Category Archives: Models

Examples we can productively study

Public Radio Thrives

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Future of public radioA recent forum of radio executives made it apparent that public radio is thriving. Audience sizes are up, contributions from sustaining members are up, and many stations have benefited from powerful new digital tools.

We are used to hearing laments about the decline of the big city newspaper, the traditional broadcasting networks, and other broad-based “legacy” outlets.  Most assume that social media have swallowed up the attention of younger Americans.  While there is some truth to that observation, a recent forum of radio executives at The College of New Jersey made it apparent that public radio is thriving.  The event was held in part to honor the 50th Anniversary of the College’s station, WTSR.

For most larger stations in the United States (and there are many), audience sizes are up, contributions from sustaining members are up, and many have found digital tools that have made them community assets.  Dean Cappello, the Chief Content Officer of New York’s WNYC—which is actually an amalgam of about seven stations—cited monthly listening rates that are huge for radio: well over 20,000 million.  Leading programs on National Public Radio, Public Radio International, and American Public Media—some of which are produced by WYNC—now reach Americans in every corner of the globe.  Radiolab, On the Media and Studio 360 all originate at WNYC, as do live opera broadcasts from its sister station, WQXR.  And then there are key shows from other stations around the nation.  Who knew that Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me or This American Life or A Prairie Home Companion would become American touchstones, rivaling old and venerable models of audio programming like BBC radio’s Desert Island Disks?

Another recent factor in station membership growth is the recent election.  The New York Times recently reported that  more Americans are contributing to news organizations, including public radio, presumably because they want the struggling press to ramp up their traditional “watchdog” functions, even in the face of relentless press attacks by Donald Trump.

Roger LaMay
                                  Roger LaMay

While New York is clearly a special case as the largest media market in the country, the story is no less bright in the 5th largest market of Philadelphia.  Roger LaMay who is the General Manager of WXPN and also Chairman of the NPR Board described how WXPN has grown their station with a special devotion to new music and live performance. WXPN’s syndicated World Café Live is picked up by 100 other stations in the United States. Much of the show is produced in a way that is becoming more common for big city public radio outlets.  Live concerts are featured, using a station’s own dedicated performance spaces, sometimes with restaurants and bars attached.

Another of the city’s stations represented on the November 30th panel was WHYY, the home of NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross. The station is also known for originating substantial news coverage of the region, extending their reach with an ambitious internet site. Audio News Director Gene Sonn credits their success in part to how well matched radio is to news and information programming. As he noted to me before the formal panel started, a print story drains its human subjects of the emotion and feeling in their voices. We understand stories better when we can actually hear participants in their own voices. And, of course, audio technology is so much more portable than the equipment that is required to shoot a well lit-video that also has a clear audio track.  In short, radio is more immediate and nimble in covering many kinds of news stories.

All of the participants reminded the audience that “radio” doesn’t necessarily mean a station with a broadcast license. WNYC’s Dean Cappello notes that “The audience is in charge now,” deciding when and how to listen to programs.  Listeners who are “streaming” programming from the internet will at some point probably surpass those receiving signals over the air. This explains why these stations are now truly global. With streaming, a listener can receive the programming of a station virtually anywhere, vastly increasing the potential audience size.  For example, I like a classical music “station” in Athens Greece. A friend is devoted to a jazz station in Paris. Newer audio equipment can be programmed with station URLs to receive signals from virtually anywhere on the globe.

Newer “On demand” listening  via podcasts helps public radio counter its tendency to appeal to older listeners.

Add in the use of the iPhone, notes WNYC’s Cappello, and the world of radio changes dramatically. The phone’s storage capabilities make it ideal to receive and hold podcasts downloaded from stations and sources such as iTunes. Periodic updates provide targeted programming to Americans on the run or on the road.  A friend reports loading up his phone with lots of podcasts that can be played later on the train or whenever he is in transit. This “on demand” listening helps public radio counter its tendency to appeal to older listeners with a NPR network average age of 58.  And there’s an advantage for program producers going into the podcast business, with avid listeners mostly in their 20s or 30s. The panelists pointed out that they can sell advertising space in podcasts, a revenue stream not open to true “non-commercial” radio operating at the bottom (“educational”) end of the FM band. The ads may not always be a plus for listeners, but they make these executives more comfortable about the future of their organizations: optimism that seems fully justified.

De-Stressing in the Woods

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poplar-tree
                       Yellow Poplar

Thoreau acted on what many of us also know: rediscovering the ground of silence by retreating into a forest offers a chance to rebalance, to reawaken selves diminished by the clutter of  messages that ceaselessly intrude.

In his recent best-selling book, The Hidden Life of Trees (2016), Peter Wohlleben explains why he is so passionate about the verdant world of the forest.  Mostly he wants to marvel at a kind of biological intentionality that has trees “talking” to each other, aggregating in communities, nurturing the weakest and the wounded, and finding ways to protect themselves from invaders. In Wohlleben’s world “mother” trees keep their nearby offspring small by denying the light they need to grow quickly.  The slow growth mandated by the sun-blocking canopy of the parent has the effect of hardening the wood structure in the offspring.  That will add years to its life when the older tree falls and allows a direct path to the sun.  Like so much in the biological world, trees are “smart” in the ways they need to be smart.  And while I would quarrel a bit with a language of intention that works better for sentient beings than plants, we can’t help but share his admiration for these living structures.  Trees are the heroes of the planet for their longevity, their towering height and beauty, their life-giving  oxygen, and their capacity to regenerate even when abused by animals and humans. Thankfully, not all humans.

For decades some Japanese have engaged in a practice of “forest bathing.”  This is less a form of exercise than a simpler act of pausing to absorb the wonder of a wooded hillside.  This involves, as they say, “being in the moment,” lingering in a setting that offers psychological breathing space.  In addition, the transpiration-infused air of a forest is said to have its own restorative attributes.

For some time my family has lived on several acres within an expansive wooded valley.  But only recently have I fully appreciated the 100-foot tall poplars that stand as sentinels along the pathway to our house. Their tall trunks are ramrod straight, with branches and leaf canopies too high to fully appreciate from the ground. I marvel at how they’ve managed to endure all that human encroachment has thrown at them.  We rarely take the time, but more often we should stand at their bases in a conscious tribute to their magnificence.

Treks deep into the woods obviously function for the simple pleasure of spending time in the cool shade of these giants.

trees Pixabay
                                                    Pixabay

Perhaps pausing at the foot of a tree is a start in the direction of forest bathing.  Americans have other names for it as well. Fishing, hunting and camping come to mind. The ruddy gamesmen loaded to the teeth with various armaments would probably reject the label of “tree hugger.”  But hug them they do as they make their way along angled forest floors. Treks deep into the woods obviously function for the simple pleasure of spending time in the company of these giants.

The relevant communication lesson here lies in the perspective we regain when we withdraw into the natural world.  “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately,” Henry David Thoreau famously observed. For him the company of others was too much of a distraction, as were the new products of the information age delivered by the rapidly expanding telegraph. He acted on a premise that many of us also know: silence offered by a retreat into a forest offers a chance to rebalance, to reawaken selves diminished by the clutter of  messages that ceaselessly intrude.

And, of course, a forest’s presence is its own reward. It’s lushness, smell and density give us an existential lift. In the natural world we are again of a place and not just in it.  We are home with the elements of life-support we already know.  I sense this accutely after what is usually brief rain shower in the Rockies, where lodgepole pines add an indescribably clean scent to the thin air. Fortunately for nearly all of us, communities of trees are close by. Standing among them is to acknowledge that we are but one biological form paying homage to another, each extraordinary in their own ways.

Comments: woodward@tcnj.edu