While non-profit, community-oriented public radio stations aren’t usually seen as being at the forefront of Internet technology, National Public Radio has been quietly making very impressive moves in adjusting to a new set of user expectations and technologies we’ve termed the Assembled Web.
As consumers have become increasingly sophisticated in their consumption (and control) of web experiences, their expectations have risen. The last few years of Web 2.0 have shown clearly that users are no longer content to passively consume content - they expect to be able to respond, comment, rate, and respond. In fact, even these basic web 2.0 patterns (interact with content on our site) are quickly getting out of date.
Users expect to be able to take content with them, to find it in their existing networks, and to share it with their friends across a wide set of experiences: in social networks, on blogs, on their portable media players, through microblogging and activity streams, and on their mobile phones (which may, of course, be redundant with any of the other items in the list, since that mobile may be their access point to the web and/or be their media player of choice).
Daniel Jacobson of National Public Radio describes their Open Content Strategy in exactly that context:
NPR decided to release a comprehensive API of all of our content that we have rights to redistribute. If our content is truly open, it will enable users to mash it up, keep it relevant to them, and share it with new audiences in places where those people are. Although NPR.org is still critical to our strategy, we can no longer rely exclusively on the site as a way to reach people.
(It’s worth reading Jacobson’s post in its entirety, as well as reading the presentation slides he used at the Business of APIs conference – very forward-thinking and valuable insights).
The goal is not just to find broader content distribution- which could be accomplished through what Jacobson calls “really stingy syndication” (a nice twist on the usual perception of RSS) – but broader distribution of rich content and interactivity. It isn’t enough just to get some mostly-plain-text-content in front of users where they are: it’s a question of getting the richest experience in front of users in the most places.
Is it working?
In this blog post, Mike Starling ties NPR’s use of APIs to a new “Golden Age” of radio:
“I really believe that we are on the precipice of a renaissance in radio, especially with our ability to deliver programming to platforms such as mobile phones, iPods, and computers,” says Mike Starling, CTO and executive director of NPR Labs, a division of National Public Radio. He notes that one of the keys to an expansion in NPR Radio was a decision to have an open applications programming interface (API), allowing independent developers of software to write applications that can run radio on a variety of devices. These new applications give people more opportunity to interact with and to customize radio, as they do other Internet applications.
“What has happened is an evolution of a ‘lean-in’ instead of a strictly ‘lean-back’ approach to radio,” says Starling. “Radio is no longer a ‘companion’ medium that is something passively listened to. People are actively participating with it — and we especially see this reflected in the numbers of young people who are becoming actively engaged.”
NPR is effectively broadening its Internet footprint, enabling the community to experience a higher level of interaction and engagement across the web, rather than spending time and energy trying to push all traffic to their own sites.
It’s making NPR relevant in new ways to a new audience (as well as, I’m sure, reinforcing their brand among existing audiences), and it’s made the Inside NPR blog regular required reading for anyone interested in the future of media.
How long will it be before “API” joins “About Us” and “Privacy Policy” as a mandatory link in the utility nav of every media site?
