Radio Sweethearts

Well, not single-handedly.

On his blog, Rob Paterson has at least proposed a solution.

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.

I like his enthusiasm here, and he asserts that this is a solution not just for the Bryant Park Project, but for NPR - and public media - as a whole.

When he points out that every bit of public media - especially the local stations - is struggling as the nation gets used to a new economy (the web) and a new economic reality (oil-based systems are crumbling), he acknowledges that he doesn’t have the answer, but he knows who does.

By opening public media for comment and ideas, by making public media’s web reality an open-source project of sorts, not only do you get the warm fuzzies of having ‘public’ media become truly ‘public,’ but also the wisdom of crowd-sourcing working in your favor.

But perhaps the most critical question remains unanswered: how are we going to fund this?

I’ve thought for some time that direct donation to specific programs would be a brilliant idea, making more popular programs cheaper for local stations to carry.

Think of it this way: When you buy a Bob Dylan record, Columbia records still gets paid, but your money still goes to Dylan, rather than to Bruce Springsteen. When you buy a Springsteen record, the opposite happens.

But of course, the local stations couldn’t do without the direct donations they receive. So what can be done?

Reader Jaime F., in a comment on the original Forget Ferris post, had some suggestions:

Possibility one - NPR Corporate is convinced that they can’t afford to lose the BPP in terms of future funding AND a nice underwriter is found. I don’t know exactly how underwriting works, but I think it might be the only way for money to go directly to a program.

Possibility two - An NPR member station takes the BPP on in the same way that Car Talk comes from a member station and, I think, get some funding help from NPR Corporate.

Possibility three - Some other company or organization essentially re-creates the BPP under a different name, as it’s NPR’s program (unless, somehow, NPR can sell the program, and I have absolutely no idea if that’s at all possible). So either something like American Public Radio or Sirius?

I really want to hear from somebody high up in NPR about this - I want to know what kind of decisions are being made, whether they’re hearing us raise hell about this, and what of our ideas might work.

 Previous Forget Ferris (save the BPP) Project posts: Day One, Day Two.