DuPont Awards for NPR and Public Media

Awards for Investigative Reports

It was a really important say for NPR and Public Media as they've recognized for their reporting.
The Dupont award is the equivalent of the Pulitzer for broadcast news. Among the reports winning DuPont Awards:

NPR: Guilty and Charged  Many guaranteed services like the right to an attorney are no longer free.

WGBH: Frontline – United States of Secrets How the government came to monitor the communications of millions all over the world.

MPR News: Betrayed by Silence The cover-up of abuse of children by Priests.

There were six awards given to Public Media.

Millennial Gateway for Public Radio

Two programs distributed by APM are being touted as hip and trendy for Millennials.

MPR now stands for millennial public radio

Concern within public radio is the aging of the audience and how the younger audience uses radio. The hope is shows like "Wits" and "The Dinner Party Download" will draw younger listeners to public radio. Both programs are distributed nationally. According to the article in the Minneapolis Star, the audience is still small for programs with national distribution. "The Dinner Party Download" draws 250,000 listeners on 130 stations. "Wits" has 131,500 listeners in 100 markets nationally. A Prairie Home Companion  (APHC) also distributed by APM, draws 4 million listeners on 679 stations. APHC's audierceis centered on the Boomers.

Listener measurements listed in the article are based on station based statistics. They do not include on-demand listening through hand held devices, web downloads and streaming. Millennials listen at their convenience...not at the station's. Still, when public radio was new we talked about All Things Considered and Morning Edition being the gateway for the rest of our programming. The concept of gateway programming worked then. It could work now.

New funding process frustrates small stations

MinnPost - New funding process frustrates small public radio stations

Some are saying the change in the way the State of Minnesota funds public radio is politically motivated. "The only reason it was done that way was just because a bunch of Republicans didn't want to give money to MPR," charges Rep. Ryan Winkler, DFL-Golden Valley. 

An article in the Minnesota Post reports that the opposite has happened. The smaller stations, members of AMPERS and independent of Minnesota Public Radio, ended up with smaller grants and MPR has ended up with more.

Collaborative Marketing for Public Radio

As I read some of what was said at the Public Radio Development Conference about the need for consolidation and collaboration, I thought about a similar effort in public television. Connecticut Public Television, WTTW and a few others created a marketing partnership to garner underwriting funds for stations by pooling efforts.  Market exclusivity was one of the key points. The agreement was competitive. Not only would these station have more marketing clout against local commercial affiliates, but they would also have more clout against public television stations not in the consortium. The consortium failed. They were unable to sign clients interested in underwriting on these stations as a group.

What if the idea was focused on markets? What if public radio stations within a market were to pool resources to garner underwriters?

This idea would work best in markets where there is very little program overlap. Baltimore might be a good example. WBJC offers classical music with an audience share o 2.2%. WEAA offers Jazz and programming aimed to serve minorities with an audience share of 0.6%. WTMD is a AAA station with a share of 0.7 percent. WYPR is Baltimore's NPR station with a share of 3.1%. Individually, station shares are moderate to small. Collectively the audience share is a respectable 6.6%. The top station in the market is WWIN (MAGIC95.9) P6+ in BALTIMORE in JUNE with an 8.9 share.

Of course, this assumes the stations within a market would be willing to collaborate to create more marketing clout.

Philadelphia is another market where the public radio stations could benefit from a combined marketing effort. The combined cume of WHYY, WRTI and WXPN is 6.2% according to Arbitron PPM figures for the Spring Quarter provided by RRC

Some stations already benefit from having more than one signal in a market with a different format on each of the signals. Minnesota Public Radio, Colorado Public Radio, New York Public Radio and WGBH, Boston benefit from cross-format marketing. This is something I proposed at CPBI. If approved, the combined share could have been 6%.

Combining shares:

• MPR                  10.8%
• CPR                    5.6% (CPR is about to add a third format)
• WGBH/WCRB    3.1% 
• WNYC/WQXR    4.2%

How could individual stations share combined underwriting revenue? A simple idea would be to divide up the revenue by listener hours. That could be done for the entire topline or for specific dayparts depending the client's contract.