Public Interactive gears up menu of web music streams

Originally published in Current, Feb. 21, 2000

By Mike Janssen

Public Interactive will venture into online radio later this month when it unveils streaming music channels and archived programs that stations can add to their web sites, free of charge. Though some are eager to sign up, they wonder how the service will play out in the fuzzy world of web radio, where listeners' habits and attitudes have proved tough to gauge.

So far, stations in 130 markets offer PI's material, says web entrepreneur and PI President Tom Lix, who created the Boston-based company last May in partnership with Public Radio International.

Among PI's web offerings: Public Arts, a page of topical articles on arts and culture, and Public Conversation, live web chats with celebs such as actor Eric Idle, author Scott Turow, and Car Talk's Tom and Ray Magliozzi. Public Newsroom, a listing of top news stories and links to online news outlets, is in beta-testing on a few station sites. And Public Store sells books, recordings and other goodies tied in with public radio programs.

With headers that bear each station's logo, PI pages are designed to look like they're on a local station's web site, even though they're physically on another Internet server. For example, visitors to WGBH's site (www.wgbh.org) who click on Public Newsroom get whisked away to www.publicbroadcasting.net/wgbh/news/.

PI's web offerings are designed to boost loyalty to them by giving surf-happy visitors fewer reasons to exercise those itchy clicking fingers. PI's newest feature, Personal Public Radio, is offering a wide array of public radio programs and musical genres to appeal to diverse tastes. Consistent with that strategy, PI is encouraging stations to carry Personal Public Radio programming that differs from their broadcast format. News stations could offer world music online, and vice versa. "It's one of the things that your users expect to find on a station site," says Lix. "They expect to find your streaming signal, but they also expect to find a slightly different experience."

The experience includes:

• Listen Live, a streaming setup that includes a computer and software for encoding broadcast signals, along with 10 gigabytes of storage for archived programs on a central server. Stations can also use Stream Director, a piece of PI software (now in beta testing) that automatically inserts the station's choice of filler for "blackouts"—down time when a station can't webcast its signal because it doesn't have the rights to rebroadcast a program on the web. So far, about 20 stations are using the encoders to stream their signals, says Personal Public Radio Managing Producer Chris Wirth.
• Pick a Program, a collection of archived shows sorted into categories: history, finance, comedy, and kids' programming, for instance. Citing negotiations with "a lot of companies," Lix wouldn't go into detail about what programs would be offered, but says Pick a Program will include existing programs from local and national levels. "The beauty of this is that you can take something that's just sort of a regional show and make it national," he says.
• Music channels programmed by a stable of stations and producers, including jazz and blues from KPLU in Tacoma, Wash.; classical and folk from WKSU in Kent, Ohio; New Orleans music from that city's WWOZ; and acoustic singer-songwriter fare from WXPN, producer of PRI's World Cafe. Producers include American Routes's Nick Spitzer and Afropop Worldwide's Sean Barlow. PI pays each programmer to digitize and develop a playlist for 40 hours of music to start, and add another four hours of music each week. The end result, Wirth says, is a "growing, breathing, evolving jukebox."

Web listeners will access these features through a Windows Media Player branded with the station's logo. Though details aren't worked out yet, Lix says clicking a Personal Public Radio link will jumpstart the player, which will automatically begin playing the station's streamed broadcast signal. Drop-down menus will list available channels and on-demand programs. Though PI plans to launch just five channels in the next few weeks—probably including WXPN's, KPLU's jazz channel and a classical channel from WKSU—Lix envisions 100-plus channels in the future.

PI's investing stations, some of which are also programming channels, are enthusiastic about the new service, which gives them a wealth of content without taxing their resources as local web production might. "It's early in the game, but I'm thinking that what Public Interactive has been able to put together so far has been just what has been needed in this time frame in the public radio Internet era," says Kerry Swanson, director of operations at KPLU. The station already streams its signal but will sign up for other Personal Public Radio features.

"Their model is really interesting," says Bruce Warren, p.d. at WXPN and programmer of the World Cafe channel. "I like the idea that independent stations can produce and share content with each other. It kind of opens up the world of the public radio listener a little bit. It's not NPR, and it's not PRI—it's all these people kind of working together to create really interesting content for our listeners."

Banner ads: "Selling out?"

Stations' interest in PI and Personal Public Radio is no doubt whetted by the fact that the entire setup—hardware, software, server capacity, and all—doesn't cost them a cent. In fact, PI says stations actually stand to make money by participating. To augment Public Store sales, PI's pages could feature banner ads in their headers, and the company would give half the revenue from ad sales to stations. (The pages already feature banner ads that promote PI's own pages.)

Banner ads aren't new to public radio—they're already posted on NPR's site and Car Talk's, for instance—but the jury's still out on their merits. KPLU's Swanson says his station has "mixed feelings" about PI's banner ads. "We don't want to do anything that's out of character," he says.

"We're just grappling with it," says Warren of World Cafe. "Ten years ago, the issue was, 'Should we put music beds under our underwriting announcements?' Now it's banner ads. Is it selling out? I don't think so. I think it's just adapting to modern-day business forces that exist in the world."

PI's Lix says the banner ads are "not a done deal," and adds, "Obviously, we have to be respectful to the audience." He says that if PI does plaster banner ads on its pages, they would not be the flashy, "Get Out of Debt Fast" species of banner ad that sprout like weeds on web sites.

Keeping it Real

Some stations are also less than pleased that Personal Public Radio's media player is a Windows Media Player. The Microsoft product could cause allergic reactions among a subclass of Microsoft-phobic web surfers, especially those in tech-friendly towns such as San Francisco and Seattle—areas where allegiances to software can run as strong as a cup of Starbucks. "Definitely, there are a number of people that prefer one or the other," says Swanson of KPLU, which serves Seattle listeners.

Furthermore, Windows Media Player doesn't support SMIL slideshows, a visual addition to RealNetworks' RealPlayer and the subject of a recent workshop at the NPR-PBS online summit. Macintosh users have only a beta version of WMP. And Linux users, perhaps a rare breed in some areas but more plentiful near Silicon Valley, can't use WMP at all.

"As a person developing journalistic content for the web, I would rather use RealPlayer," says Robin Marks, web content developer at San Francisco's KQED. "Microsoft has proven itself to be an unadapting company, and the web is a medium in which the technology flows and changes consistently.

PI's Chris Wirth says his company went with WMP for sound reasons. "It frankly sounds better at every given bit rate," he says. "The video is better." In addition, he says, WMP can adapt to different sound formats, boasts more efficient delivery, and its market share is growing faster than its competitors. Nevertheless, PI is "currently in discussions" about using RealAudio, he says.

Think globally, click locally

While Personal Public Radio raises short-term questions about logistics, it's also pushing stations into some long-term planning that could be necessary for them to get online successfully. Eric Nuzum, director of programming and operations at WKSU, says creating three channels for Personal Public Radio has caused "growing pains" as the station has moved from programming one channel—its own—to four. "It requires a whole different way of thinking, and it's kind of cool, but it's frustrating," he says. WKSU wasn't thinking of its role as a new-media player when it built its studios or purchased software, for example.

But questions of identity are bound to crop up at even more stations. Suddenly, online content furnished by PI and eXploreRadio—the competing service from NPR and Minnesota Public Radio—deepens the pool of services into which stations can dip. How does a station's identity change if it offers listeners not one "flavor" of programming, but one hundred and one? Will stations offer channels that differ from their on-air focus? And how many people out in web-land are ready to listen?

In some ways, PI's model is familiar to public radio. "It's not that much different than what we've done for years," Nuzum says. "If you look at it, we get CDs from record companies. We got news content from NPR or whatever. We get all these things, and we kind of put them together. We're kind of a filtering system. It's kind of the same thing. We're still the filter."

But as some stations are already doing, Personal Public Radio affiliates will break with tradition and stream more than just their own channel. "It gets into what no one knows about," says PI's Chris Wirth. "What do listeners want? How do their on-air habits correlate to their online habits?" Traditionally, he says, stations have competed against each other within their markets, but technology is changing. "Have the rules of the game changed for stations? I'm not so sure that's a question Public Interactive can answer. ... I think ultimately it really comes down to the relationship that stations have with their users."

That relationship will guide WXPN's Bruce Warren as he considers PI's channels and services. He anticipates some channels will mesh with his audience better than others, such as Sean Barlow's tentatively titled "Global Groove" channel. But "if it's going to be Tuvan throat music for 45 minutes, chances are we won't play it," he says.

As web content developer at KQED-FM, a major market station that has not signed up with PI and has yet to stream its audio online, Robin Marks is mulling over PI's offerings. So far, she's undecided. "Its most interesting aspect also seems to be its most worrisome aspect, and that is that it creates a more unifying identity for public radio stations," she says. "One of the things we need to decide here is whether we want to be part of a unifying identity of public radio stations, or if we want to set ourselves apart somewhat."

Torey Malatia, president of Chicago's WBEZ, says his station faces a similar dilemma as it moves toward revamping its web site and possibly picking up national content from PI or eXploreRadio. Should WBEZ funnel its resources into developing a Chicago-specific site, or follow what Malatia calls the "default strategy" for the web—downplaying a local focus in favor of universal content?

"The fact is that what every public radio station is grappling with in one way or another is the notion of perceived distinctive value," Malatia says. He says a station using PI's products is like a grocery store labeling Palmolive dishwashing liquid as a house brand—and that's not good or bad; it's fine, he says. But "if the key to viability for individual stations is having a distinctive value that that station provides and only that station provides, then you have to think of the web as an extension of that personality."

That might vary from station to station. "Some of the stations are thinking of themselves less as a radio station and more as an organization that provides content and entertainment and information and services," PI's Tom Lix says. Personal Public Radio "keeps the varied interests of your audience happy," he says.

If stations resist breaking from their current format when they choose their PI offerings, Chris Wirth says PI would probably "establish a dialogue" about these questions and challenges. "If public radio doesn't give their audience what they want," he says, "they're going to find it someplace else."

The audio player offered by PI looks like this (only bigger) but is branded with the name of your local station.