To help confused users, NPR will consolidate its two apps into one

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NEW ORLEANS — NPR will focus on promoting a single app for its content beginning next year with a new app powered by NPR One’s technology.

NPR now offers two apps: the audio-focused NPR One, which merges national and local newscasts, news segments and podcasts into a personalized stream; and the eponymous NPR app, which presents written news stories along with a live station stream and on-demand audio.

Elements of both apps will be merged into one using the NPR One technology that combines local and national content. Discussing their plans Thursday with station leaders at the Public Radio Super-Regional conference, NPR digital leaders said they’re aiming to simplify the experience for users searching for their apps.

“You go to the app store and you look for NPR, and you’re not sure, should I pick the NPR app or should I pick NPR One?” said Kerry Lenahan, NPR’s VP of product, during a conference session. “Why should I pick one versus the other?” 

“We realized that we basically had created arbitrary lines in our apps based upon how NPR was structured,” Lenahan said. “We have a newsroom, we have a programming team, and we have two apps kind of created for the way we are organizing. We were forcing our organizational problems on our users.”

Lenahan said NPR also sees room to boost use of the apps. Audience has flattened for both the NPR app, which has about 2 million users, and NPR One, which has about 500,000. “We can do better than this,” Lenahan said.

The app could include station podcasts and livestreams, and NPR is looking into creating “enhanced editorial tools” that could give stations more control over the app’s content, Lenahan said. Stations now notify NPR when they want their podcasts to be featured on NPR One. 

When you talk to any user of the NPR digital properties, they will tell you that they want that national-local blend, which is what you get in an NPR One experience,” Lenahan said. “But they want that whether it’s listening or reading.”

Other possible features could include “pre-localization,” with the station-branded content and livestream already loaded on the app based on the user’s location. NPR One picks a user’s station based on their location, while users of the NPR app choose a station through a multi-step process. The NPR app doesn’t include station news stories. 

NPR hopes to start testing versions of the app by May.

Some station leaders at the session raised concerns about local sponsorship on digital platforms. Tim Eby, GM at St. Louis Public Radio, pointed out that NPR and stations are “competing in the local marketplace” for inventory.

“We’ve got to figure out either revenue-sharing or something so that we’re finding a way that, one, we’re being efficient in how we’re doing it, and two, all boats are rising,” Eby said.

NPR is piloting local inventory on NPR One with a small group of stations, according to Tom Hjelm, NPR’s chief digital officer. The pilot is in the early stages, but “so far what we’ve found is that the scale isn’t there,” he said. “So the money isn’t coming in.” 

But Hjelm said he does think that “NPR One has the right template for how we divide local and national inventory. I think the lines are fairly clearly drawn there. I think we need to scale this in order for this to be something that you can see a return on.”

Clarification: This post has been revised to clarify that NPR hopes to be testing versions of the app by May. A launch date has not been finalized.

6 thoughts on “To help confused users, NPR will consolidate its two apps into one

  1. If NPR really wants to help confused listeners, maybe they should be providing an app TEMPLATE that allows for it to be branded as the listeners’ local member station? Rather than an app that just siphons listeners away from the stations that pay the vast majority of NPR’s expenses? Just a thought!

  2. The back and forth between NPR and member stations about local underwriting in the NPR One app is feeling pretty tired, right? — like we’ve been having the same circular conversation for years now. As a digital director at a member station, I’ve been discouraged from promoting NPR One by our underwriting team. From their point of view, why would we encourage our listeners to use an app that has no revenue opportunities for us (other than membership leads)? That’s not my perspective, but it is an understandable and valid one. It feels like NPR’s policy is to perpetually kick that question down the road… like, maybe the revenue will start rolling in and we’ll figure it out one day. But how do we get there if stations feel no incentive to market the app? And at stations, we don’t see how expensive it is to build and maintain something like NPR One. I just wish I could see this conversation evolve somehow.

  3. I have been looking for an internet radio app and, since most of my listening is NPR, thought that NPR One might do. In looking at reviews, where 1 star is almost as frequent as 5 star, I conclude that this is not for me. When I listen to the radio, that is what I want to do. I turn it on, listen, and turn it off. I listen to two local NPR stations, BPR Classic and SCETV Classic plus Minnesota Classical and occasional others. Many of the reviews report the inability to listen to a whole program. They complain of the app turning on randomly, draining the battery when not in use, and having a difficult and obscure interface. Only a very few of these reviews elicit comments from the developers and almost none of the responses address usability issues. those that do often point to an obscure and badly named command tab that might address the problem. Several years ago, I dropped an NPR TV membership because of similar unfriendliness in its video program interface, e.g. the inability to remember the last episode watched in a series (or the point in the episode where watching was interrupted in an episode), difficulty in getting to a particular series, etc. I am sad to see that NPR is still unable to develop apps that allow users to do easily what they want to do.

  4. So which is it? NPR or NPR ONE? Your explanation pretty much says it in a nutshell…. NOT! the explanation is as confusing as the duplicate apps. Still don’t know which one to delete to make room.

  5. You need a single NPR app. App offers a user specified filter. Filter can include preferences for: text; video; audio; local; national; international; radio…. If user specifies text, but there are audio/videos related to the text then have an audio/video indicators next to the listed text stories to allow user to jump to view videos when they want it and when it’s an appropriate time to avoid disturbing nearby people. If user specifies audio/video, then show text indicators next to listed audio/video to allow users to jump to related text. Similar scheme may be used with other preferences. I find a big problem for me with other news apps are the mixing of text and video in the feed showing topics of interest but circumstance doesn’t lend itself to listening/watching a story.
    (The explanation of NPR vs NPR ONE I find is just a restatement of the confusion.)

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