Big initiatives, basic details seen as keys to radio growth
Public radio must build audience by enhancing NPR’s newsmagazines and broadening its strategy for attracting a more diverse audience, according to recommendations in a forthcoming report from the CPB-backed Grow the Audience project.
Although the project’s final report is still being vetted by members of its advisory task force, Tom Thomas of the Station Resource Group unveiled its major recommendations Feb. 5 [2009] during the Public Radio in Mid America conference in San Antonio.
The regional gathering of station managers gave an occasion for SRG, which is managing the research and consultation project, to discuss the study’s major conclusions and “see how people respond,” Thomas said. “We want something that, as it comes forward, has a strong sense of consensus and support.”
CPB backed the project last year as it sought guidance on the best strategies for promoting public radio audience growth. Thomas is co-directing the project with Terry Clifford, co-c.e.o. of SRG.
Thomas discussed four broad themes from the forthcoming recommendations of Grow the Audience:
Focus on the newsmagazines: Any audience-building strategy for public radio needs to start with NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered, “our very most important signature national programs,” Thomas said. Although NPR has been working on this for the past year, “a whole lot more needs to be done,” he said. “These are so fundamental to the franchise upon which anything else has to be built.”
Focus on what listeners hear: Local stations must pay “relentless attention” to the quality of listeners’ experience, Thomas said. The project commissioned the writing of a step-by-step audience-building guide by Deborah Blakeley and Israel Smith that covers goal-setting, frequent airchecking and overhauling program schedules.
“There are a dozen basic things that, if you do them, they work,” Thomas said. “More people listen and are satisfied by the experience and they come back.” The report, “Thinking Audience,” is posted on SRG’s website.
Grow the Audience also will endorse revival of the Morning Edition Grad School training programs designed to help stations improve local presentation of Morning Edition, Thomas said, and recommend that similar programs be developed for other pubradio formats.
Bigger moves toward diversity: Efforts to diversify the public radio audience need to start with “franchise programs and leading stations,” Thomas said.
“We’re urging people to focus in a holistic way ... on what our aspirations should be as an organization — that we create a welcoming sense to a broad range of people in our governance, production, programming and fundraising — all of those things.”
Public radio needs to shift from its longstanding focus on building minority-controlled stations and creating programs that target specific minority groups, Thomas said, and turn to stations in big cities with large minority populations.
“We’ve made progress on minority ownership and, in fits and starts, around audience-targeted programs, but to make this more central to who and what we are, we need to focus on the most important programs and most important stations,” Thomas said. “That’s a tricky thing and not an easy question to take up when you’re running a national network that’s speaking to all different communities,” he said.
“We want to take that to our leading stations in markets with the largest concentrations of Latino and African-American listeners.” He described a “coalition of the willing” of stations that would take up the challenge.
A world-class news portal: Public radio needs to build a “world-class public-service media news portal” that is collaboratively managed and integrates international, national and local content, Thomas said (separate story). To be successful, the web service must feature content from multiple public radio brands.
The report also describes the potential for geocoding technology to deliver customized local content to a web user based on an IP address. In addition, the report calls on pubradio stations to emphasize digital-media skills in recruiting and training staffs at all levels. “This is a skill set that people are going to need to have throughout their organizations,” Thomas said.
Web page posted Feb. 17, 2009
Copyright 2009 by Current LLC
