Robert Paterson's Weblog

NPR - On the Tipping Point?

With the launch this weekend of the new NPR Mobile App, I can look back over the last 4 years and see a pattern emerge that tells me that NPR is poised to be the first major new organization to break through into the new Media Reality.

That's a bold statement so let me try and back it up.

First of all, NPR and the public radio system have got something that no other media has in America - Growth in audience.

 

Why? I suspect that a large part of the answer is to be found in one word - "Trust". As our world becomes more uncertain, it is also clear that much of the media was either complicit in hiding the truth about what was going on or that they just missed it. The non profit aspect of NPR and its system, I suspect helps keep it more trusted. The second point is just good journalism. As all other sources of media have retrenched on their staff, NPR and its stations have continued to invest in great staff.

But there is more going on here than the core journalism - NPR - like no other organizations except the BBC - is there a pattern here too? - Has made a decisive push to make the web work for it, for the stations and for the audience.

Here is the "Story" as revealed in a "Power Curve".

This suggests that NPR is at the Tipping Point. Why? Because we can see both the acceleration and also the growth of the supporting system that will facilitate the growth.

We see a long gestation period from 2005 - 2007. Podcasting began then - greatly facilitated by iTunes.

It is in 2008 that we see progress begin to accelerate. In 2009, NPR is positively rocking.

How did this happen when so many other media organizations are merely hiding behind the castle walls?

I think the answer is in the New Realities Process that NPR undertook at the end of 2005 - May 2006. Over 800 people were involved in "Exploring" what the web might mean to NPR and the system of stations.

This was the basic problem presented to all.

Please let me explain. Remember this was done in early 2006. The core assumption was that by 2009, the web would be ubiquitous. NPR's relative position versus the web at the time was that tiny black line.

The question was this - How did we get to scale on the web in time AND still not piss off the audience AND the Stations?

Looking back, the time line we posed was correct and it seems that we have solved the key question.

So how did this process of mutual exploration help NPR and the stations do this? My answer is this - It gave everyone a real voice. ALL the issues were on the table. A real common view emerged.

In every meeting, groups came up with the same big idea. That we had to be able to offer the audience what we did "Their Way". This appears to have been an underlying idea that has been realized by the Mobile App - many groups even envisaged a device like the iPhone that would enable this.

Surely this is no small thing? Most media organizations still insist controlling everything.

The underlying constraint was what would be the role of NPR and of each station? At the time, many believed that NPR had a "secret plan" to go it alone. In truth many at NPR also did not know what to do. They talked about working with the stations but were uncertain.

A major result of the process is that the senior NPR folks realized that they HAD to work with the stations. It has taken years for much of the fear that NPR would go it alone to dissipate but it is. NPR have proved by their actions that they are in this together.

For another common theme that kept coming up again and again was this. That the end game would look like this - a REAL NETWORK based on Natural Systems. This was the systems' great hidden strength.

This idea of a large natural system is now even bigger than anyone envisaged in 2006. For the CPB has been making major investments in creating a Public Radio AND TV system. The Facing the Mortgage Crisis project is one of these investments where radio and Tv stations in 32 markets are working together. NPR and the NewsHour are working together to offer the best news service in the nation. Key local stations are creating local news hubs.

All this is going to come together in late 2009 early 2010.

2010 will be I think THE year. The product will be unparalleled. The Web approach will be ideal. The resources will be all that such a network can supply.

With the audience, with the engagement and with the web fully supporting the air all that is left is this..

I think that with the underlying audience, engagement and a network - it should be possible to make the money and the system work - don't you?

So in closing I return to the question of our time. How do large organizations make the changes that they have to? How do they do this when the New is often the opposite of what they are and what they do today?

I think that the answer for NPR and Public radio is that they overcame the huge natural resistance by investing in a shared and deep exploration of what confronted them. What they have done since has come from the genuine emergence of ideas and of a language that they created for themselves.

It has not been easy. I admit to being in despair in 2007 when I could see no visible progress. But in retrospect I was naive. The laws of nature demand a period of gestation. 2007 was that time.

What is remarkable now is that NPR and the system has fully met the challenge set out in the starting question of the process. They have kept their audience, kept the system together AND become a leader in the web.

Now they have to turn this into revenue. I think that they are up to this.

What Next for the CBC? What next for us? What about Public Radio and TV on the Border?

The financial crunch is in full force at the CBC and next week staff and the public will hear the new plan.

My bet is that it will look like this:

• CBC will cut costs by further centralization and consolidation - Such as Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and PEI will be served by one main office with at best stringers. All production will be focused in Toronto and Vancouver

• While cuts to the front line will be extensive - the bloated head office will be less affected

• Ads maybe on radio

• CBC will be on a death spiral

I think that death is inevitable for the CBC because the real challenge for the CBC is not the government. It is not the economy alone but it is in fact its culture and hence its unresponsive structure. Being a top down, one city focused bureaucracy, it cannot be saved. There is no one to talk too who can make changes who wont hold onto power in the old way.

Here follows a quick rant and then two paths that I think may offer a future - for the audience that is!

It is already run by fiat from its Toronto bureaucracy. The local stations have no local control at all.

It is a Broadcaster - it pushes out - it sets the agenda - it is the sole taste-maker - it prohibits any kind of local innovation - it is hardly open at all to participation in a real way by the Canadian public.

It's approach to News is very conventional - No Planet Money kind of offering of real context - No Bill Moyers - No All things Considered.

It's approach Magazines (10 - 4pm) is beyond sad and low brow - failed Oprah.

It's approach to music is authoritarian - Here is the Canadian Content that we choose.

It has alienated its loyal audience in search of a youth segment at does not exist and that laughs at what is on offer.

So what is to be done? I don't see how the CBC as a central bureaucracy can be saved or redeemed. The bureaucracy will defend itself to the death.

But there are two related ways forward that would offer Canadians a really excellent local and national public service. But this idea is based on a paradox as you will see.

The 30 million plus people that live in Canada live close to the US Border. Along that border just a few miles south is the best public radio and TV system in the world. Already in some markets such as Buffalo, Canadians are the largest audience and WNED TV has an office in Toronto!

I think that the border pub radio stations offer a platform that we can build on in Canada.

If the border stations were to have a web based Canadian strategy, my bet is that they could do the following - let's look at one undeserved Canadian city and one US border station to se what might be done.

Kingston has a population of about 100,000 plus maybe another 50,000 in the hinterland. CBC does not serve them. The most local they get is Ottawa. Kingston is a university town with one of Canada's leading universities, Queens and Canada's "Westpoint" RMC. NCPR serves upstate New York and has a very special team in place at the station. NCPR already has some strong support in Kingston.

What if NCPR set up a web based hub in Kingston that acted as an attractor for the local bloggers and neo citizen journalists? By Hub, I mean it offers its brand, NPR and its local content (The API will enable this anyway) And support services to a local Canadian Kingston Pub Media COOP. Like Visa and a local bank. The two are separate. The local group is LOCAL. But Visa offers the access to a larger system.

I think that local groups will spring up anyway. But on their own - it would be very hard. But with the NCPR Brand and the staff and the programming behind NCPR, (A Kind of Visa Deal) I think a very good local Kingston "station" could emerge.

For NCPR, it could mean a doubling of audience in a couple of years. For NPR, if this happened along the border, it could mean going form 30 million to 40 million in 2-3 years.

Brandon Manitoba is the epicentre of this struggle to maintain a local news centre. Prairie Public Radio is juts a few miles away south. No Canadian wants to play.

The CRTC of course currently blocks conventional radio and TV. It also does its best to block web radio and TV from outside Canada. But if there is no local service, I wonder how long this position can hold?

In the interim I think that there is a work around that is good for all of us. In the next 5 years conventional "ait" is going to diminish anyway. All content will use the web. Radio and TV will converge and will converge I think locally.

For the border stations and NPR, PBS and CPB to experiment with an all web idea in Canada might offer up a beta that may work well back in the US and then offer a global solution to how best to keep the news, democracy and local local alive for the world.

I know that this is just a germ of an idea but what do you think?

I can see how for instance Maine Public Radio could offer "services" to PEI Public Media.

I can see how a group of us could set up a truly local system here on PEI if we had some help for MPR. I can see how some of the current staff of CBC could fit in. I can see that when the Guardian, our local paper, dies, that this local "station" could really thrive.

I would like to try this - would you?

The Truth shall set you free - NPR Planet Money

I think that one of the problems that we are all having as the epic scale of the financial crisis starts to come into general view - is that most journalists have reported a business as usual context. They have lulled us into sleep so this is both a surprise and a mystery.

"The market is down but markets always go down and it will be up soon". "It's just a correction and soon the good times will be back". - That kind of reporting is the norm.

It's a bit like how they play music on the plane or when the band played on the Titanic.

This kind of journalism is not helpful. It's just noise. It does not help me understand. So in the end I cannot make sound decisions.

Earlier this year, a new journalistic voice was heard for the first time. For the first time there was an attempt to get to the bottom of a real mystery.

"The Giant Pool of Money" is I think the "Silent Spring" of our time. It goes way beneath the headlines and the simple re-quoting of other sources and digs deep into the story.

Here NPR and This American Life paired Adam Davidson and Alex Bumberg and set them off on a real voyage of discovery. The Giant Pool of Money is like a great detective story but a real one.

Adam told me last week that he and Alex did not know what they would find. They did not fit the facts to the headline - they found out from the stories what the story was. They even used Craigslist to ask for help - they asked people for their stories. People came back with the goods.

If you want to know how we got ourselves into this mess - there is no better source. It's also very entertaining and self-deprecating. No preaching. No judging from on high. Very human. Funny even.

The Giant Pool of Money has reset the bar. In a time when journalism is under fire. This team has I think gone to the next level in what I think great journalism could and should be.

For is not the entire fabric of our society under threat. To heal, we have to get beyond headlines and simple blame. We have to discover the context.

Well my friends - we are in luck!

NPR are quietly launching a new economics site called Planet Money. Guess who is behind this?

The Giant Pool of Money Team.

The objective is to widen the context set by the Giant Pool of Money.

To go beneath the headlines and to find the meaning of why we are in the pickle we are. To find out what is REALLY going on. To give you the context in which you can make decisions in a time of great complexity.

The intent is to find not only an audience but to find a community who can add to the story. To help in that, my best friend whom I have never met - Laura Conaway from BPP has joined the team.

If I was a horse breeder I could describe this as as show out of This American Life and Morning Edition by The Giant Pool of Money and The Bryant Park Project.

Watch this space - I have a good feeling that this yearling could become the Seabiscuit of our time.

NPR and PI?

I have been thinking all week about the NPR and PI deal - it's taken me this long to process it all.

Implicit in the press release is the idea that technology, the back end, training and standards will drive the transition in public radio to public media.

The existing service will evolve to further help public media strengthen and grow its digital distribution capabilities. It will manage the utility and support functions for distribution on diverse media platforms; support the infrastructure; reinforce digital cooperation across public media; help define technical and operating standards; provide increased station support and staff development, including training on digital tools; and develop new products and services to enrich stations' and content producers' digital activities. As a result, stations will have the resources to introduce greater functionality, engage in new community partnerships, and generate more value in the digital space while leveraging limited resources.

In my 2 years of work with stations it is now clear to me that technology is not the barrier to the New Media Reality that we have to reach. There are a number of barriers - none of which are mentioned in the release.

A very high barrier is cultural - a 2.0 world cannot be trained for - it has to be lived. There has to be enough people on staff who are digital natives. It is people that will make the difference not technology.

The goal is not "digital distribution" - these words imply that the web is only another channel. The web is a place and it is the only future for the system. It is not a nice to have - it is life or death.

What is left out entirely in the release is the most important issue of all - it is the business model.

The new business model for the web is the goal here.

The current business model, based on a local monopoly and "on air" being the primary activity is no longer valid. If we all hope that it is, then seeing it as being the central truth will will kill everyone.

Look at how this idea of the old one-way physical delivery model is killing newspapers. It is the attachment to the paper that keeps the costs so high that the new cannot live. It is the attachment to the old one way relationship with the reader that holds back progress. It is the attachment to the paper that forces the owners who become desperate for cash flow, to cut the best people and the best content.

I think that public radio and TV is on the same path now as newspapers. The attachment to the one way on air model is strangling the new and carries death with it as the only outcome. Soon the drop in revenue and the need to pay for the legacy will squeeze the life out of public radio and TV as it is doing to newspapers.

When this point is reached they will be forced to cut staff to the bone and then to cut content. With even fewer staff, of course they cannot make the transition. The future will be lost to them. The ship is bound to sink: it is only a matter of time. They can only keep bailing until the boat sinks.

What content will they cut? Their first choice has to be ATC. Newspapers cut the afternoon edition. Of course their listener base shrinks even further - but they can only focus on cash flow now - they are in bailing mode. Cash flow and surviving another day has to pre-empt a future view. The future become meeting next month's payroll.

As stations diet to death, what happens to NPR? They themselves also implode as their market shrinks, costs mount and underwriting and revenues shrink. They too go into bailing/survival mode. All now depends on ME. What about the new building? Anything that does not pay today's bill, has to get cut. That includes the future!

But as Ford has found - you can't cut your way to the future.

“Everybody says cut and cut some more, but how are we going to sustain this company?” Mr. Mulally said in one meeting in his office on the 12th floor of Ford headquarters, according to people in attendance. “What does a sustainable Ford look like, gentlemen?”

Like the papers, many stations and NPR are locked into a legacy infrastructure that has to be paid for. This traps the system into paying for survival  The legacy and the main business traps the system into never changing.

So death is certain. The New York times can only survive if it stops the presses - but culturally this is all but impossible - it is a form of identity death. This is why all of this is so hard.

This is the decision that Admiral Jackie Fisher had to make in 1906. If he launched Dreadnought, every ship in the Royal Navy would be obsolete. His only chance was to grow the new faster than the rest. But if he did not make this decisive move to the new, he could be sure that other nations would and that Britain would then have to lose.

This is the same moment for public radio and TV. We decide that the new is THE FUTURE and that the legacy is the past that we will have to deal with or we decide to die. I am not saying that we all drop the traditional tomorrow. I am saying that we have to see that if we hang onto to it too hard it will have to take us down. We have to see that developing the new model is our only hope. It is not part of our future. It is not a new distribution system. It is the future as direct is the past.

As newspapers and now network TV is being gutted by new model outsiders, so will we.

The PI deal is a great catalyst to have the conversation that may get us to this point.

Just as the newspapers have to give up the paper, the presses and the union arrangements, just as Ford has to give up Trucks and the US production system to live, so Public Radio and TV have to give up their legacy as well. The legacy costs of air have to go away.

For the revenues from air will soon not be enough to support the organizations. So long as all depends on air, there will never be the focus required to shift to the web and a costs structure that can allow for survival. So long as the organizational power in NPR and your station resides with the traditional and the new is a minor league piece, we are stuck.

To make all of this more pressing, we are going into a depression. Underwriting is and will shrink dramatically. It's a perfect storm. What is left will shift to the web where it is easier to know who you are reaching.

It is clear that this is no ordinary economic downturn. What we are seeing is the end of top down - high control - highly centralized systems that relied on a very expensive infrastructure as the competitive barrier. All enterprises that have used this model are failing. Also are enterprises that merely treat the consumer as a idiot such as financial services and ultimately politics!

Here are a few words from Dave Snowden that explain the predicament:

I find it fascinating that some people just can't get away from the top down paradigm.  I'm not sure why people need it?  It could be control, the conventional issue of authority.  Equally there is a strong patronising theme to many of these approaches, a sort of mother(or rather father, this is patriarchal)  knows best. Maybe its much simpler, people just don't have the imagination to do things differently?  Shifting from hierarchical management, the tyranny of experts and stodgidity (yes I made that word up but I rather like it) of committees is hard for people who have spent most of their adult lives in those environments. 

They need a mindset change fast not only for their own sake, but more so for those they govern.

The consequences of failing to realise that we are moving into a networked, distributed model of management in which control is an emergent property of interactions will be disastrous for society. 

Network models use distributed cognition (a much better phrase than the wisdom of crowds) and reward original contributions and thinking, plus the ability to make a difference now rather than at some imagined point in the future. 

Current models, and the proposal for centralisation that I referenced yesterday will instead reward those adept at manipulating the system.

Come to think of it, maybe that is the motivation?

What are seeing is the rise of enterprises that put the person and the community first.

This is where we are. The purchase of PI has to be seen in this context.

PRI and NPR will work together and with other industry leaders on several significant, immediate steps to further PI's growth and services, including conducting a station consultation process, supporting editorial collaboration, and establishing common standards and interoperability across public media.

Is this really the best agenda for these meetings? I implore NPR to think about the real reality facing the system and make this predicament their agenda. Can we find the new business model?

Can NPR be freed to go direct. If it does, it may well have a brilliant future. Millions of people all over the world want to have access to the NPR product but only on the terms of the New Reality of anytime, anywhere. How can they do this and enable the stations to transition?

What about the stations? Can they give up the fantasy that they have a local monopoly of NPR content? If they do give this up then what? Can they share in the direct model?

How do they make it in their local market? How do they use the network effect to generate and to curate content that they can afford and that has large appeal?

How can they become the trusted convener as KETC in TV is becoming in St Louis where it is acknowledged that the station is the keystone in the local community getting through their complex problems such as the credit crisis, the energy crisis etc?

This is what I would put on the agenda for the proposed consultation process that is attached to the deal.

New Realities told us that all would go to the web. We can see that as being true now. New Realities told us that the value in the web would be community attachment to things and issues that were important. We can see from others that this is true now. New Realities told us that what we did had to be available at any time and at any place. New Realities told us that we had to make room for the people to use our megaphone. All this has become a reality for others but not for us.

We have to do the hardest work of all - we have to die to be born again.

NPR has to be set free - NPR's content has to have a new relationship with the stations.

The stations have to come to terms that there is no future merely being a local on air repeater. They have to find their web 2.0 relationship with their community and they have to learn how to become the trusted local convener.

The word "Public" has to be redefined. It can no longer mean that a system is supported by the public because it brings a rare thing to its community - quality shows and news - for these things are no longer rare as Public TV found out. It brings a new rare thing to its community - it brings the very voice of that community to itself and it does something even more rare - it brings this community together to tackle their own intractable problems.

NPR in this context opens up its audience to the entire world and becomes a beacon of truth to all who seek freedom and to all who wish to inquire about what is really going on.

In this context - let all ask how can PI help. Let's use this deal to find out how we can all do this work.

There is no work that is harder. Who knows how to do this? No one! But we can find out - don't we have to.

Please use this deal as the catalyst to do what is needed.

BPP Friday - The Last Time?

Join the BPP Diner

BPP Lives on The BPP Diner

The BPP Diner on Ning is now up - please join here

BPP - Death and Resurrection? - Will you help?

I have been very restrained in connection with the cancellation of BPP (Bryant Park Project) many in NPR are friends and some, such as Dennis, I also respect a great deal as well as value their friendship.

I have not contacted anyone directly. I hope that my language has been respectful as well. I had hoped that the hundreds of comments and the coherence of some arguments might have caused a rethink and a plan to see what could be done.

Well it's probably too late for that and Dennis' email seems to shut the door. By the way Dennis, did you write that or did Andi? Didn't have your lucid voice.

So what's to do? For folks - if there is to be a future for BPP - its' now up to us.

I would be happy to open up a Ning/Diner/@bpp site tomorrow.

Here we could:

• Harness the huge energy out there
• Keep in touch
• Help the staff get work
• Maybe relaunch the show?
• Raise money

Be grown up - maybe the future is in death and then resurrection. Maybe the future is in our hands?

What do you think? Would you join such a venture into the unknown and help?

BPP - Who wants to live forever

BPP - The Show Must Go On!

A rescue plan for Bryant Park Project and also for NPR - Part 2

To enable my plan for NPR and BPP  to work - some things have to be put right at NPR. NPR has to have the environment that will support the new.

The Lesson of the Innovators Dilemma - BPP or any of the new at NPR has no sponsor at the management table equal in power to the legacy.

The lessons of the Innovators Dilemma remind us that not protecting the new from the legacy guarantees failure for the new.

It matters not that the CEO wants the new. Without a Prince of the new at Court - the legacy will kill the new.

This is not just a theory for me. When I was at a regular bank, CIBC, in the early 1980's I was part of a small team whose job it was to get investment banking going. We had the committed support of the Chairman - Bank chairmen then made Saddam Hussein look weak. But we reported into the Corporate bank - the power base of the legacy. In spite of the chairman's support - he even resorted to having us report directly to HIM - we were constantly sabotaged by the leaders of the legacy bank. Not even the chairman could get around the power of the system at the bank.

With a new chairman, we took off. How and why? Because the new Chairman made an organizational rather than a personal move. He made a senior appointment for the new and told the others that this man, Paul Cantor, with less than 50 employees and losing money hand over fist was their equal. This was the breakthrough organizational move. This one move enabled the new to get the protection that the new always needs. The investment bank took off.

No one at NPR is responsible for the new at the table equal to the legacy system. Without this appointment, NPR will never go there - even though the CEO and the Board want it to go there - there is too much legacy power to allow this.

So please NPR - please make this organizational move.

It's all about culture - You need a critical mass of people inside NPR in senior positions who are social media natives. You can't train for this. People have to live it.

So how many people at NPR "live the new"? My bet is that of the 800 plus and the board that at a stretch, including the CEO who is a true native, there are not more than 10 who have a say in anything.

There is not a critical mass and even with an appointment of the Person for the New who sits as an equal to the legacy, there is not enough horse power there - a lot of the horsepower by the way lives in New York in BPP.

More critical mass of natives who live the culture is essential. Redeploying non natives is a waste of time and is actually obstructive.

NPR needs help - Thirdly who can advise NPR on how best to go to the new?

2 years ago, I called Jeff Jarvis and asked if he could use his influence and help me bring together the AAAAAAA list of people who understood the new and to spend a day at NPR giving as THEIR GIFT a full day of conversation. NPR paid only our travel expenses. Here is Dennis Haarsager's post about that meeting.

Jeff remains in his offer for help and his advice remains consistent today - he will be in Washington talking about this later this week

It was my hope and my explicit conversation at NPR that such a body could be given life. Look here at the immense power generated by that meeting. The group had agreed to remain a body of advice in waiting. They have never been called on. What a waste! Worse, a mistake. Worse, a mistake of hubris.

Please ask for help. There are many like myself and Jeff who pray and who long for your success. Please don't retreat into yourself.

I say this in all humility because I am as much a sinner as anyone. I know all about hubris. I have lived this moment for myself.

Years ago, I had left investment banking and had come into the world of HR as the person who was going to link the real needs of the enterprise to the resources of HR. I had been used to being an expert in my field and all the HR stuff was new and foreign to me - as maybe social media is to most at NPR.

I retreated into my old persona of arrogance as I felt myself failing for the first time in my life. The more I realized that I was failing, the more angry and arrogant I became.

Finally I went to see my boss who was and is a great man. I told him that I was failing. He agreed with me. But he added, but your friends don't want you to fail. I was sure that they were all laughing at me.

He said "I have confidence that you can turn this around. But do you have confidence?" I said that I was not sure now for I was stuck. I did not know what the first step would be.

John said "You have to ask for help!" "You have to ask your colleagues for help"

I had never asked for help in my life. This was like being asked to kill myself."Who should I ask?" I said. "The person you fear the most" was his reply. "The person you feel most ashamed about not talking too"

So trembling with shame and fear, I went to see Hubert Saint Onge. Who was compassion embodied. I never looked back.

Ask for help - Ask for help - Ask for help!!!!!