Talk:NPR and Commercialization

POV
This just smacks of POV: it's an essay that is trying to get a point across. æle ✆ 02:21, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

This article is laidened with POV Zr2d2 20:45, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

The article certainly has a point of view, but the topic is probably impossible to discuss without tinting matters somewhat. Just as well to be open about one's commitments.

There are three big points here that need discussing:

1) Commercialism: I don't think you can conflate, as this author does throughout the article, commercialism with the effort to gain more listeners. Just because something is popular or trying to be popular doesn't make it commercial. Giovannoni equates service with listenership, which I think is wrong. I think it is equally wrong to think of them as opposed.

There are commercialism concerns at NPR: first there is the pure aural clutter of the many underwriting announcements; and second there is the influence that business underwriters may wield CONTRA the listenership. What do I mean by this? The real danger of this kind of commercialism isn't that the prospect of greater underwriting revenue will cause NPR top seek ever greater audiences, it is that underwriters interested in very small segments of the market will pressure NPR to forgo some of its potential audience in favor of locking up others. This sort of pressure is what is widely blamed for having ruined commercial radio (advertisers are interested exclusively in certain markets (say young men) and the programming gets completely highjacked by their narrow interests).

2) Service and Mission: I think it is completely wrong to equate service with cultural programming and news and talk with "commercialism." The news and talk programming can be said (and I will say it) to fulfill NPR's mission better than a lot of the older cultural programming ever did.

3) Audience Research vs. Innovation: I think the author is right on the money when he states that the unimaginative application of audience research has severely cramped the ability of public radio to innovate. radio programs sometimes take a long time to develop a their approach and their audience's expectations, and Audience Research has no regard whatsoever for the need for public radio to lead, guide and shape audience taste, not just follow it.

Some of the biggest success stories in public radio have been authored by folks who told the "men in suits with charts" to go to hell. As someone once told me, the best thing to do with audience researchers is to accept their findings, consider them, question them, and then ask them to leave the room to get on with the work of programming. I don't think Giovannoni ever leaves the room at NPR, and that's the problem.

Echines 15:02, 30 December 2005 (UTC)


 * It seems to me that this article could be written without POV. Even if it had NPOV it would still seem like an essay.  It's doubtful this needs to be kept.Anthopos 05:32, 16 January 2006 (UTC)