[Dixielandjazz] The NPR quest for a younger audience

[Stephen G Barbone]

Excerpts from a NY Times article. Even National Public Radio is seeking a young audience.<grin>


Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband


New Hits Needed; Apply to NPR

NY TIMES - By ELIZABETH JENSEN - June 18, 2012

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. . . .   

     

 “Public radio is in need of an infusion of new voices, new models,” said Jake Shapiro, the executive director of the Public Radio Exchange, which is rolling out the personal storytelling show “The Moth Radio Hour” as a weekly program in January, and in 2010 developed “Snap Judgment,” from the Public Radio Talent Quest winner Glynn Washington, which calls itself “Storytelling. With a Beat.”


If public radio sticks with its current franchises and sound, Mr. Shapiro said, it will “leave us open to other vulnerabilities, as the next-generation audience goes elsewhere for its content.”  . . . .     



In testing, “Ask Me Another” is appealing to the younger listeners that many believe public radio needs more of. “The dividing line is right around 45 years old,” Mr. Nuzum said. “People under 45, they love it. People over 45 have much more of a mixed reaction: The puzzles are not hard enough, the staff is trying too hard, or they don’t get the humor.”