Is There a Future for Public Radio?

Written on January 23, 2008  |  by RP Mickler  |  Leave a Comment Leave a Comment  |  Bookmark and Share

On the first week of February, my local public radio station for Oregon Public Broadcasting will begin their quarterly fund drive. This is where they interrupt regularly scheduled programs like NPR’s Morning Edition to beg for money.
At this time of year, I struggle to understand the public broadcasting business model. Per their own admission, less than 10-percent of listeners actually respond to these drives and OPB receives no public subsidy. They do not advertise, costs are always increasing for their content which is based on market demographics, and over 60-percent of their budget comes from membership donations.
So, while driving this morning, I mentally recapped where I get my news these days:1. I subscribe to eight podcasts. I listen to them daily. They are free. Noteworthy to mention who they are: CNN, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Economist Magazine, NPR, Boing Boing… professional content here.
2. I actively read nine blogs through an RSS feed. I read them daily. They are free.
3. I receive daily news alerts on my Blackberry and email from CNN. They are free.
4. I use the web to watch a video, read an article, or Google the news. It’s free.
5. I listen to public radio at any time – for free – from my computer, using radio channels available in iTunes.
6. I subscribe to four paper magazines. They were practically free, less than a buck an issue for twelve months.
Anyway, if consumers have more choice, and, numerous substitute products exist, and, the switching cost/barrier to entry is nill, what is the future of public broadcasting? Satellite channels and programming in the car, news feeds to cell phones, iPods and podcasting, mass customization of news and alert monitors… how can a non-profit entity hope to survive, let alone remain relevant? Everything I hear on NPR is 30 minutes behind the feeds that I receive … for free… on my mobile devices.
Certainly, the future of public radio is pretty bleak when there isn’t incremental or added value to their consumer, that their broadcast cannot be customized or tailored to my preferences as a consumer, their service is redundant (perhaps even obsolete) to sources of news that arrive faster to that consumer, and their product has been reduced to a commodity: iTunes offers it for free.
I guess it bothers me to hear a fund drive for something like NPR when on the rare occasion that I’m actually listening to public radio. No amount of begging will prevent the inevitable: the business model has been made irrelevant and survives only by the goodwill, or nostalgia, of its contributors. Eventually, public broadcasting must end, or, entirely change to remain relevant. Yet here we are: planning another winter fund drive. Actually, it annoys me so much that I often return to my iPod to see if there was an update to one of my NPR podcast subscriptions. Makes me wonder if anyone in public radio is paying attention to another decaying industry – newspapers – and learning anything from the experience? Is anyone paying attention?
R