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"Live!" from NPR

G

GaryOmaha

NPR top of the hour newscasts have recently added one word to the intro -- "Live from NPR news..."

Well, of course the news is live. Or...isn't it that certain?

Does anyone know why this was done? I cannot find any stories about it online. The only thing I can think of -- and this is a stretch -- is if some Congressional folks are trying to cut funding by claiming programming isn't always live, or some such thinking.

(Yes, Morning Edition and All Things Considered are rebroadcast for time zone coverage, but I'm talking about the actual news on the hour...well okay...at :01.)
 
Maybe they want listeners to know that even though Morning Edition and All Things Considered are delayed, the :01 news is always live.

It does cause a problem for NPR affiliates who might want to delay the newscast to later in the hour. Not from a listener standpoint, they probably won't know that it isn't live if at runs at :10 or :15, but from a legal standpoint. You can't say something is live when it isn't.
 
GaryOmaha said:
The only thing I can think of -- and this is a stretch -- is if some Congressional folks are trying to cut funding by claiming programming isn't always live, or some such thinking.
Click to expand...

You're right...that's a stretch. It has never come up in the discussion. Federal funding is for local stations, not NPR. That's why you don't hear about it as much anymore.

Sounds like a marketing idea to me. Nothing to do with programming.
 
The member stations pushed for this in response to the threat of streaming and podcasting. "Live," they think, is the one advantage of old fashioned terrestrial radio and member station managers see that as their "bread and butter." Similarly, they have banned NPR from mentioning or promoting NPR podcasts on the air. In spite of that, some shows distributed by not produced by NPR, have continued to promote their podcasts. For example, the other day Terry Gross mentioned that more of the interview just played on air could be heard on the Fresh Air podcast, not only promoting the podcast but suggesting the on-air version is sometimes truncated. But Morning Edition and All Things Considered have stopped mentioning the Planet Money podcast after one of their team does an economics piece on air or the Hidden Brain podcast after a social science research on-air piece.

This is on a par with stations not wanting to admit they took a story off the AP wire and the AP got the story from the local newspaper.
 
Thanks for the explanation. It still doesn't quite make sense to me, but apparently member stations are worried. On the one hand, NPR seems to be promoting and expanding the ways one can listen -- I can "tune in" virtually any member station online using the NPR app. I can listen to the hourly newscast using the NPR app. I can hear almost any program or story I missed or want to hear again using the NPR app. On the other hand, the affiliates think adding "Live!" will keep me from doing that? Okayyyyyy...
 
On The Media did a pretty good explanation of the current situation on their April 15th show (available online).

I don't get the infatuation with "Live!." TV local news is so obsessed with live reports that they keep a crew out where nothing is happening so they can say "live report." Live musicals have been disappointing especially Grease!. Capturing a real stage performance comes much closer to the experience of live theater. SNL? Half the time the show is recorded and it's no more or less funny than the first when it was live. On the West Coast, SNL is always recorded. Often the classic episodes at 10pm are better than the new show at 11:30. Live adds nothing. Live episodes of series (ER, 30 Rock, etc) is pure shark jumping. And - puh-leese - Live with Regis/Michael and Cindy/Kathy Lee/Kelly! Who cares? So, they hold up the morning paper to prove they a live? If they have to do that, clearly Live adds nothing. I had thought Bing Crosby settled this 70 years ago but apparently not.
 
Don't waste time looking for logic in marketing. It's just marketing, and has nothing to do with reality.

We've had long discussions about "New & Improved!" as though that's a selling point. What it suggests is that the original product wasn't very good, and needed to be improved. But try and explain that to the marketing folks.
 
The suits at NPR are in tough balancing act. The board have fired CEOs who promoted "new media." On the other hand, many stations are using new media and even actively developing and distributing shows in new media (in competition with NPR). Most of NPR's competition comes from "member stations" (Minnesota Public Radio - APM, WGBH - PRI, WNYC Studios...). Before NPR always got a piece of the action from other people's shows because they owned the satellite. Now satellites aren't necessary to distribute (and stations aren't necessary to listen). At some point (maybe already) NPR's corporate sponsors (and the stations') are going to start thinking demographics and then the money flow drops way off. Public radio is coping as badly with the new media environment as the newspaper did. What they should have done, years ago, is instead of coffee mugs and tote bags, offer preferred access online to donors.

It's not just marketing. It's bad marketing. NPR has a monopoly on radio news (beyond headlines) and is burdened with public sector thinking.
 
TheBigA said:
Still their new media footprint is far better than most of commercial radio.
Click to expand...

True, despite the efforts of the A-Reps to thwart them in that area. But the real challenge is from outside radio - public or commercial. NPR doesn't need to be able to compete with IHeart and the rest online, they need to be able to compete with Panoply, Radiotopia and hundreds of others doing the kind of programming associated with public radio for the audience associated with public radio. It seems a major purpose for the NPR One app is to keep people locked into NPR content online.
 
If you build it, they will come. No one has the budget for content that NPR has. They have a brand, everyone knows the brand, so there's really no competition.

What's hurting them is so many of the NPR stations are stuck in the 60s, and they're not helping the brand. Nothing the folks in DC can do about that, except support the stations like KQED and WBUR, and hope that someday, the rest of the system wakes up. NPR can't worry about things they can't control. All they can do is play the cards they've been dealt.
 
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