Public radio goes for younger audience
New Hits Needed; Apply to NPR
By ELIZABETH JENSEN, NYT
On an unseasonably warm spring night at the Bell House, a hip club in Brooklyn, a new NPR quiz show was taking shape. Like its hit older sibling “Wait Wait ... Don’t Tell Me!,” the new show, “Ask Me Another,” is taped before a live audience. But “Wait Wait ...” tapes at the likes of the august Carnegie Hall when it is in New York; this audience was sitting on metal folding chairs and drinking beer from plastic cups as contestants filed onstage to compete over obscure trivia like Weird Al Yankovic lyrics.
“Ask Me Another,” which began broadcasts on some NPR stations in May (but not in New York), is part of a new land rush for precious public-radio weekend airtime. Developed on modest budgets, many of the newcomers are aimed at a decidedly younger audience than currently listens to NPR; some aim for diverse listeners. All face a big hurdle: limited open time slots and, some would argue, a risk-averse public-radio culture, where time-tested audience and money generators make it challenging for new shows to thrive.
The recent news that the 35-year-old “Car Talk” would stop taping original episodes this fall seemingly creates an opening. But that show — by far public radio’s most listened to, and a major local station fund-raising draw — will continue in repeats.
“The safe choice most stations will make, at least for the foreseeable future, will be to just take the reruns and not rock the boat,” lamented Adam Schweigert, a digital consultant and former public radio producer based in Columbus, Ohio, who has exhorted his online followers to demand that their local stations move on to other programming.
(More here.)
By ELIZABETH JENSEN, NYT
On an unseasonably warm spring night at the Bell House, a hip club in Brooklyn, a new NPR quiz show was taking shape. Like its hit older sibling “Wait Wait ... Don’t Tell Me!,” the new show, “Ask Me Another,” is taped before a live audience. But “Wait Wait ...” tapes at the likes of the august Carnegie Hall when it is in New York; this audience was sitting on metal folding chairs and drinking beer from plastic cups as contestants filed onstage to compete over obscure trivia like Weird Al Yankovic lyrics.
“Ask Me Another,” which began broadcasts on some NPR stations in May (but not in New York), is part of a new land rush for precious public-radio weekend airtime. Developed on modest budgets, many of the newcomers are aimed at a decidedly younger audience than currently listens to NPR; some aim for diverse listeners. All face a big hurdle: limited open time slots and, some would argue, a risk-averse public-radio culture, where time-tested audience and money generators make it challenging for new shows to thrive.
The recent news that the 35-year-old “Car Talk” would stop taping original episodes this fall seemingly creates an opening. But that show — by far public radio’s most listened to, and a major local station fund-raising draw — will continue in repeats.
“The safe choice most stations will make, at least for the foreseeable future, will be to just take the reruns and not rock the boat,” lamented Adam Schweigert, a digital consultant and former public radio producer based in Columbus, Ohio, who has exhorted his online followers to demand that their local stations move on to other programming.
(More here.)
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