Public Radio Content Conference

Creativity and management? Together? Vision and management? Together? Yes.

Most managers are lucky to make it through a day that’s filled with balancing multiple initiatives, priorities, and problems. There seems like little time for (or benefit from) defining a creative vision for your work and your teams. But that’s completely backwards. The small amount of time it takes to articulate your vision (hint: you can do it during the time it takes to attend this session) will help you be a more effective leader of inspired, energized, and focused creative teams. In this session, Eric Nuzum shares techniques he has used at NPR and Audible to focus and motivate managers and teams to do their best work.

Today’s dynamic media environment gives any content provider the ability to easily offer video to your audience. To that end, CPB funded a project to develop models for video training, production and distribution for both stand-alone radio and TV stations and joint licensees. For stations emphasizing their news mission, video is a powerful tool to reach new audiences and build additional support. This session will provide offer practical ideas for stations that want to start or grow their video content. We’ll also talk about the challenges of sustaining this effort and building a new business model.

Reality check: our music stations are just one of myriad options for music lovers today. This session offers concrete strategies to ensure your station is on the radar screen when people are in the mood for classical music. Topics include station positioning, branding clarity, and Ten Tips for effective on-air promotion to keep people listening and coming back for more. This session is produced in partnership with Classical Music Rising.

The interview has never been about “asking good questions.” Today’s question is: how will you deliver a distinct, meaningful experience in a deeply divided mediascape that is glutted with interview-based content?  Everyone has biases.  Identity and background are inextricably linked to an interviewer’s quest and topic selection, booking prep, framing and call selection and has a major impact on what the audience receives - and perceives. The Millennial Research Project surfaced critical fault lines in our audience around these issues, so be prepared to expand your thinking and approach.

The day you need it is not the day to establish a station’s emergency plan. Dead obvious, right? But has your station established contingency plans for a variety of natural disasters, mass casualty incidents, active shooter situations, accidents and circumstances that may require your staff to evacuate your building? Learn from the people who have led teams through these situations - in small and large shops - how they developed, communicated and implemented their plans. Your community will remember if you were able to provide meaningful, continuous public service during an emergency. Be ready.

In 2016 Apple served up over 10 billion podcast episode downloads and streams, but the Top 100 list of podcasts on iTunes rarely includes anything with music or music performance. How does a music station distinguish itself in the age of podcasts and make classical music more impactful in people’s lives beyond broadcast offerings? This session looks at what’s sticky – and what’s not – in our rapidly shifting digital landscape. Which of our digital offerings and what new products might we consider to build audiences for classical music and loyalty to our stations? This session is produced in partnership with Classical Music Rising.

Ignorance is bliss until --- you receive a notice of infringement of copyright or trademark, a nasty cease and desist letter, or a summons to defend an unauthorized use of publicity rights. This panel identifies some of these potentially expensive disasters and outlines steps you can take to avoid them. The panel will discuss updates to  the notice and takedown requirements for your website,  filing deadlines with the Copyright Office,  the dangers of posting  photographs without permission, the value of trademarks ( yours and others),  and some of the dos and don’ts for using copyrighted music and posting programs on different  platforms. Join attorneys from the firm Garvey Schubert Barer for a lively discussion of some of the rewards and perils of intellectual property rights.

What makes a good idea? How does innovation happen? BBC World Service Senior Commissioning Editor Steve Titherington gives some examples of what works, and what shouldn't have worked, and looks at the many and varied obstacles the media is determined to put in the way of a good idea and a successful production. Steve offers a look at what the old platforms, and radio is the oldest by far, can do to utilize fresh approaches through new thinking about audiences, journalists, formats, presenters and acceptable risk. And remember, it doesn't have to be like this!

StoryCorps teaches us that “listening is an act of love.” It’s also the most elemental unit of the public radio economy. Following more than a year of record increases in listening, stations are converting that listening into new revenue to fuel new content creation, including new content for future audiences. Let's talk about how growing listening sustains public radio, and allows stations to tell new and deeper stories to all kinds of audiences.

Fact checking is playing a larger role than ever in political coverage thanks the rise of PolitiFact, Factcheck.org, the Washington Post Fact Checker and others. What is the role of public  radio and fact checking? Capital Public Radio launched PolitiFact California two years ago. Why did they do it and why did PolitiFact want to partner with public radio? What are the challenges to launching a fact checking initiative, and how do you turn a digital/print concept into radio?

Driving will soon -- 2020, by some estimates -- become a passive experience, one where your hands and eyes are free to concentrate on something other than the road. What will that mean for public radio? Join us for an interactive workshop focused on exploring and assessing the opportunities and challenges autonomous vehicles present for an industry long associated with commuting.

How are digital users connecting with our content? What are the user journeys that we are responding to and trying to guide? How do we leverage the real-time data of the digital age to increase our relevance, value, impact, and sustainability? A growing number of stations are investing  in tools, systems, and personnel to better understand our audiences and better assess our own performance.  This session will report how public radio digital leaders are refining the multitude of metrics to which we have access, learning about advanced digital analytics, and working to inform and assess our evolving digital strategies.

Digital platforms, mobile devices, and streaming services are all changing the way we discover and enjoy music. Hear industry leaders discuss the challenges and opportunities for public media music stations as we all navigate a path through this ever-changing terrain.

What can public media learn about effective engagement strategies and opportunities from commercial media outlets?  Broaden your engagement perspective in this dialog, featuring leading commercial media engagement strategists.

Learn about how your public radio content can attract new audiences and encourage your audiences to tune in longer. MetaPub, a new service developed by the Public Radio Satellite System (PRSS), designed for stations and producers synchronizes text, images and links with live broadcasts on smartphones, car dashboards, web sites and other mobile devices.  It can also enable listeners to donate while listening to your station using their smartphones and provide new opportunities for sponsorships.  The session, moderated by NPR Distribution, manager of the PRSS, will include national producers and station leaders who will discuss their involvement in the development and testing of the MetaPub service.

As a generation of public radio superstars steps away from the mic, how do we identify, attract, and elevate the talented new on-air personalities that will carry the industry into the future? And how in the world do we carry forward a generation of listeners who are sad to see their beloved NPR personalities move on? Hear from veterans of high-profile talent transitions on what works, what doesn’t, and how you can leverage your moment of transition to make your station stronger and more beloved.

As podcasting continues to grow, and as stations experiment with the best ways to engage audiences on both radio and podcast platforms, this APM session explores what works about the podcasting to radio crossover, or vice versa. How is it a “both/and” strategy instead of an “either/or” strategy for reaching audiences? What are the realities and possibilities?

We'll start with our annual look at the latest audience data for News/Talk format stations. Then, NPR’s Senior VP of News, Mike Oreskes, will take your questions about his initiative to create regional journalism hubs in partnership with member stations. We'll then spend the rest of our time in a free-flowing discussion of innovative ideas for local news content during Morning Edition and All Things Considered, featuring mini-“Ted Talks” from forward-thinking station leaders.

Find out what stations discover when they dug into the NPR One data and use NPR One as part of their content strategy. Hint: it is all about serving audience. Over the last few months, a group of stations have been working with the NPR One team to dig into the approaches to local news and podcasts that work best.  We’ll share what we discovered together about approaches to stories and podcasts. Station participants will share the changes they made at their stations as a result of NPR One and their recommendations about how to create similar successes at your station. And we’ll open up a discussion with you about which lessons are more broadly applicable to other platforms.

Defining "local" is easy. Defining "works"... much harder. What are the possible KPI, do we have agreement on the dashboard and who are the top performers? The Public Media Futures Forum is collaborating with Current to collect a library of "Local that Works" case studies and model projects.  Together, they are sponsoring a national competition to find and reward the best new ideas. This session will present some of the breakthrough cases they have identified. The presentation will allow for interaction with the programming leaders who made the staffing, production and financial decisions that shaped these success stories.

As storytellers, the voice is a powerful, expressive tool. With more and more print and TV reporters coming to radio – an increasing number of on-air talent needs help making that transition.  So how can we help our hosts and reporters raise their performance game?  Join NPR voice coach Jessica Hansen as she shares insights on breath control, vocal placement and delivery, which increase credibility, accessibility, and comprehension for the listener.

Playing music on the radio alone isn’t enough to make people aware of and care about (and support) your station. This session looks at how a station’s personality is communicated through the music mix and messaging, and most importantly in the way our hosts interact with listeners. The host connection – in the booth and on social media – sets our stations apart from other classical music services, as daily friends, companions, entertainers and trusted guides. The session will include comparative air checks, and best announcer practices in today’s media environment. This session is produced in partnership with Classical Music Rising.

The recent election cycle has taught us that rural America should not -- and cannot -- be ignored. As public media organizations we have a special opportunity to bridge divides between rural communities and larger metro areas, but many stations are struggling with where to begin. We turn the tables in this session as we invite large-market stations to sit in the seats and listen closely to our rural station panel, as they help us understand the work of public broadcasting in non-urban, often politically conservative settings and outline their vision for the unique role public media can play in the current climate. They’ll share some concrete ideas for how urban and rural stations can do a better job supporting each other’s efforts. This session is produced in partnership with Greater Public, PRPD, NFCB, and AIR.

Public Radio stations continue to increase events for content that expand digital and broadcast experiences. However as a discipline, content events lack the benchmark analysis that provide best practices similar to the broadcast and digital platforms. Over the next year, the PRPD and Culture Casts will conduct a study with stations examining events through a metric of Audience, Impact and Revenue. Join us in this discussion and share your views to help inform this timely study. Results of a preliminary event survey study will also be part of this session.

Public radio stations across the country are seeing record growth in new listeners, driven in large part by an unrelenting news cycle. But why are these “samplers” coming to public radio, and more importantly, what would it take to keep them? WAMU partnered with PRPD and Jacobs Media to conduct qualitative research with an initial batch of listeners—and we’re dying to share what we’ve learned about who they are, what they like, and what they say it would take to keep them. Join us as we share our top-level findings

Sooner or later, every station has a new initiative to promote. What does it take to make an impact with a new program? Join a conversation about how to keep attention on your core offerings, while also building attention and awareness for your new program or project.