Back from the dead & NPR Podcasts
Well, not quite, but I think this is definitely the longest hiatus since I started this blog two and a half years ago - over two months of no entries! The reasons are somewhat obvious from the last entry, huh? But of course there's work as well. A new job has meant less free time at work to get personal things done - can you imagine, what nerve they have expecting me to actually work! ;-) Hopefully, I will make time to post something new and useful on at least a weekly basis, though. I think I can at least manage that!
So for starters, I have revamped the links section at left - specifically I've updated it with the podcasts I listen to now. Many are the same, but there are a lot of new ones, particularly NPR podcasts. If you've been following this blog, you know that I have been rooting for NPR to get most or all of its shows out there as podcasts. A couple of months ago they did add a whole lot of content, but not exactly in the way I expected.
Most of the new content added is actually clips from various shows they produce (Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Day to Day, etc.), but categorized. So you have lots of movie-related content strung together from different shows into one regular podcast. Another has lots of health-related clips, and so on. It's definitely a different approach than simply taking an entire show and plopping it down into podcast form. In some ways it's better for the listener because if they have no interest in a given subject, they don't have to fast forward every time a segment comes up on, say, the bird flu pandemic. It's of course a lot more work for NPR itself, so I'm a bit surprised they went to that level. On the other hand, there are also these "Story of the Day" or "Most Emailed Stories" which aren't a specific category. Because they overlap other categories, and even each other, I very often have to fast forward through stories that I've heard before.
Then there are all the great shows that are put out by the individual stations rather than NPR headquarters. Shows like Good Food, Le Show, Leonard Lopate, Morning Stories, etc. NPR is finding it needs to adapt to the ongoing change in technology and distribution channels. Unlike the recording industry or the movie industry, it doesn't have to protect its outlandish profits or price scale of $20-30 Million for many of it's top performers, let alone the high costs of advertising, marketing, and executive salaries. And so it doesn't have to put everything into a DRM package, continue to charge outlandish prices for its content, nor arrest children because they downloaded some copyrighted content off the Internet.
NPR affiliates still rely on two main sources of funding. One of these is the involuntary donation of every tax-paying citizen, although Congress has continually whittled away at this. The other source is through voluntary listener donations. In past years I have given to my two local affiliates as I used to listen to them daily. But now most of my listening is in podcast form, and my local affiliates don't put any of their shows into that form. So I'm seriously considering, at the end of this year, dividing up my allotted amount between the various stations that produce the podcasts I listen to, including KCRW, WNYC, WGBH, and others. I think this really does make sense because not only does it thank these stations for what they are offering and help defray those costs, but it also, I would hope, motivates other stations to get in their to offer their own content in a free, downloadable form. Some of my favorite shows, including Marketplace, This American Life, Metro Connection, and others) still aren't in this format. At this point there is just far too many shows that are freely available to worry about the shows that make it harder for me the listener to listen to them (whether that is due to lack of a downloadable version, or a downloadable version that one has to pay for - such as through Audible.com). I would even be ok with a subscription fee to all public radio shows, but I'm not going to subscribe to individual shows as I fear the price would add up significantly after only a few.