

Ira Glass: Public radio can capitalize on its popularity without selling out - pwenzel
http://current.org/2015/05/ira-glass-public-radio-can-capitalize-on-its-popularity-without-selling-out-its-mission/

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tptacek
Avid public radio listener, WBEZ member.

I guess I'm not opposed to scaling up program underwriting, but I wonder what
it is about the structure of NPR and program buying that prevents shows like
Ira Glass's TAL from just making their money on "the back end".

Long-term, FM radio NPR is not going to last. As radio shifts from FM to the
Internet, local stations will matter less, and NPR/PRI will increasingly
become a Knight Foundation-like seed fund for new shows.

The ones lucrative enough to raise extra money can use all of the tools of the
Internet to monetize and expand.

~~~
lfowles
> Long-term, FM radio NPR is not going to last.

I'm curious, what do you think will replace FM NPR in cars? In Wichita, KS,
I'm lucky to get cell data service before I'm a mile out of the city.

Maybe I'm reading too much into an "FM Radio will not last" interpretation.

~~~
derefr
Instead of the "directly-streamed linear programming" model, you _could_ do
radio audio broadcast the same way you do GPS: just have the local radio
towers spraying some selection of podcasts on a loop (with high enough
frequency+bandwidth+compression that the effective audio rate is faster-than-
real-time, unlike satellite radio), and then have "radios" in cars (or
wherever) which catch the files and cache them.

You can build whatever you like on top of that—a hybrid device that will
siphon up local OTA content along with arbitrary podcasts when it can find 4G,
and then intelligently arrange the combination into linear programming, for
example. (Really, though, you're just creating a weird sort of secondary
internet that only allows retrieval of files relevant to the local area. In
fact, you _could_ make the "radio" into a 4G picocell that actually re-serves
said limited internet to your phone, where the OTA content then shows up in
your regular podcast app.)

Effectively, this would be the over-the-air equivalent of how pay-per-view
(not video-on-demand, the older one) worked, but with the client device then
acting as a set-top box to turn the received broadcasts _into_ something
equivalent to video-on-demand.

This would _also_ be equivalent to how the
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellaview](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellaview)
received game programs.

~~~
NeutronBoy
That sounds super complicated compared to good old FM radio.

~~~
derefr
You're imagining FM radio as some magical simple system that turns audio files
into airwaves. But guess what's in the middle? People. People making decisions
about what airs, in what order, on a very limited amount of real-time audio
band.

This would move that decision-making to the client device, which could follow
any algorithm the user preferred. There would be no people "working" at such a
radio station. It would just be a box out on a hilltop with an antenna,
retrieving files from an S3 bucket and spraying them—a bit like a numbers
station.

Now, there might be some curation going into what counts as "local content"
for the box to download and broadcast, but it could be algorithmic or just
economic. Picture something more like the "curation" that Public Access
television gets: anyone who wants to show up at the station and book a booth
for an hour for a fee can have a "TV show." In the same way, anyone who wanted
to hand the maintainer of the box an RSS feed of their podcast could have a
"local radio program" that cars could receive.

The key, here, is that there would be an _unlimited_ number of such "local
radio programs."

Don't imagine radio as it is today. Imagine driving into the vicinity of a
city and "picking up" the YouTube channels of everyone who lives there.

------
mc32
Public radio is a mixed bag. It's better than most but I dislike the pretense
of being better, because in my view they are only marginally better when
presenting news.

One of the things I'm most disenchanted with is how on uncontroversial things
they'll offer an opinion. "lack of oversight is bad". But on controversial
issues they tend to appear neutral (offering no opinion) while at the same
time couching the questions and loading their questions. So when it comes to
controversial subjects they take a position, but they try to hide it, which,
to me, is more perverse than the blatant left and blatant right, who at least
aren't pretending to be objective. That's to say nor, while marginally better,
comparatively, isn't all that good and show bias in their reporting and choice
of news.

For example, the strife in some inner cities was cast as police vs population
when in reality government is at greatest fault. They put the police there to
mop up after their failed or non existent policies to better peoples desperate
lives. So the police are their last desperate attempt at controlling a
situation for which they fell asleep at the wheel then blast police for the
situation.

~~~
thorfish
I heard a really outrageous example of that the other day. They were doing a
piece on migrants from Africa traveling to Europe. The NPR reporter brought on
a British professor of international studies for an interview. The professor
says, "There is a perception that immigrants hurt wages. But lots of studies
now show that is not true." This statement went completely undisputed, it was
reported as fact. No person of an opposing viewpoint was interviewed. I have
looked at some of those studies. Lots of fancy math - but math only reflects
the assumptions you put in. One paper I read stated as one of its assumptions
that economic growth would be proportional to the number of migrants, and then
based on that assumption proved that immigration would not hurt wages! It is
pure intellectual dishonesty to cite that result out of context as proof that
migration will not hurt wages, since the assumptions on which the paper is
based are completely unproven.

~~~
zorpner
Do you have any evidence that the result you found was the result this
professor was citing?

It's not generally possible to gain an understanding of a field by "[looking]
at some of those studies". This is why graduate students spend hours every
week doing literature review. It's why news stations get an expert in the
field to comment on a topic. Such experts can never be completely free of
bias, but the idea that every expert should be coupled with someone with an
opposing viewpoint (and if there's consensus in the field on the topic, who?)
is ludicrous at best.

~~~
thorfish
_Such experts can never be completely free of bias, but the idea that every
expert should be coupled with someone with an opposing viewpoint (and if there
's consensus in the field on the topic, who?) is ludicrous at best._

I actually think reaching some goal of being "bias free" is neither possible
nor desirable. I would have had a less of an issue with that NPR segment if
they had only presented one side - but it was the side that I thought had the
most accurate view.

My problem with citing "studies" was not just that I had read that one lousy
study. My problem is that virtually all these studies are inconclusive at
best, since you cannot do controlled experiments, you cannot generalize a
study of one immigrant group in one situation to other groups, etc. So citing
"studies say" as some kind of world of God is ridiculous.

~~~
mc32
Exactly. Like when they find it almost painful to call out Isis/isil as bad.
They do but it pains them to take a side when it's obvious there is a side.
But then if someone they have an obvious stance against, they have no issue
calling them out, say Russia vs Ukraine. I guess they feel safe calling out
Putin. There are fewer "allegeds" qualifiers.

------
tofupup
Folks seem to forgotten what happened to the Appalachian Community Service
Network. We know it as TLC and while a fortune was made off of honey bobo the
folk in Appalachia still have one of the lowest educational levels of working
Americans. As much as I love capitalism you have to admit it does not play
well with the commons.

~~~
joshuapants
I don't know that you could count on TV programming to have an appreciable
impact on education levels. Additionally, TLC was good for years before it
fell into reality show garbage, so it's not like the lack of results is the
fault of capitalism.

------
hoopism
Naive question... with the influx of cash from larger and larger underwriters
and the public funds becoming a smaller and smaller % of overall funding how
does public radio handle the natural tendency to chase the big funds?

What's the % breakdown today? I don't think it's evil, but when 80% of funding
starts rolling in for projects like invisibilia I could see it as tempting to
head more into a "reality show" type programming to chase big donors / big
audience... again, that's not to say that is wrong... but it certainly isn't
the mission.

Big dollars brings big pressures.

~~~
fleitz
The key is to limit advertising to the point where there is always demand for
the spot, and/or not reliant on major sponsors.

eg. If coke is willing to spend $15 million and pepsi $10 million if you sell
the ad to coke for $10 million you know you can always sell to pepsi for $10
should you piss coke off.

Ideally you should have a bunch of smaller advertisers such that it's easy to
find another person to take the spot.

It's an issue for any business and something DHH talks about regarding not
getting big clients which you inevitably end up becoming beholden to.

~~~
hoopism
Thanks. That's a great explanation.

------
lvs
This strikes me as naive and wishful, bordering on ignorant. Perhaps /he/
knows how to act ethically and idealistically despite relying advertising
money, but he must see how the entire remainder of the news/media industry is
not able to do so. This suggestion comes at precisely the wrong time, when the
ideal that media should be for a common good is utterly gone beyond lip
service now and then.

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nosuchthing
Does anyone here know of fundraising systems or lists of different micro-
economic models?

------
pervycreeper
Hard to take the message seriously when his show, This American Life, is so
incredibly bland. In my appraisal, it does nothing but pander to its
"middlebrow" audience, never daring to tell them anything they don't already
know. Maybe he's just not aware of it.

~~~
jasonmp85
Like how this week they interviewed a black man who when asked if his young
daughter's nascent understanding of the history of racial relations in this
country might alienate some of their white acquaintances and he replied "I
don't really care about the emotions of the white man in this country; perhaps
they should spend some time thinking about things they enjoy that no one else
in this nation can."

That's not daring to present a viewpoint at which the show's white bread
audience might bristle? What about the show that was generously interpreted as
positing that perhaps certain individuals were on disability insurance because
they had been left behind by the economy and this isn't a judgment of them but
rather of our lack of any other option for those individuals? The not-generous
interpretation was that it was shining a light on disability fraud,
essentially punching down. I guess that wasn't a challenging issue for the
listeners, either.

Or the whole debacle with Daisey. Yeah, they just glossed right over that.

~~~
ebfe
>That's not daring to present a viewpoint at which the show's white bread
audience might bristle?

Did you bristle at it?

>What about the show that was generously interpreted as positing that perhaps
certain individuals were on disability insurance because they had been left
behind by the economy and this isn't a judgment of them but rather of our lack
of any other option for those individuals? I guess that wasn't a challenging
issue for the listeners, either.

Was it a challenging issue for you? I.e., prior to the episode, you believed
that everyone on disability insurance was lazy?

~~~
jasonmp85
> Did you bristle at it?

Point taken.

> Was it a challenging issue for you? I.e., prior to the episode, you believed
> that everyone on disability insurance was lazy?

No, but I did generally assume they had something so debilitating they were
incapable of working. The show basically pointed out that some doctors in
areas of high unemployment were signing off on disabilities for people who
basically just had outdated skill sets. My impression was that in lieu of any
real progressive safety net (basic income, etc.) citizens have started leaning
heavily on disability insurance.

I was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt. Do some Googling to see
the other side of the argument about that episode.

Also, why is this being discussed at all? This (and shows like it) are
basically Chicken Soup for the Soul in podcast form. They're emotional filler
but I've fallen for discussing them like they should be some sort of hard-
hitting journalism or policy discussions. In a discussion of media
responsibility, does Ira really deserve to be the first head on the chopping
block?

