Of course NPR had to cancel BPP as it is currently constructed as a radio show that can't get air but with a budget that is all about a big radio show.
But was black and white, binary, on off decision the right one? Is the choice only to retreat to the established and the known? What does such a binary call mean? Is there an alternative?
I think there is an alternative and I think that there are life and death reasons for NPR to consider what I am going to suggest.
First of all the environmental assessment.
- The US is not going into a recession - that would be bad - it is going into a DEPRESSION. All the pillars of the oil based industrial economy are failing. The US does not have a viable financial system and in the next 10 years, any business that depended on cheap oil will go to the wall. The foundations of 50 years of how we all lived are being swept away. Especially exposed are the traditional media organizations - of which NPR is one.
- The 3 fatal flaws of Traditional Media -
- 1.They are attached to a very expensive production and delivery system - presses, paper, studios, unions, towers etc. These ongoing costs are like a mortgage - they have to get paid before the talent. So papers and networks descend into cheaper content, reality TV or news services or rely on the trusted and true that has the risk of a finite shelf life. It's like the mortgage crisis - paying the mortgage trumps all other items. But in paying the price for say printing the New York Times risks losing it all.
- 2. As the world of free web based content explodes, traditional media loses its attachment to its listeners, viewers and readers - made worse by the weaker content. The bond is weakened and then broken.
- 3. As the economy weakens underwriters and advertisers switch to the web - better targets and they can accurately measure the ROI. The money is moving faster than the total audience. In these tough times advertisers cannot afford the mystery of old style advertising.
So if you are in traditional media and you stay in the bar of the Titanic you will go down with the ship. The safety and the opulence of your surroundings are an illusion of normality. The iceberg of the economics has dealt a death blow to the traditional business model. Time is very very short.
All of this brings a huge opportunity for public media. KETC is working on a test project to see how a public TV station can bring together its city to help each other with the mortgage crisis. Never has the convening potential of public media been needed so greatly. ONLY pub media can bring our shattered communities back. As the economy gets worse and the ripple effect of the credit crisis and the oil crisis spread - Only Pub Media stands able to help re-activate community. Only community can help us all get though this.
The future is in convening and in community activation.
So what to do with the BPP decision in this context of the old and the new?
In the new world, we work with our "audience" and with our staff. In this new world, the path to economic success is not clear. If it was we would all go there. But intuitively we all know that BPP has a lot of the new in place. What it is missing is the disconnect from the radio business model. It is not going to be picked up by a whole mass of stations - all of which are themselves reeling from the economy.
I would go public and I would ask for help from the "audience" and the staff to find a way of making this work on the web.
I would make the Bryant Park PROJECT - the community project that would unleash the collective energy of thousands of people.
Sounds a wild idea?
Well here is the catch. What if NPR decides to keep mum and to retreat without trying anything?
What does this say to the people who work there who are trying their all to make the new work? What does this say to all of pub radio about all of their struggles to survive? What does this say to the millions of people who want pub media to survive?
I tell you what it says to me. It says that you have given up.
On the other hand, if NPR truly asks for help what does that say:
- That NPR is doing its best to find a way
- That NPR is opening itself up as a true community
- That NPR is determined to find the new business model - that it can be the Carpathia!
It says that there is hope and that NPR will live as will pub media in some new form.
It means that in this desperate time when the nation and the world needs the potential social convening power of pub media more than at any time in the last 50 years, that Pub Media is taking up this responsibility.
All of you in New Realities know that this was the mission, to use your trust to make a difference in where you live, that emerged from all our conversation. All of you know that on the content side that we all agreed that it was only the web that could offer the choice at the cost that we could afford.
I appeal to you to take this step of asking for help. I urge you to consider the consequences of a silent retreat. I beg you to have faith in the ideas that you yourselves have given birth too.
