mramsey1
Dec 16, 20085 min
Here's my take on one such future for Public Radio, as published in "Grow the Audience for Public Radio" by the Station Resource Group.
Some of the themes here will be familiar to folks who caught my presentation for the Public Radio Program Directors' Conference in LA a few months ago – or to folks who have read my new book.
For those of you who would rather read than click, here's the piece in its entirety:
A Future for Public Radio
by Mark Ramsey
One of the most popular Public Radio personalities has never had a show on Public
Radio.
And it's simply because we have never asked him.
What is the future of Public Radio? That future is what you will make it. And this
much is for certain, it is not more of the past.
I don't need to lecture you about audience and technology trends with which you're
already well acquainted. I don't need to tell you about the tidal wave of
entertainment and information options listeners have today. I don't need to rant
about the unprecedented control any individual listener has over her own audio
experience. I don't need to explain the new primacy of the listener as the source of
content, no longer simply its recipient. You've heard all about this before.
But what are you doing about it?
The old models have a scant few years of life left in them.
Will there always be Public Radio no matter what? Sure, maybe. But it doesn't have
to be vital. It doesn't have to matter. It doesn't have to be "public." And it doesn't
have to include you or me in its ranks.
EBay was born in 1995 when a computer programmer named Pierre Omidyar
couldn’t register the name of his consulting company, Echo Bay Technology Group,
so he shortened the domain to “eBay.”
The very first item to appear on eBay was Omidyar’s laser pointer – his broken laser
pointer.
After selling the item for $14.83, Omidyar contacted the winning bidder to make
sure he understood that this laser pointer was, in fact, busted.
He did. You see, he was a collector of broken laser pointers.
There’s something for everyone and, thanks to the democratizing force of digital
media, there’s now everyone for something.
Either you're the best in the world at "something for everyone" or you're the best in
the world at "one thing for someone." The former is the "big head" and the latter is
the "long tail."
Radio is all about the "big head." We are blessed with a gift no new media outfit can
match: The power of the tower – a megaphone reaching into every home,
workplace, and car. A megaphone mediating the close relationship between you and
your audiences in your local communities. Want them to do something they want to
do? Want them to go someplace they want to go? Just ask, and ye shall receive.
Can even the mighty Google match your ability to move your audience to any
destination that interests them, online, on-air, or off?
Not on your life.
So how do you use this gift, this power, this megaphone?
It was Public Broadcasting's own elder mythologist Joseph Campbell who once
uttered the famous words "follow your bliss." What Campbell meant was to live out
of your own center, and that, I think, is great advice for Public Radio as it gauges its
future.
Who are you, Public Radio? What is your center? And – more to the point – what are
you capable of if you really stretch your wings?
What do you do better than anybody else, no matter what techno-whiz-bang comes
along?
You create content.
You are the program producers, the dream-makers. What
Spielberg is to movies you are to audio. Or at least, you can be.
Have you ever asked yourself why so little of Public Radio's programming is
entertainment-oriented? Sure there's lots of entertainment content out there. But
on radio there's almost none aimed at the very audience best served by and most
fanatical about Public Radio: Smart people.
I would argue that Public Radio's future was first glimpsed on a cold night in March
of 1948, but it would take 60 years before anyone would see it.
That was the night of the 20th Academy Awards, and the world of American movie-
making was on the verge of radical change – thanks in part to the advent of an
alternative entertainment medium called television. The Hollywood studios would
try to battle this new medium, they would try to kill it. They were dependent on
audiences and any substantial decrease in those audiences would mean economic
disaster.
Fear was in the air that night for all the studio-heads. All but one. The one with the
crazy ideas.
Walt Disney would win no awards that night, but he would be the spark that ignited
his industry’s future and, at the same time, point the way for our own.
Previously, all studios but Disney made their money strictly from theatrical
exhibition of their motion pictures. They profited by squeezing down the costs of
producing films and distributing them to their own theaters. The talent was under
contract and they owned the channel of distribution from head to tail.
Disney had already baffled the other studio heads after successfully creating the first
full-length animated feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which had once been
known as “Disney’s folly.”
Not just any movie, this was the first film to gross $100
million, the first to have a soundtrack, the first to have a merchandising tie-in, the
first with multiple licensable characters.
In one fell swoop, Walt Disney had done more than create a new hit, he had created
a new business model.
Today, the movie business per se is a relatively unimportant part of the business of
the conglomerates which own the studios. All the majors routinely lose money on
theatrical release, where the massive audiences of days gone by no longer exist.
According to Edward Jay Epstein, author of The Big Picture: Money and Power in Hollywood
Writes Epstein,
“Theatrical releases now serve essentially as launching platforms for licensing
rights.”
Put another way, the movie studios aren’t in the movie business, they’re in the
content licensing business.
To license content you have to create it first.
Is it strictly a coincidence that "Wait, Wait…Don't Tell Me!" has a deal with CBS
Entertainment to produce a TV pilot? Is it an accident that Ira Glass begat This American Life the Radio show which begat CD's and books, which begat a first-look
deal with Warner Bros. which begat an Emmy-nominated series on Showtime?
Is it
only good fortune that turned A Prairie Home Companion the Radio show into A
Prairie Home Companion, the movie?
These are the exceptions. And that's because Public Radio is aiming too low and
aspiring to too little.
Why is it that Deepak Chopra, an incredible pledge-driver for Public Broadcasting,
has a radio show…
…on Sirius/XM?!
Could it be that we simply didn't ask first? Don't you think Deepak knows he'd sell a
lot more books on Public Radio than on Sirius/XM?
How will we ever create another show as distinctive and entertaining as Car Talk
unless we seek to create another show as distinctive and entertaining as Car Talk?
And, by the way, who is that top-ranked Public Radio personality who has never had
a Public Radio show?
The one who ranks in the top five of all Public Radio personalities as judged by
Public Radio listeners, themselves?
He is Jon Stewart.
Where is the radio show for his audience?
I'm waiting.
Bueller?
Bueller??