At Wits End

All Things Millennial?

I don't have much to say about the cancelling of Wits. It was touted as A Prairie Home Companion for a younger crowd.

I listened...sometimes. It was on Saturday night. That's not exactly prime listening time for radio. Even in its heyday, A Prairie Home Companion lost over half its audience in the last half hour on the stations where I worked.

Wits had its moments, but not enough to draw me in every week. I only listened if I happened to be in the car.


Wits was an attempt to find a new hit to replace Public Radio's aging stars like Wait, Wait, Car Talk and APHC. Those programs were anomalies. Most attempts to create the new shining star have failed, especially one hour programs. It is hard for a program to gain audience...unlike programming. Listeners have trouble finding a single program. Landing on, and listening to, a program stream with a consistent appeal is much more conducive to habitual listening. Being able to listen to programming that consistently meets a listeners expectations on a regular basis can lead to greater loyalty and a large enough audiences to support the programming.

There's a difference

Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Weekend Edition and Marketplace are programs that work well together and resemble programming. Wait, Wait, Car Talk and APHC appeal to the same core audience. It just seemed like Wits, with it's out of the way scheduling, was trying to change the way people listen to radio. That's an uphill battle. We had a music director at one of the stations I worked for who vowed he was going to change the way people used radio. All he managed to do was drive the audience away.

I was at a PRPD retreat in 2002 when a network exec stopped by to give us an update on the status of public radio programming. He told us there were a handful of programs that were breaking even or better. There were over 350 programs being offered at the time. The odds of success weren't good...even when times were good.

Location Matters

All of the public radio hits mentioned above air when people use radio...except for APHC. The programs are all well produced and appeal to the lifestyle and values of the public radio audience. They also air during times when listening to radio reaches its peak. They air during morning and afternoon drive, or during the midday bulge on the weekend. A Prairie Home Companion is the exception. We aired APHC twice on WNPR. We carried the live broadcast on Saturday evening. We repeated the program Sunday at noon. It was not long before the Sunday broadcast outperformed the Saturday broadcast. The reason...The potential for an audience was greater on Sunday at noon because more people use radio at that time.

There is no shame or blame. The effort to create something new and vital should be encouraged. We should endeavor to create new audiences and, more importantly, reengage the audience we already have with new ideas and perspectives.

Eliminating Seams

Saying Goodbye Less Than Seamless

I was listening to the last minutes of Science Friday Today. At least I thought it was the last few minutes. Ira Flatow was saying goodbye. He was reading the credits. He told me to have a good weekend. The PRI button played. The show was over! Well, maybe not.

He told me to tune away.

So, I did. I got out of the car and did my errand. I got back in my car. I turned on the radio and there was the second half of Science Friday. I thought you were gone. You said goodbye. What gives?

I remember learning in my PD classes we were supposed to promote time spent listening by not creating barriers to listening. Telling listeners goodbye is a big sin. When you do this you're telling listeners to go away. You're creating seam. You're creating an excuse to tune out.

I would hope the network people would know about something as basic as the avoidance
of seams. Yet, I hear it all the time. The halfway point of Weekend Edition has a long goodbye. Garrison Keillor spends a good two minutes saying goodbye. They say goodbye every night on All Things Considered.

Why?

As a PD responsible for keeping listeners listening and engaged...you're doing your best to send them away. It is supposed to be about the listener. We're supposed to think audience. The audience tunes in and out all the time. They do not listen to programs from top to bottom. Instead of saying goodbye, how about an opportunity to forward promote?

Why is this important for public broadcasting? Building audience and promoting time spent listening creates loyalty which allows stations the opportunity to grow funding and build partnerships within the community. It's basic. It should be a part of best practices.

Rise of Podcasts

It is all changing...but how fast?

It has been said many time before. Radio...as we know it...is dead. Television, Cable, Satellite Radio, Internet Radio...now podcasts?  Maybe.
Check out this report heard on Weekend Edition today.

Podcasts Rise In Popularity, Funded By Advertisers And Listeners

Funding includes crowd funding, and advertising. This makes a few of these podcasts self-sustaining. Are podcasts ready to supplant radio. By public radio standards the audience is still niche. The costs are a lot lower than radio. It's an advantage. Running a public radio station is expensive.

Disruptive Technology

New technology is around the corner that will take away radio's advantage in the car. John C. Dvorak is cohost of the No Agenda podcast. He says this new technology is also bringing into question the future of broadcasting itself. "I think it is disruptive. And eventually, when we have real-time Internet availability in a moving car, it's going to be very difficult for conventional radio to compete with this model. I just don't think it's possible."

Public Radio is safe for now. Once the community of listeners disperses in large enough numbers to other platforms, Public Radio will no longer be able to support itself. I fret that the true loss may be the editorial gatekeepers.  I search for trusted sources for information. Where are the firewalls and editorial standards in social media? I'm not sure I can trust bloggers and podcasters. Not from what I've read and heard.

Old Time Radio Convention Closes Door

The big networks gave up on radio dramas in 1962. I listened to some of the final broadcasts of "The Shadow" when I was a kid. A teacher recommended them to me. He was quite enthusiastic about them. For me, if it came down to a choice between "The Shadow" and a basketball game,the game always won. Radio dramas were for the generation before mine.

The audience has almost disappeared. So have the producers and actors.   One of the legends of the Public Radio Program Directors Conference is that one PD asked what would be a good time to air drama on the radio? The answer came back, "1947."Some public radio stations still air these shows. Most notably WRVO, Oswego with "Tuned to Yesterday" weeknights Tuesday through Sunday.

As Scott Gurian reports for NPR, The Old Time Radio Convention met for the last time this weekend. This genre died a long time ago. Still, it was with a touch of nostalgia and sadness that I listened to this piece on NPR's Weekend Edition.