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Project Core: A vision for scale and growth

Over the past three years, CentralCast has been hard at work implementing critical upgrades that lay the foundation for a more resilient and advanced future. And now, the culmination of these efforts is taking shape in our most ambitious initiative yet: Project Core.

Development

Study finds most listeners don’t mind NPR’s embedded underwriting credits

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A committee of NPR’s board voted May 8 to maintain embedded underwriting at its current level on network programs, despite concerns among station executives that the practice could harm listeners’ perceptions. Embedded underwriting credits appear within segments of NPR’s newsmagazines, rather than in the longer blocks of credits that punctuate the shows. The credits give sponsors dedicated placement alongside particular series and areas of coverage, such as business, health and technology. NPR ramped up efforts to sell embedded underwriting starting in 2011, and station leaders and programmers responded with worries that the credits were disrupting the flow of programs and giving listeners the idea that sponsors are influencing content. Late last year, NPR agreed to limit the number of adjacent spots to 11 per week and to study listeners’ reactions to the credits.

Programs/Content

Via Aviators website, opportunities for product placement

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Producers of The Aviators, a public TV series distributed by the National Educational Telecommunications Association, devoted a page of the program website to videos depicting opportunities for product placements by sponsors. The web page was removed after Current inquired about the unusual sponsorship marketing. Screenshots from the page are presented here. In an email to Current, Executive Producer Anthony Nalli explained the marketing strategies behind the descriptions and how FourPoints Television Productions worked with sponsors. Nalli writes:  “Any time aviation gives back to the community, that’s the kind of positive message we feel is important to convey as part of the core mission of The Aviators.”

 

Nalli: This example referred “not so much a marketing point as it was a concern was that we would sensationalize their aircraft’s accident history.

System/Policy

Calif. judge orders Pacifica’s ousted leader to end occupation of network’s offices

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Summer Reese, former executive director of the Pacifica Foundation, was ordered to vacate the network’s headquarters Monday after an Alameda County Superior Court judge sided with the majority of the Pacifica board who fired her in March. Reese’s continued occupation of Pacifica’s national office “constitutes trespass and a nuisance,” wrote Judge Ioana Petrou in her ruling. Petrou ordered that Reese leave Pacifica’s headquarters immediately, as her presence there was impeding the foundation from conducting its normal business. “The Court finds that the current situation is not only far from ideal, but completely untenable,” Petrou wrote. After Pacifica’s board voted March 14 to dismiss Reese, she questioned the validity of the firing and broke into the foundation’s headquarters with a team of supporters.