NPR responds to BPP fans
In the wake of the Bryant Park Project’s cancellation, NPR’s interim CEO, Dennis Haarsager, has responded to the deluge of blog posts, e-mails and phone calls from outraged fans. (I sent in a polite but displeased e-mail myself.)
BPP was designed to help us explore the complex, undefined digital media environment and, we hoped, to establish new ways of providing content on unfamiliar platforms. We’ve/I’ve learned — or relearned — a lot in this process. For non-commercial media such as NPR, sustaining a new program of this financial magnitude requires attracting users from each of the platforms we can access. Ultimately, we recognized that wasn’t happening with BPP. Radio carriage didn’t materialize to any degree: right now, BPP airs on only five analog radio stations and 19 HD Radio digital channels. Web/podcasting usage was also hampered — here’s the relearning part — since we were offering an “appointment program” in a medium that doesn’t excel in that kind of usage. Web radio is growing very rapidly (much faster than FM did), but it’s almost all to music and, increasingly, to attention-tracking music (e.g., Pandora). While there might be a viable audience for a day/time specific program on the Web at some point in the future, it is not on the horizon.
A number of you have expressed concern that with this cancellation, NPR has forsaken its commitment to reaching younger audiences. That isn’t true. We’re doing it at npr.org/music and on many of our major news magazines, on the radio, online and via podcasting. While our reach crosses several demographics, younger audiences are well-represented.
Many offered to contribute directly to BPP. It’s unclear (that’s the word people use when they don’t know the answer) that this would work. At the average donation level to public radio stations, it would take more than 25,000 people to cover BPP’s costs. Public radio programs with much larger audiences that are doing direct fundraising are, I’m told, bringing in much smaller amounts. We are exploring new ways to pay for public media programming, but this one won’t be solved in time to be applied to BPP.
The show gets its final airing on Friday.
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