[NPR] NPR Radio Ratings Collapse As Pandemic Ends Listeners' Commutes

"NPR Radio Ratings Collapse As Pandemic Ends Listeners' Commutes":

https://www.npr.org/sections/corona...collapse-as-pandemic-kills-listeners-commutes

excerpt:

Broadcast ratings for nearly all of NPR's radio shows took a steep dive in major markets this spring, as the coronavirus pandemic kept many Americans from commuting to work and school. The network's shows lost roughly a quarter of their audience between the second quarter of 2019 and the same months in 2020.

People who listened to NPR shows on the radio at home before the pandemic by and large still do. But many of those who listened on their commute have not rejoined from home. And that threatens to alter the terrain for NPR for years to come, said Lori Kaplan, the network's senior director of audience insights.

"We anticipated these changes," Kaplan said. "This kind of change was going to take place over the next decade. But the pandemic has shown us what our future is now."

Commercial radio is experiencing, if anything, worse declines. But audience research commissioned by Kaplan indicates that NPR's audience is disproportionately made up of professionals who are able to work from home and who are interested in doing so even after the pandemic subsides.
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In an interview, Lansing said this year's revenue from podcasting will likely be slightly greater than last year's earnings. Yet that growth will not make up for the projected $23 million drop in total sponsorship this year, driven by losses on the radio side, he said.

"The first thing that I see is a situation driven by habits of consumers that are not related to the content of our programs," Lansing said. "It's almost entirely related to the disruption caused by the pandemic to commuting patterns both in the morning and the evenings. [Most] of us, including me, are working from home."

The drop affected shows across the day, though the midday show Here & Now has fared better than the flagship morning and afternoon shows, Morning Edition and All Things Considered. Several NPR programs that don't revolve around the news, such as Ask Me Another, the TED Radio Hour, and Hidden Brain, have also lost listenership.

NPR's research revealed recommencing commutes would boost back audience the most. Yet a significant minority of public radio listeners said they would tune in more often if NPR shows offered a greater variety of news coverage, beyond the coronavirus, recent protests for social justice and the election.

Kaplan and Lansing presented the findings at a series of meetings with staff Wednesday.

NPR has, to date, weathered the recession without resorting to layoffs, unlike many other media outlets. The newspaper industry has been beset with job cuts stemming from before the coronavirus and the economic crisis.

On Wednesday, the BBC said it would lay off 70 staffers, on top of 450 announced earlier this year, for a total cut of about 8 percent. The British newspaper The Guardian also disclosed it would lay off 180 staffers, including 70 journalists.

NPR receives revenue from underwriting sponsorship, foundation support and fees from its stations, as well as gifts and some government grants. NPR used to charge station fees based on the size of audiences for its programs, which include Morning Edition, All Things Considered, Fresh Air and Wait Wait Don't Tell Me. Now the network derives revenues based on a formula involving how much money each station receives from its community members.

Lansing has declared protecting jobs a top priority. Staff has agreed to pay reductions, furloughs, a near-total hiring freeze and a temporary freeze on employer retirement contributions through Sept. 30 in exchange for job protections.

The company has signaled it intends to seek similar concessions from its labor unions in the next fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. Yet Lansing is not guaranteeing that NPR will avoid layoffs. He said that the network is projecting a deficit of between $30 million and $43 million for the upcoming year. In the worst-case scenario, he said, layoffs may become inevitable.

NPR has been planning for the migration of listeners away from traditional radio for years. Back in 2010, under then-CEO Vivian Schiller, the network shifted its on air and online branding from National Public Radio to the ubiquitous NPR as it made a greater digital push.

Lansing joined NPR last year after a long career as a television executive and a stint as the CEO of the federal government's international broadcasting agency. At that time, he identified the urgent need to attract a younger and more diverse audience.

"It's important for us to reach our future audiences where they are," Lansing said Wednesday, "whether or not it's in their car, or on other digital platforms, or social media platforms."

Lansing now said he expects the pandemic to hasten the inevitable.

"Not unlike World War II, you just don't come out the other end and everything's back to being 1939," he added. "Certain habits are going to be changed."
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@tinman will want to make sure you donate here first. just sayin'

 

"NPR may be ‘public’ radio, but it’s feeling the economic pain of the pandemic. More trouble lies ahead."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/media/npr-may-be-public-radio-but-its-feeling-the-economic-pain-of-the-pandemic-more-trouble-lies-ahead/2020/07/21/8f08958a-c6a4-11ea-a99f-3bbdffb1af38_story.html

excerpt:

NPR reporter Kelsey Snell would normally have spent last week covering Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell as the congressional correspondent for “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered.” But it wasn’t a normal week for Snell or anyone else at NPR.

Instead, she was out of work — one of dozens in NPR’s 520-person Washington newsroom who are going on unpaid week-long furloughs at some point during this shutdown summer, under a cost-saving agreement between NPR’s management and its newsroom.

“Please support your local public radio station!” she tweeted before ducking out for the week.

For decades, the P in NPR stood for “public,” as in publicly supported, noncommercial radio and digital news. Yet with its growing dependence on corporate advertising, NPR has found itself on equally troubled footing as its for-profit competitors, all of them reliant on the same pool of advertising dollars that have dried up during the coronavirus pandemic.

At the same time, ratings have taken a hit, with stay-at-home orders keeping many devoted listeners out of their cars, and thus away from their radios, raising concerns about the effect on public donations to hundreds of member stations.

A sharp downturn in “underwriting” — public broadcasting’s euphemism for its tasteful style of advertising — prompted NPR to adopt a package of pay cuts, furloughs and other concessions in April. Yet NPR will still show a deficit of about $10 million when its fiscal year closes in September, its widest in years, chief executive John Lansing said in an interview.

The new year starting in October figures to be even tougher. Without another round of givebacks, Lansing is projecting a deficit of $30 million to $43 million — by far the largest in NPR’s 50-year history.

Advertisers began to grow wary in early March, as the full dimension of the pandemic became clear. Many “paused” or canceled spots on NPR’s signature news shows, Lansing said, tearing a hole in budget projections for the year.

“When the economy all but shut down, companies cut their marketing expenses. We felt it,” said Lansing, who became NPR’s chief executive in October. He estimates that the organization will lose $12 million to $15 million in ad revenue this year from the pullback.

NPR, of course, was founded to stand apart from the ups and downs of the commercial marketplace.

It was established in 1970, alongside television’s Public Broadcasting Service, as a kind of national trust, supported through federal funding and fees and dues paid by affiliated, though independently operated, public stations nationwide. (NPR doesn’t hold pledge drives, but its stations do.) To wean itself from government funding — and the political battles that accompany it — NPR began courting advertisers. Ad money was projected this year to pass station fees as its largest source of revenue, accounting for just over a third of its $275 million annual budget. Nowadays, the federal government directly contributes only about 1 percent of its operating money.

This raises a definitional question: Can NPR still be called a noncommercial broadcaster? The more immediate question remains how the organization can muddle through the coronavirus crisis that has pushed many news organizations to the brink, and a few over it, even as the news — the health crisis, mass protests, a presidential campaign — has intensified.
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