Current (https://current.org/tag/prpd/)
Even when it’s safe to bring hundreds of conventioneers together in hotel ballrooms, digital meeting platforms will make it possible for more people to participate.
Station leaders and the Public Radio Program Directors Association are questioning the Times’ damage control related to its podcast “Caliphate.”
The former NPR programmer was honored at the organization’s conference in Pittsburgh.
As the Public Radio Program Directors conference wrapped up, we asked people to tell us what they learned.
PUBLIC RADIO PROGRAM DIRECTORS
Craig Oliver, a public radio audience research consultant, received the Don Otto award for career contributions to the field. Oliver is the owner of Craig Oliver Consulting, which provides audience research and insight to Public Radio International, Greater Public, and several public radio stations. Oliver co-founded PRPD in 1987 and served as its first president. He was also president of the Radio Research Consortium, where he is now a board member. The Otto award is given annually by PRPD and Audience Research Analysis to recognize creative contributions to public radio.
Plus: A Frank Zappa concert comes to light, and Nieman Lab looks at podcasting.
PORTLAND, Ore. — This week’s Public Radio Programming Conference is giving attendees a chance to prepare for Nov. 17, the day when new clocks for NPR’s newsmagazines take effect and both stations and the network’s news staffers will need to adjust to the revised formatting. Wednesday’s proceedings featured two opportunities for discussion. At the first, NPR representatives fielded questions from station programmers, with Chris Turpin, acting senior v.p. of news, laying out changes in store.
NPR will postpone implementing new clocks for its flagship newsmagazines until at least November after hearing concerns that an earlier transition could interfere with stations’ fund drives and coverage of midterm elections. The network initially proposed starting the new schedules for Morning Edition and All Things Considered Sept. 22. But stations and the board of the Public Radio Program Directors Association asked for more time. When setting the initial date for implementation, NPR “did a good job of trying to find a time not in the middle of fundraising,” said PRPD President Arthur Cohen.
Plus: A columnist sounds off on Slate’s pubmedia-esque membership program, and NPR unearths its Internet beginnings.
Plus: KCETLink has some laughs, the CBC cuts more than 600 jobs and WCRB searches for a sonic logo.
• WNYC/New York Public Radio is receiving the largest grant ever given to a public radio station, it announced today. The pubcaster will use the $10 million from the Jerome L. Greene Foundation for digital innovation and to support its Jerome L. Greene Performance Space, keeping ticket prices low for events there. Also today, the station introduced a new Discover feature to its WNYC app, allowing listeners to create and download curated playlists with a function that “blends personal preferences with an element of surprise,” it said in the announcement. • POV’s new online documentary collaboration with the New York Times kicked off over the weekend with an in-depth look at a group of developmentally challenged men who survived decades of neglect in a small Iowa town. The Men of Atalissa, produced by the Times, was posted on both websites March 8.
Public radio leaders are discussing how and whether NPR can give stations more freedom to reuse its newsmagazine segments and more opportunities to insert local news into All Things Considered.
Of all the complex and potentially fateful decisions faced by public radio program directors as they navigate the emergence of multiplatform distribution, one of the most significant is the drive to “go local” and produce more local programs, especially news and information. This push signals a strategic shift for public radio, with potentially enormous consequences for growth or decline. Audience 2010, one of a series of landmark research reports on programming trends published in the previous decade, reported that much of the credit for the growth of public radio listenership could be traced to a shift “away from local production toward network production, away from music-based content toward news, information and entertainment.” That shift was extraordinarily successful, representing two decades of impressive audience expansion and financial growth at a time when other parts of the radio industry struggled. Now, it appears that program decision-makers are changing course. But why would dozens of stations move off the path that worked so well and choose another approach that, viewed through the lens of audience research, would seem to be both more costly and less powerful in attracting listenership?
The Public Radio Program Directors Association will expand its training programs for stations this year and continue its Sense of Place studies of local audiences, with funding from NPR and the Millstream Fund. PRPD will offer three workshops based on the Morning Edition Grad School classes that it has offered in recent years. “New MEGS” will extend training to all newsmagazines, including All Things Considered and Weekend Edition, and is designed for hosts, news directors and program directors. The first workshop will be offered May 18 in Charlotte, N.C.
“JMEGS” (MEGS for Journalists) applies MEGS principles to journalism, focusing on selecting stories, interviewing, writing, planning newscasts and promoting news reports. JMEGS was piloted in 2009 but has not yet been implemented.
The funeral dirge has been played many times for the classical music radio format, but after decades of decline on both commercial and public broadcasting, the tune has changed to a major key, and the melody has sweetened.
The Public Radio Program Directors Association gave its 2012 Don Otto Award to audience researcher Peter Dominowski, who co-founded PRPD in 1987. PRPD bestowed the award Sept. 13 in Las Vegas, where it observed its 25th anniversary as an organization. Dominowski is president of Market Trends Research, a market-research company based in Matheson, Colo. In presenting the award, Jeff Hansen, p.d. at Seattle’s KUOW, cited Dominowski’s many focus groups and research studies, and his work with the Morning Edition Grad School training sessions for stations and as a member of the Strategic Programming Partners consultancy.
Audio from last week’s Public Radio Program Directors conference in Las Vegas is now available on PRPD’s website, including the keynote address by June Cohen, executive producer for TED Media; a Q&A with content chiefs Kinsey Wilson of NPR and David Kansas of American Public Media; and the closing address by NPR “founding mother” Linda Wertheimer. Not all of the recordings are freely available, however — only PRPD members can access recordings of the conference’s breakout sessions. PRPD’s David Hollis has also posted photos from PRPD on Flickr. I’m sifting through my notes from the conference and will have a wrap-up coming your way soon, plus additional coverage inspired by conference conversations in weeks to come. If you went to PRPD, what did you take away from the conference?
When Public Radio Program Directors Association was formed 25 years ago, the idea that programmers should do things for an audience “felt like a complete revolution,” says Marcia Alvar in a Q&A with three of the founders.
It was raining in Baltimore Sept. 23 when independent producer Jay Allison delivered his “benediction,” the traditional closing speech of the Public Radio Program Directors annual conference. The bleary, conferenced-out audience listened closely. Allison, who learned the nonfiction radio craft when NPR was a startup and went on to start up a few radio institutions himself, reminded attendees why perseverance matters. They gave Allison a standing ovation before dispersing under the dark sky.
Programmer Shelia Rue received the Don Otto Award at PRPD. The veteran programmer and workshop instructor for Public Radio Program Directors was honored for career contributions to the field at a presentation during the association’s conference last month in Baltimore. Rue, p.d. at Tampa’s WUSF since 2008 (and lately its classical sister station, WSMR), previously directed programming at KUSC in Los Angeles and WUNC in Chapel Hill, N.C. She also ran her own consultancy, SR Sound Programming, and shared her expertise with other programmers by running PRPD’s training workshops. The award honors the legacy of an influential mentor to the founders of PRPD, the late Don Otto — a “proactive, innovative and creative thinker,” said Steve Olson of Audience Research Analysis, announcing the award Sept. 22 [2011].