by Rob Paterson
July 14, 2008 at 9:45 am
· Filed under Bryant Park Project, Enterprise 2.0, NPR, Public Media, Public Radio, Public TV, Relationships
It was announced this weekend that NPR will have to cancel their new News program The Bryant Park Project for cost reasons. The NYT story is here. The BPP site with comments on the closing of the show is here. You can see that I was not the only fan nor am I the only one who is upset!
Laura called me this morning for an interview on how I felt. Obviously I am very sad. But she also asked me for what I thought might be some reasons. It is only day 1 – but I do have some ideas. They are only mine and they are my immediate reactions. As I have promoted the show and its apporach to the web so much, I think that I owe you some reasons as well.
I think a couple of things are becoming more clear to me. The show was seen as a Radio show with a strong social web element. This is I think the key error that drove the costs and the expectations. If you want to do the new today – you have to break away from the costs of the machine – if a paper, no press and no paper! I would have launched BPP as a web show with a bit of radio. No small distinction.
So much of what BPP did on the web – the use of Twitter to build community – the use of Facebook to give us a weekly review. The use of video on the blog. All this broke down the barriers of power/distance and time. Many of us felt part of the show. Our ideas were heard and acted upon. We even went on the show now and then.
A lot of what pulled us in was the personal. We learned about the food obsessions, the drilling, we chatted 24/7 with the staff and with each other. We met and made new friends.
The NYT mentioned that in April and May they had a million unique visitors on the web. This is brilliant.
As a web based show you can build the audience until you have enough momentum to add more radio. I would also have made it easy for “members” to donate to BPP. What about the stations? I would have had a split. Try the new economics for real all the way.
So what went wrong? The show was conceived as Radio!
In St Louis, many of the best staff of the Dispatch left the paper and started a new one. The one thing they did not consider was using paper!
This is a picture of the pride of the RN in 1860. Called HMS Inflexible, she looks modern. She has a “website”. She is made of steel. She is driven by steam. She has big guns in turrets. But she was not modern. Because, she was set up to fight as Nelson’s wooden ships were. The culture was to engage closely. The culture was that those dirty engineers had to stay away from command roles.
HMS Inflexible was a hybrid. Looked new but was in reality based on the rules and the culture of 1805.
This is HMS Dreadnought.
Launched in 1906, she was the complete vision of the new in its reality. She was designed to fight at 10 miles. She was designed to be led by people who understood engineering. She had the power to sink the entire German Fleet at the time. In launching her, Admiral Fisher knew that he had made all the RN’s fleet of Hybrids obsolete overnight. But he could not afford not to go to the new. His concern was that Germany or America would beat him to it.
I think that this where we are in media on this sad July morning.
It’s all the way or not at all. Just as the presses and the paper is a cost that is killing the Newspapers, so the transmitters are killing TV and Radio.
All that can remain for a while are the established shows such as ME and ATC.
But if you want some thing new that will scale and make you money – it’s the web all the way. Look back at what BPP did so well there and know that they paved the way for you.
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Brilliant analogy w/ real and imagined transitions in naval architecture. As many times over the 15 year life of the web, its use has been misconstrued as an adjunct to or simulation of known models of communication and education – I’ve wanted to shout from the virtual and visible rooftops “this is a another, different band of the visible and audible”. Ah well, at least a few of us get it.
Fantastic analogy.
You can carry it a step further–while some may argue that shifting to dreadnaughts is a waste of money, and that simply being the first to bring out a dreadnaught failed to give the Royal Navy supremacy over the seas, the fact is that if your competition is building dreadnaughts and you’re still building ships-of-line, the next war is going to be over pretty quickly for your navy.
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GJuly 16th, 2008 at 2:53 pm |
Great post.
NPR did a great job at doing things half way. They (BPP specifically) built a great hybrid show, but relied on traditional funding methods. I have little doubt that BPP fans could have at least partially supported the show to keep it on the air.
I think that the BPP has a chance to make it on it’s own, without the NPR backing, if they switched to the model you suggested. Website, blog, twitter, and facebook focus, with some radio mixed in. Add some advertisers, a voluntary donation, and they may have the recipe to make it on their own.
Thanks Rob,
The need for a new funding-hybrid-model IS all important. I am one of those who are e-mailing, commenting, contacting, etc. to help save BPP in some form. My last effort goes out tomorrow – snail-mail to NPR CEO and Executives, etc., cc’d to The New York Times.
My main point in the letter will be to encourage vision – to adopt – quickly – this newer web-based model. The show, and by extension NPR, are showing rare creativity; I haven’t seen this kind of community from MTV, VHS-1, Rolling Stone, other “youth-oriented” media. Yet, here it is at NPR. They just need to catch the wave and hang on.
Or, as you say, perhaps BPP will go independent and viral.
Very thoughtful post and comments. I’m very sad and angry.
How does the money appear in a web-based model? Who pays the staff salaries? Do you think a trickle of donations would be sufficient? Or do you suppose a corporate entity (like NPR) still has to be in the background somehow?
I think a tough thing would be to make a staffed show tap-dance every day for its money.
If Ira Glass had to, he could sit in his living room and do voice-overs, while hungry writers produce their spots (kind of a magazine model). The writers/producers would be the tap-dancers. But the BPP is news-gathering, more a newspaper model, which implies a dedicated staff. Sounds expensive any way you look at it, no?
I return to sulking.
The BPP was a great experiment and I can’t help but wonder if NPR was really serious about engaging a younger, more diverse demographic…I think they are giving up too easily. I happened to find the show on satellite radio and loved the concept from the start. I am a loyal listener half the time in the car and the other half streaming it at the office. I loved to be able to go back and listen to the show on my schedule. I am amazed that NPR did not reach out to the web giants of Google and/or Yahoo for sponsorship, since this was a great blend of media… NPR will regret this move, because someone else is going to make this happen and NPR would have lost it’s edge. I have been listening to NPR for almost 20 years. I look around to the young people I work with and I could see them interested in NPR because of this show…
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ChrisJuly 23rd, 2008 at 9:54 am |
The problem with BPP is that, as radio, it imitated all the other crap on morning tv and radio. A bunch of giggling, talking heads is really not very high quality. This is the wrong product to offer to the NPR audience. Public radio is generally very intelligent. Although BPP had high quality talent and some excellent journalism, the format itself was suited more to MTV or IMUS than to the more thoughtful NPR network.
I thought it was young sounding, up tempo, and the kind of stuff I wanted to listen to when I wanted to listen to it. I felt engaged to the personalities I heard through streaming, and I read the blog site presence from time to time. In short I thought it was being a success at what it was trying to accomplsh. I dont worry about costs and hybrid this and that. I was attracted to the personality presentation of the content, tempo, and community on the site. IF there was something I wasnt interested in, it changed after a few minutes and went on, or I focused on what I was doing until the next topic.
Now that its gone, I want to find something as good in the same time slot.
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