a few others via Patreon, but some quick Googling didn't find anything
similar for NPR.

~~~
rc_kas
I'd do this for my fav podcasts.

------
diafygi
I have mixed feelings about this, since on several NPR podcasts Exxon has
sponsored and advertised their carbon capture investment, despite it being a
greenwashing campaign that comprises such a tiny percent of their overall new
investment.

How can NPR not ultimately be captured by corporate interests with for-profit
sponsorships?

~~~
alrs
Because it's already a state-media propaganda apparatus?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_operations_(Unit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_operations_\(United_States\)#CNN_and_NPR_interns_incident)

~~~
gbrown
NPR is not perfect - in particular, I have some issues with the artifical
equivalency between our two major parties implied by NPR interview programs.

With that being said, your claim is 100% complete and utter bullshit,
unsupported by even your own source.

~~~
sidlls
Claiming they're a PYSOPS unit is overcomplicating the matter. NPR basically
practices access journalism
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_journalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Access_journalism))
and claims not to.

~~~
crispyambulance
Access journalism ??

Oh, you mean Terry Gross' excellent and astonishingly comprehensive interviews
with virtually all movers and shakers of the last 3-4 decades?

That's what I like about NPR the most. Prairie home companion, wait-wait don't
tell me... BORING. it's time to change the station.

~~~
alrs
Terry Gross' excellent and astonishingly comprehensive interview of each and
every member of the E Street Band.

------
dest
Shameless plug: I built adblock radio, for radio and podcast ads

[https://github.com/adblockradio/adblockradio](https://github.com/adblockradio/adblockradio)

Support is mainly for radio streams though, more work is needed to make it
work on podcasts.

------
dgaudet
this pleases me in so many ways.

as a former public radio listener, who grew increasingly tired of finding
something else to listen to during the all-too-regular fund drives, i very
much appreciate the ability to skip forward on podcasts.

i'm also happier paying for good audio content than i am willing to pay for a
dozen different news site subscriptions. my regular day is full of visual-
attention-required tasks, and having an audio-only source of information and
entertainment is worth paying for.

it's nice to know that it appears to be a successful business model for NPR.

~~~
gbrown
They've experimented with "silent" fund drives lately in Iowa, where if they
raise a target amount then the full fund drive is skipped. I like that a lot,
as well as the fact that their programs are all podcasted.

~~~
war1025
I find the silent drive to be soooo painful. It's the most passive aggressive
form of fundraising. I think they've gotten better at it the last couple times
around, but the first one was rough.

"We're just going to keep this silent drive going until we get the money!" ...
A month later "Come on people, going to have to do a real pledge drive since
no one is paying up..."

------
DoofusOfDeath
One beef I have with NPR podcasts is that they often crank up the loudness of
the ads way higher than the rest of the podcast.

When I already have the volume adjusted so I can hear the podcast over local
background noise, the commercials are genuinely painful. Especially when I'm
wearing earbuds and can't instantly lower the volume.

I'm sure they have reasons, but it really pisses me off.

------
countryqt30
I love NPR since I was a little kid. High quality information, also and
especially on financial topics.

[GERMAN] I also love listening to the German counterpart of NPR/ SeekingAlpha
> AlleAktien.de ( [https://www.alleaktien.de](https://www.alleaktien.de) )

