The campaign’s name comes from its goal: Listeners would tune in an average of 7.8 times a week. Their average is now 6.8 a week.
Succeeding would help reverse a recent trend — public radio’s first audience declines in two decades.
NPR chose the tune-in metric because “we wanted a simple and bold rallying cry,” says Jay Kernis, senior v.p. for programming. Ken Stern, executive v.p., announced the goal to NPR execs in September and to stations in a December e-mail.
Stations that join the effort are likely to develop individual approaches, while NPR’s strategy entails improving on-air promotion of news programming and strengthening shows, particularly All Things Considered and talk programs. It will also launch a newsmagazine later this year aimed at younger audiences.
Kernis says the network will work to enhance forward promotion in newsmagazines and cross-promotion between Morning Edition and All Things Considered. It also aims to give stations better materials for writing promos for NPR shows.
The goal is to give audiences more reasons to listen and to help orient them within programs. Commercial news stations tend to do better than NPR at telling listeners about upcoming segments, Kernis says. To listeners used to commercial radio, “we are somewhat mysterious,” he says. “It may be difficult to figure out where the news is and what’s happening next because we don’t give the same kinds of signposts.”
Kernis adds that promos should be written more effectively and that NPR and stations too often assume that listeners are interested in the topics they cover. Too many promos sound like “Coming up, global warming” or “Coming up, the new Congress,” he says, failing to play up the most interesting angles of the stories.
On the production side, NPR will continue to work on improving All Things Considered. “ATC remains a wonderful, successful program but should be rethought to better reflect changing news consumption patterns, first and foremost the proliferation of sources of information available to listeners throughout the day,” Stern wrote in his memo to stations.
To reflect this, the network is working to provide more context in ATC’s reporting and will focus less on what Kernis calls “iterative reporting.” Research will inform the planning. NPR has learned that listeners want talk shows to offer context rather than breaking news and to give them conversation and perspectives not available elsewhere.
The network may also experiment with airing some stories on more than one newsmag to extend its strongest content to more listeners. “No one listens to public radio the way we listen to public radio, which is for hours at a time every single day,” Kernis says.
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posted Jan. 25, 2007
Copyright 2007 by Current Publishing Committee
