It's here! A key promise of the New Realities process was new kinds of programming that would reach out to a wider audience, include stations and allow interaction, allow discovery and be available when the user wanted it. A tough commitment.
Well folks the new NPR Music Site is up in Beta - I am having such fun in exploring it - it is a world not just a site - full of surprises and packed with material.
It has video, interviews, music discovery, concerts, studio shows, reviews, blogs - it's going to take weeks to get to the bottom of it.
And this is not the only fulfillment of a promise. I love Bryant Park which is becoming my Morning Show.
A new kind of News show. In the New Realities skits, many of us made fun of the "stiffness" of the traditional NPR news voice. BP is anything but stiff - but it is not inane either - the producers have brought "Life" back to the voice and to the approach without trying too hard to be Trendy.So you get the authority and the trust that you would expect from NPR but with more energy.
BP is also just as much a web based service as a radio one. I live far away from a signal but the stream and the web provide a wonderful reinforcing total experience.
Well done guys! You are making the New Reality - Real.
This for me is the great reward for my nearly two years with NPR - seeing these wonderful people show how they have understood. I and many others were hard on NPR for not acting more quickly. In retrospect, I think that I was naive and impatient. There was so much to process and to do to get here.
So this post is also an apology for pushing so hard and underestimating the effort required.
You rock!