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NPR Leader Out After Board Clash – washingtonpost.com — The back story is simple. The typical public radio station managers and owners are extremely dull-witted. This guy delivered them a huge audience and once they got the audience they wanted no new Internet-delivered content since it was perceived as competition. Apparently the NPR news blog was killed too. It will all deteriorate now. You watch.
People at NPR said, however, that Stern and the organizations 17-member board had clashed repeatedly over several of Sterns initiatives, including NPRs expansion into new media. Those initiatives often riled station managers, who saw them coming at the expense of serving the hundreds of public stations that pay dues annually to NPR.
NPRs board, which includes 10 members from station groups, declined to renew Sterns contract yesterday.
Interesting. Is that why the NPR twitter changed yesterday?
I was so happy when NPR finally gave up and put “This American Life” and “Car Talk” up as regular free podcasts. For a while they tried to charge, or limit you to Real streaming. Now there are heaps of excellent NPR podcasts. They contain the same content that they deliver over the air. It is just better because I can choose what programs I want to listen to, and when I listen to them.
So it sounds like they are going to give up podcasts soon. Their loss.
I know nothing other than this article and common sense. You have a “leader” who goes against the board members and the paying membership interests while increasing an “audience” that did not help the paying membership? So, what good was the guy?
Unless the paying members could benefit from the interwebitubes, what benefit is THAT to the membership?
Sounds too much like “fair trade” to me. USA thinks it can’t win in the international manufacturing competition, so it gives up. Thats not what Hillary would do. (smark!)
Its the hair. Old conservatives mostly lean towards deductive reasoning.
Stern embraces technology.
Stern is losing hair.
Therefore embracing technology leads to losing hair.
Here’s the url for the page allowing the public to address complaints to the NPR Ombudsman:
http://tinyurl.com/469a3g
For most “for-profit” radio stations, the “customer” is the advertiser. And want the customer wants is a larger audience to listen to the ads. So the radio station’s job is to increase it’s audience by any means.
For public radio, the “customer” is either the state or federal government that provides the grant, or the occasional large corporate donation that they pretend to feel embarrassed about accepting. The listening audience is irrelevant. Increasing the audience might lead to problems – like being pressured to produce interesting programs. As long as the audience is limited to people with exactly the same opinion who enjoy agreeing with themselves then there won’t be a problem.
I could care two farts what a radio network does as long as it doesn’t involve my tax dollars. If NPR is so great, it can be advertiser-supported. They accept paid advertising now, only they don’t call it that.
I liked it better before I could tell. Now I can. It taints all. Sorry.
#2 – You sound like some lameass radio DJ from victoria
I don’t think NPR should be expanding. I’d rather they focusing on delivering what they are doing as well as they can. I also don’t like the Post Office expanding outside of mail delivery.
Before the podcasts were available, I would only occasionally catch my favorite shows and I felt no need to become a subscriber to my local station. When the podcasts of the 3-4 shows I really don’t want to miss became available, I began subscribing as I could now get the content I wanted when I wanted. If the podcasts go away, they will lose my subscription.
#8 nailed it. The shortsightedness of those who run NPR is flabbergasting.
Here is a quote from NPR’s own website:
“NPR is an independent, self-supporting media organization.”…”NPR supports its operations through a combination of membership dues and programming fees from over 860 independent radio stations, sponsorship from private foundations and corporations, and revenue from the sales of transcripts, books, CDs, and merchandise. A very small percentage — between one percent to two percent of NPR’s annual budget — comes from competitive grants sought by NPR from federally funded organizations”.
Where do podcasts come in? Nowhere, at as far as the 860 independent radio stations are concerned. They probably see the internet as cutting into their advertiser base, and that won’t do. Even if NPR ends up loosing a number of listeners, the radio stations will feel safer…
I believe that NPR has done a tremendous service to the real customers, the listeners, by making available their programs for download, streaming or whatever on the internet.
First, it is rarely practical for me to listen to the NPR programs that I want to listen to at the times that they are broadcast on my local public radio station, KUAR. It’s no fault of KUAR. It’s just that my personal schedule generally only permits my listening late at night or in the early hours of the morning.
Second, and very valuable to me, is the ability to stop, start, and back up the program. I very often will replay a segment of a program several times to make sure that I fully understood what was said. Obviously, this is impossible with broadcasts unless I set up some sort of recording system for the program. And to my knowledge there is no radio equivalent of TiVo or my old VCR and even if there was, it would not be nearly as convenient for me as going to the NPR web site and selecting the programs that I want to listen to and just listening.
For example, I particularly enjoy many of the segments presented on Talk of the Nation, but I also don’t care for many others. So, I have found it convenient and enjoyable to, on Friday night or on Saturday to go through the previous week’s shows and to add the segments in which I am interested to the playlist on the NPR player. Then I just sit back and listen. It’s great. And if I have an interruption, as I often do, I just pause the program and then restart it after the interruption. Did I say great? Maybe that’s an understatement.
The bottom line is that, if NPR cuts out my internet connection to NPR, I will, with rare exception, cease to be an NPR listener. It’s not that I desire it, for I believe that NPR gives the most complete and balanced programming and news available on radio. I say that, even though I consider myself to be a staunch conservative who very often disagrees with the points of view of the decidedly liberal NPR program hosts and guests and NPR reporters.
Indeed, I say that NPR management and member stations need to get over it and realize that the internet is not stealing listeners from the member stations, for they never really had listeners like me, nor can they ever get listeners like me.
If the NP in NPR stood for non profit, you might have an audiance
There is also the possibility that the reason for pushing him out was that NPR got what it wanted from him and so they need him no more.
We will have to wait and see what turns up in the rest of this year.
Cursor_
#4 “Therefore embracing technology leads to losing hair”
Has anyone told John?
While everyone likes free stuff on the Interwebtubes. In this case it has to hurt the local stations.
First, several years back NPR changed the way it charges local stations for program. They used to be charged based on the number of listener members they had. Worked out great for the stations they basically just paid in a percentage of their revenue.
Then came the change. Now they are charged based on how many people COULD be listening. So two stations that are in two like sized markets pay the same. It doesn’t matter if Station A has half the listeners (and revenue) as Station B. The online content can only further dilute the local membership base.
“I know nothing other than this article and common sense. You have a “leader” who goes against the board members and the paying membership interests while increasing an “audience” that did not help the paying membership? So, what good was the guy?”
It says that revenue increased from 65 million to 200 million so he must have been doing something right.
#19 Of course revenue went up for NPR. Read my #18 post and you will see why.
I don’t know about you, but my local NPR affiliate is glad that they got rid of Stern. Though some of the things he has done have been good, the vast majority of them have been bad for National PUBLIC Radio, in that he was taking the PUBLIC out of it and putting corporate interests in its place.
My local affiliate, WAMC, in Albany, NY, is listener supported for about 90% of its funding. A little comes from grants, federal and state programs, and corporations. This is not true of other affiliates, one who has teamed up with Clear Channel. NPR gets its funding from the affiliates (I hear the station manager complain all the time about this), the federal government, and endowments. More and more money is coming from corporate interests, and this does not serve the public well, as corporations are NOT people. Small businesses, who are trying to plug their local wares on the local station are one thing, but when GE or ADM sponsor something on NPR or PBS, I start to wonder as to what corporate spin there has been put on this. Over the last couple of years, I have noticed that NPR has become more and more corporately aligned, and their programming shows. I am glad to see this change, and hope that someone new can put NPR back on the proper track.
We should stop giving NPR taxpayer money every year.
“This guy delivered them a huge audience…” = The guy is too good to fire.
And Hitler made the trains run on time = the guy is too good to go to war with…
“It will all deteriorate now, you watch.” Nothing like an editorializing way of pushing the story into accelerated flames.
In that spirit, new aphorisms will appear:
Where there’s a whiff of smoke, there’s an apocalyptic inferno.
A penny saved is a million bucks.
Unlock the barn and the horse will get back in.
Always trust Microsoft.
Early to bed and early to rise will give a man girth, direction and size.
Everything made in Detroit is good for America.
Dvorak’s agenda is to inflame you with Truth.
Seriously, I’m reading reports that he QUIT March 5 or 6. So how is this Big News now? Can you get fired 60 days after quitting?
Google his name and you will find out a bunch more.
#22 – We should stop giving NPR taxpayer money every year.
Right, because between 1% and 2% of NPR’s total budget is funded by competitive grants from state and federal sources, and once that boondoggle is cleared up we’ll be showing budget surpluses and all children will graduate with high scores and all terrorists will surrender and sunshine will blow out of all our collective asses.
There is no federal budget line item called “Free Money For Public Radio”.
Although, there should be.
#23 – And Hitler made the trains run on time
No he didn’t. That was Mussolini.
#19–stopher==so the guy made millions? How? I infer that he made it by selling out the interests of the dues paying member radio stations to outside corporate web based entities.
Again==his JOB was to keep the board and the paying members happy. How much money he makes for the NPR reserved capital funds is of NO INTEREST to the paying membership who I assume elect the board members?
So yes money is important and in this case the paying members and their elected board members were losing theirs.
It is pretty clear–even though I am assuming everything.
#24, 1-2%? Then they should have no problem without the money, and that’s some money saved. I didn’t realize that was your standard for budget cuts.
Is NPR relevant anymore?
>>Is NPR relevant anymore?
Sure. Anyone with an IQ in the triple digits listens to it on a regular basis. I guess that wouldn’t include you?
#29 Mister Musturd said, – “Sure. Anyone with an IQ in the triple digits listens to it on a regular basis. I guess that wouldn’t include you?”
That must explain why you can’t answer any of my questions to your posts that are completely wrong?
LOL!
So the people who download free music are sorry because they can’t download free NPR shows?
Boo hoo. Bobbo and GigG are right – no one has an obligation to go bust to satisfy the internet’s “freetards”.