On Thu, Jul 28, 2016 at 4:21 PM, Mark Jeffries <[email protected]>
wrote:
> As public radio faces the fact that they haven't had a new hit gateway
> drug series to bring in the neophytes since "Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me!"
> started 18 years ago--and with Michael Feldman forced off and Garrison
> Kellior choosing to hang up the mike in the last few weeks ("Prairie Home
> Companion" will continue as a predominately folk music show, catering to an
> aging audience that thinks NPR is a corporate sellout, "Whad'ya Know?" will
> continue as a podcast)--NPR and WBUR in Boston have announced that "The
> Best of Car Talk" repackagings will go off the air in Sept. 2017, five
> years after Tom Magliozzi's retirement (he died in 2014 of Alzheimer's) and
> the beginning of the repackaging, which caused some controversy because of
> the idea of a public show in all reruns--although WNYC in NY and WBEZ in
> Chicago moved the show out of its traditional Saturday morning time slot
> and/or dropped it, most NPR stations are still airing it on Saturday
> mornings as if nothing has changed, due to the scaredy cat nature of most
> public radio program directors, who are cowed by the fact that ANY kind of
> programming change will meet with loud complaints and threats of no more
> donations, especially from the Boomers who think that because they have a
> tote bag with the station's name on it, they are more entitled to program
> the station than professionals:
>
>
> http://current.org/2016/07/nprs-best-of-car-talk-will-end-in-september-2017/
>
> The repackagings will continue as podcasts and NPR will offer reruns of
> the original episodes, but stations supposedly can't air them on Saturday
> mornings (good luck with that).
>
> Meanwhile, as I said, public radio needs to find a new gateway drug show
> and fast. "This American Life" surprisingly doesn't attract new listeners
> that much--on-air, at least (podcasts are a different story--see
> "Serial")--and the same can be said for the other storytelling shows like
> "Snap Judgment" and "The Moth Story Hour" (and "The TED Radio Hour") that
> have popped up in its success. "Radiolab" is mostly a confirmed listener
> show. "Anthem," the pop culture show that started the same day as "Wait,
> Wait..." on NPR, was gone after a year and American Public Media lost a lot
> of money on "Weekend America," an attempt at a lighter newsmag show that
> ran under five years to no great interest. APM's attempt at a Gen-X
> millennial comedy-variety show called "Wits" went off last year after lousy
> station clearances. The comedy game show "Ask Me Another" is making some
> headway, but is not on a lot of major markets and has the opposition of the
> Boomer diehards who either want classical music or Noam Chomsky lectures
> because of its genre.
>
I find I have to take short drives in the morning these days and my car
radio stays set to the NPR station. Saturdays when I start the car and hear
Car Talk I immediately change the station. I have to assume that I am not
the only one. One thing that bothers me about doing this in any medium is
that sticking with the old keeps the new from finding an audience.
I have to believe that NPR stations have more accurate ways of tracking
listener data than complaints or comments made with donations. Gathering
listener demographic data seems to be getting cheaper and easier all the
time and if stations are not collecting it then they are missing a critical
opportunity.
For developing new gateway shows, I thought until recently that the trend
in radio to replace local general interest talk radio shows with right wing
syndicated shows meant that talented interviewers and storytellers could
not find an outlet. But the boom in podcasts seems to have changed the
situation. Surely NPR can find new hosts or show ideas by listening to a
range of podcasts and recruiting talent.
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