Three Things for April 25, 2022

This edition of Three Things recaps a few of the sessions from the Public Radio Super-Regional.

As I shared with readers last week, I’ve taken on a new role leading a small nonprofit in St. Louis, so these newsletter posts will be much less frequent.

If the Three Things newsletter has been of value to you, you can best show your appreciation by supporting my new organization, the Special Education Foundation. Here’s a link to make a gift if you have the means to help out. Thanks.

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THING ONE: Public Radio Super-Regional #1

Eat or Be Eaten

One of the luxuries that I’ve had over the past year while writing this newsletter has been to look outside of public radio at other influences and competitors. These competitors see opportunities to carve away at our existing audiences at local stations and, more importantly, snatch the loyalty of new audiences before public media has a chance to serve them.

With that thinking in mind, I was privileged to present a slide deck and then moderate a conversation at the recent Public Radio Super-Regional in Denver, where we sought to dive into that challenge facing public radio stations as well-funded competitors enter local markets across the country with the goal of building loyalty and the consciousness of local news consumers.

The session was titled “Eat or Be Eaten: The new competitive environment for public radio news stations.” The idea was to frame the conversation around three primary areas:

• Competition for Audience, Attention, and Time

• Competition for Revenue

• Competition for Talent

One can argue that there’s always been this type of competition for stations, so why is this any different than before? I feel that this moment is critical for stations to find their place with audiences on digital platforms as radio has become the haven to serve our most loyal audiences. For more on this, check out Fred Jacobs' post from earlier this month asking, Is Radio Becoming A P1 Medium?

Let’s assume that this is the case. Then it will be through our digital channels that public radio will need to expand and diversify our audiences to meet the industry’s aspirations to serve more Americans that may not be the audiences we have traditionally served in the past.

But there’s more.

This new environment brings competitors with the “network” and scale that doesn’t exist in the operating models for digital platforms at most local stations. One of the reasons our broadcast model has worked over the years is the scale of the network that allows news stations to offer a local - national service across a 24-7 schedule.

At least for now, that type of scale does not exist for most stations through the digital services they provide to audiences.

One of the most telling charts that I’ve seen over the past year is the one above from eMarketer tracking Time Spent with Media in the US from 2019 and projects it through 2023. The trends heavily favor time spent with digital media while traditional media, including radio, are all dropping in usage.

But not all is lost; radio is still used by a large percentage of the population, as shown (below) in this study from last year by the consumer research platform Attest.

According to this research, Millennials and Gen Xers are tuning into the radio with relative frequency, while weekly podcast listening among GenZ and Millennials is very strong. The problem is that we’re seeing a reduction in overall time-spent listening to radio, which started before the pandemic but has been exacerbated over the past two years.

But what stunned me from this study was gaming. Even Boomers are into gaming, with 60% playing some type of game every day.

This stat should leave no doubt as to why The New York Times bought Wordle. And it also tells me that public media needs to develop a games strategy as a connector to millions of Americans playing games — mostly on their phones.

What the chart from the Attest Media Consumption Report 2021 also tells me is that when we talk about competition. It’s about time and attention.

I then shared details of some of the competitors out there looking to seize readers and listeners that could, or should, be part of public radio’s digital audience.

There’s City Cast, Axios Local, and 6 AM City, all moving into local markets focused on slicing away at audiences in communities across the country.

There are also nonprofit news organizations that may be competitors, but also potential partners, such as the States Newsroom and Capital B.

And then there’s the competition for revenue.

Journalism Funding Partners has raised millions to support new and expanded local journalism efforts. Most are philanthropic dollars from individuals and foundations that went to commercial newspapers and television stations. The New York Times is also raising charitable dollars to support its coverage. Then there’s The Salt Lake Tribune’s conversion to a nonprofit in 2019, which raised more than $3.5 million in donations in its first full year.

There are also the recent significant investments in local journalism in Houston and Cleveland that do not include public media. And in Baltimore, Stewart W. Bainum Jr. is pouring $50 million into the Baltimore Banner, where there is hope that WYPR will be a partner in this major news investment.

Finally, there’s the competition for talent, which I’ve detailed quite extensively in this newsletter.

I’ve turned the slide deck of my presentation into a video (with no audio) if you’re interested in looking at the slides.

If you would like the full slide deck, please email me at tim@publicimpactgroup.com, and I’ll happily forward you the presentation.

THING TWO: Public Radio Super-Regional #2

“Three Things” that stations can do to more effectively compete in their markets

The panel discussion that followed my presentation in the “Eat or Be Eaten” session was a lively conversation with our excellent panel of station leaders.

• LaFontaine Oliver from WYPR in Baltimore (who also has a second full-time job as chair of the NPR, Inc. Board of Directors)

• Stephen George, the President and General Manager of Louisville Public Media

• Rachel Hubbard, the Executive Director of KOSU, the public radio station serving central and northeast Oklahoma, including Oklahoma City and Tulsa

All three of these stations innovate in their communities as they work to distinguish and define themselves in their market. Each of these stations “play above their weight,” recognizing that doing what they’ve always done is a recipe for long-term irrelevance. Here’s an example:

• Last year WYPR acquired the Triple-A station in Baltimore, WTMD. As LaFontaine said in the press release announcing the acquisition, “If news and journalism and information is sort of the oxygen for democracy, then music is like food for the soul,” he said. “There is a great deal of synergy between our desire to be a leader as it relates to local news and journalism, and rounding ourselves out in such a way that we're not just thinking about the head, but the heart and the spirit.” WYPR is also in conversations to partner with the Baltimore Banner — with more to come on that news.

• Earlier this year, Louisville Public Media completed its capital campaign to expand its local news operation raising $1.7 million to support five new reporting positions at WFPL and a Vice President of Content to manage all editorial operations for the organization. In addition, LPM is one of just two public radio stations to receive funding from the American Journalism Project with a $655,000 grant to support an expansion of its development department through the addition of three new positions and new investments in marketing and digital membership growth.

• In February, KOSU won an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for “Blindspot: Tulsa Burning,” a collaborative podcast with Focus: Black Oklahoma, WNYC Studios, and The History Channel. The six-episode “Blindspot: Tulsa Burning” podcast explores the racial terror that destroyed the Greenwood District of Tulsa, Oklahoma, 100 years ago. Through conversations with descendants, historians, and local activists, the series considers how the traumatic two-day attack continues to take a toll.

All three stations focus a lot of their efforts on partnerships which is a big key to the impact they’re having in their communities.

To close the session, I asked these station leaders to suggest “Three Things” that stations can do to compete in their markets more effectively. Here are their recommendations:

Stephen George, Louisville Public Media:

1. Start/grow a daily local newsletter.

2. Engage your audience in your storytelling and invest in paid marketing to help augment your work.

3. Find what doesn’t exist in your local news ecosystem and go hard for it (for us, it’s environment/climate change coverage, arts coverage, and podcasting).

Rachel Hubbard, KOSU:

1. Ask the people in your service area what they need. Themes will emerge. Chase them. 

2. Give people practical information. It may seem like “dumbing it down,” but it makes your information accessible and usable. Distribute it widely.

3. Do something tomorrow that scares you. Think like a startup. 

LaFontaine Oliver, WYPR:

1. Look for and establish a meaningful local partnership. Maybe even seek out strange bedfellows.

2. Practice and refine your pitch to donors and funders. Be ready for the big ask. (Every Friday Forever)

3. Start some sort of initiative to Pass the Mic.

My thanks to these great station leaders for taking the time to participate in this terrific discussion.

THING THREE: Public Radio Super-Regional #3

New Ideas on DEI and The NPR+ Podcast Subscription Service and New Thinking in Sponsorship

The Super-Regional had several other excellent sessions, including an inspiring keynote address from Dr. Dwinita Mosby Tyler, the Founder and Chief Catalyst of The Equity Project. Dr. Tyler's talk on Demystifying Equity, Diversity & Inclusion set the tone for the first half-day of the conference that focused on DEI.

One of the first slides from the presentation was the one below that explained the idea of Liberatory Consciousness created by Dr. Barbara J. Love¹.

Liberatory consciousness is reclaiming choice in our values, attitudes, and response patterns that would allow for “greater flexibility and propensity for change” from systems & institutions.

As Dr. Tyler explained, the framework of liberatory consciousness can ground individuals to confront injustice to change systems and institutions to be more equitable and just. She shared the four steps:

• Awareness. Living with awareness means to live “in an awake position” — to notice our language, behaviors, and thoughts, and observe what's happening in the world around us. When something happens that shouldn’t have, or something is said that shouldn’t have been, one must be aware of it and how it may be contributing to systems of oppression.

• Analysis. After becoming aware of a problem, the next step is to notice it and think and theorize about it. Developing our explanations about what is happening, why it's happening, and what needs to be done better positions us to consider whether or not a situation seems consistent with our values and goals of a fair and equitable society. Dr. Tyler warned this is a place where many get stuck and can’t take the next step.

• Action. Beyond simply recognizing a problem, we must decide what needs to be done to ensure action is taken. That can look like taking the initiative as an individual, encouraging others to take action, organizing and supporting others who feel empowered to do something. It may also mean seeking out resources to encourage others to act.

• Accountability and Ally-ship. We need to “understand and manage [the] opportunity and possibility for perspective sharing & ally-ship in liberation work.” Working in connection & collaboration with others permits us to make progress in ways that wouldn’t be if we operated in isolation or separation.

You can download the full slide deck from Dr. Tyler’s talk at this link.

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One other session I want to note was the NPR session on Leveraging On-Demand Audio to Grow Revenue and Membership. Members of the NPR Network Growth Team² were on-hand to brief attendees on the efforts being developed to grow audience and revenue for NPR and member stations through podcasts and on-demand audio.

Another goal of the Network Growth Team is to use NPR One to drive audience and station membership. One of the big announcements coming from this session was a $1 million marketing investment from NPR to grow the audience and usage of NPR One. This is a big deal for public radio to build upon its own distribution platform that co-brands with local stations and features station content.

This type of effort needs stations to embrace it as well, and I hope there is a coordination plan and agreements with stations to do just that.

In addition, some research was shared of NPR podcast subscribers that found that bonus episodes and extended content were the most valuable to listeners. This is a similar benefit that other podcast producers, like Slate, offer its Slate+ members.

This was the lead-up to the idea of creating a member benefit and acquisition opportunity for stations from NPR podcast listeners. The idea is to create something similar to PBS Passport for NPR stations using an NPR podcast bundle as the carrot for subscribing, with the proceeds going directly to stations.

The proposal is to use the payment processing company Stripe to handle the transaction, which could be problematic for many licensees operating out of public universities.

In addition, the big question that I have on this is that this seems to be presented as a member acquisition proposal instead of a member benefit. PBS Passport was initially conceived as a member benefit that evolved into an enormously successful platform to add new members.

I worry that this may be a tough sell to convince a podcast listener to subscribe to the podcast bundle with a local station that they may not have any relationship with other than the brand association with NPR.

I guess we’ll soon see.

The second section, which lasted about ten minutes, of the NPR session, discussed a proposal to generate revenue and sales opportunities for stations by working together with NPM to sell unsold inventory across local, regional, and national podcasts in an ad exchange. There were many unanswered questions coming out of the session that, perhaps, have already been answered by NPR in the days since the conference.

For example, a question by one General Manager asking if a local station could sell sponsorship on a national podcast, like Planet Money, to a local business?

The response from NPM’s Bryan Moffett was a very tentative “yes” but was contingent on several factors (described as phase three) to get to this opportunity.

From my take, Bryan’s response, while not untrue, was somewhat misleading if one believes that means NPR will put its inventory into the exchange so local teams can sell NPR podcasts locally. It seems that getting to “phase three” is a pretty tall leap in how this plan was presented.

For stations, the real holy grail would be for NPR to ad a local ad unit into their national podcasts like we’ve had for years in network broadcast shows on our local air. This is technically possible given how local stations are already doing this with the localized versions of the Consider This podcast.

However, that doesn’t seem likely to happen anytime soon³.

What I took away from this presentation was that NPM is looking for more inventory and control over national and regional sponsorship, with the possible addition of local sponsorship. As it stands today, the stations participating in the ad exchange will give NPM more inventory to sell, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that stations will be allowed to access NPR’s inventory, at least not at first.

There are still some critical questions and clarity needed so station leaders fully understand what is being proposed and the impact of participating in this exchange when NPR does not intend to offer up its own inventory for a while, if ever.

The NPM ad exchange is not valuable to public radio stations until NPR commits to include their inventory in the exchange at the same time.

Stations should ask why NPR would ask stations to fully commit their inventory to the NPM ad exchange if NPR is unwilling to do the same?

In addition, presenting the podcast subscription/membership concept and the ad exchange together creates confusion because they are two very different and separate things. Therefore, these two proposals need to be negotiated and agreed upon separately by the NPR members.

The ideas presented by NPR on the membership front is a good first step. But more clarity is needed with an open dialogue with those on the front lines to get to a win-win for stations and NPR. That’s how this collaboration would be a success.

That’s it for this edition of Three Things. As I shared last week, I’ve taken a role to lead a small nonprofit in St. Louis, so these newsletter updates will be coming with much less frequency.

But, please stay in touch and share your thoughts and ideas, and I would love to hear from you at tim@publicimpactgroup.com. Stay well.

1. Dr. Barbara J. Love is a Consultant, Coach, Author, Lecturer, Climate Change Activist, and Personal & Organizational Transformation Specialist. She works from a unique set of assumptions about the nature of humans and the process of personal, organizational, and social change which participants find empowering, enabling, and effectively motivating. She has worked with a broad range of organizations throughout the U.S., Europe, the Caribbean, and Africa. Her research focuses on personal, organizational, and societal transformation and strategies for liberation. She has authored and co-authored a variety of publications, including "Developing a Liberatory Consciousness," “Understanding Racism And Internalized racism,” and chapters in Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice, including “Knowing Ourselves as Instructors,” “Racism,” and “Ageism and Adultism.”

2. The team includes Bryan Moffett, COO, NPM, Senior Vice President; Joel Sucherman, Vice President, Audio Platforms Strategy; and Leda Marritz, Program Manager, NPR Plus.

3. A slide in the deck said that opportunity would be evaluated at the end of 2022 after +50M impressions from local stations exist.