The media business, it is changing in so many
different ways!
And, I'm so excited today because we are here
with National Public Radio.
I'm Michael Krigsman.
I am an industry analyst and the host of CxOTalk.
And, we're speaking today on Episode #254;
two hundred and fifty-four! …of CxOTalk.
We're speaking with Thomas Hjelm, who is the
Chief Digital Officer of NPR.
Right now, there is a tweet chat taking place.
Go to Twitter using the hashtag #cxotalk and
you can join in and you can ask Tom questions
directly.
And, I want to say “thank you” to Livestream
for supporting CxOTalk in just a great way.
Go to Livestream.com/CxOTalk and they will
give you a discount on their plans.
So, thank you to Livestream.
Tom Hjelm, how are you and thank you for being
here.
I'm very well!
Thank you, Michael.
Good to be here!
So, Tom, I think everybody knows of NPR.
I know for myself it’s very exciting because,
of course, I’ve been an NPR listener since
I was a kid.
So, tell us about NPR.
It must be interesting and it must be fun
to work there.
It’s quite a place!
It is.
This is a…
It happens that this is sort of a red-letter
anniversary.
2017 is actually the fiftieth anniversary
of the signing of the Public Broadcasting
Act in 1967.
That was the date on which Lyndon Johnson
signed into existence what effectively became
the Corporation for Public Broadcasting which
is the government entity that funds PBS, NPR,
the interconnection systems that support public
broadcasting.
But, that was the moment at which, you know,
the sequence of events started that led to
the creation of NPR.
Formerly, NPR was created back in 1970, but
this fiftieth anniversary puts us in a very
reflective, celebratory, stock-taking frame
of mind as we look back at what’s been accomplished
in these two generations; where we’ve come,
where we are, where we’re going.
So, that, coupled with the audience success
of what NPR and public radio are doing today,
ratings are at all-time highs in terms of
broadcast, particularly for the tentpole news
magazine shows: Morning Edition, All Things
Considered.
On-demand podcast listening is at all-time
highs.
That market is really on fire.
The audience has been growing, and growing,
and growing exponentially over the last couple
of years and public radio is topping those
charts.
In these times, the role of journalism and
commentary on what’s an increasingly, incredibly
dynamic news marketplace, that is also more
important than ever.
So, their journalistic output is getting more
attention and a bigger audience than ever.
And, the role of something like public radio,
which is in that tier of public goods, public
trusts that are so important to society and
that reflects society back to itself.
You know, our role in civic dialogue, in convening
conversations, and trying to find the through
lines that connect red states, blue states,
the issues of the day, the conversation of
the hour, that is a role that we've always
played but that's becoming more important
as well.
So, these are really exciting times; heady
times; challenging times; but, we are really
on top of our game.
So, it's a really exciting time to be here,
as you said.
So, Tom, you're the Chief Digital Officer
and congratulations!
You recently won the Chief Digital Officer
of the Year Award, so congratulations on that.
What does a Chief Digital Officer at NPR do?
Yeah.
Well, I would unpack that question to talk
about…
You know, there’s the letter of what I do,
the letter of my responsibilities, and then
there’s the spirit of what I’m here to
do.
So, starting with the letter and my explicit
job description, well, there is a team, a
digital team, that is directly responsible
to me; accountable to me.
It’s about all-in about 85 people, most
of them based here in Washington with a few
spread out working remotely.
But, this is a team of product managers, product
directors, technologists, programmers and
developers, front-end, back-end, QA, systems
engineers, design, design thinkers as well
as interaction designers, project managers;
all of those functions roll up into the digital
media group that reports up to me.
So, I’m responsible for running that team,
managing their output, their execution of
what they do on a regular basis, the output
of what they do, by the way, includes things
like running NPR.org, the NPR One mobile app,
the NPR News mobile app, our various relationships
with third-party platforms, whether it’s
the Apples, Googles, Amazons, etc.
And, working very closely with our many partners
across the organization, our news department,
our marketing group, our business development
team, our fundraising teams, operations, legal,
all those guys.
So, I’m effectively…
That is my corporate role; is to manage this
division.
Please, no, I’m sorry.
I was going to say, you mentioned “design
thinking,” and, how does that fit in?
That’s really interesting.
Yeah.
Look, I’ve been working in digital media
for some time, now.
And, I’d say the art and the craft and the
process of digital work; that’s an evolving
story.
It’s an evolving narrative.
And, the methods, the best-practices for how
we identify what is the opportunity that we
really want to explore; what is the need of
the end-user?
What does our customer want and where is technology
going?
Where is the audience going?
That, in itself, just identifying where the
audience is, where the audience is going,
what is our place in an increasingly crowded
marketplace, and then, how do we mobilize
our team to explore those opportunities as
effectively, as efficiently, as thoroughly
as possible?
This is, as I say, a kind of ongoing narrative
that's always being written and rewritten.
We are a lean shop and so, our development
team subscribes to lean principles.
But, we also, as I said, have a really first-class
design team.
And so, in this kind of constant state of
self-evaluation and reinterpretation of what
we're doing and how we do it, I'm always very
interested in exploring new technologies,
new methods of doing our work.
So, "design thinking," particularly thinking
about the needs of the end-user and following
the story of where they are, where they're
going, and how we can design our products
and our platforms to meet them accordingly.
That is, as you probably know, and your listeners
probably know, there's a pretty intricate
science to the methods of design thinking;
that is something that we're also exploring
as well.
So, I guess to summarize, part of the mission
of this team is to be thinking about and working
on a regular basis about the development of
products and platforms that will, again, meet
the user, the listener, the viewer, the reader
wherever they are going, to anticipate and
then to build and innovate accordingly.
But, it’s also to be challenging ourselves
and by extension, even challenging the organization
around a different set of… different ways
of thinking about the audience; different
ways of organizing our workflows in order
to meet the needs of this, again, increasingly
dynamic marketplace.
So, it sounds like this, in a way, gets right
to the heart of what’s happening in media
today because you’re talking about telling
stories but doing it and using technologies,
and using approaches that the listener can
relate to.
And so, maybe link this into what’s going
on with media in general and the transformation
that’s taking place.
Well, maybe I’ll start by telling a little
bit about my backstory.
I’ve been working in digital media, in one
form or another, for a little over twenty
years now, which makes me a veteran if not
a fossil.
That’s a couple of generations of digital
activity, work, evolution…
And, all of my career has been spent working
in what might be termed “legacy media companies,”
that have recognized that changes are common,
and have recognized the need to adapt to those
changes.
So, I spent many years, for example, working
at NBC; first at NBC Entertainment in Burbank,
up on the West Coast, and then, more recently,
NBC News, their local news, I should say;
based in New York.
And in between, I worked for AOL, which could
be considered at this point, sort of a legacy
media company which was built on a sort of
dial-up ISP business when I was there ten
years ago now.
I was working at AOL for Broadband, which
was an effort to reorient the company to change
and adapt to what was then the broadband revolution;
taking the organization past that dial-up/ISP
legacy business and adapt it to changing times
and be everywhere always-on capability, in
terms of the digital marketplace.
In between, I worked for a couple of startups
in Hollywood and so forth.
In other words, my whole career has been built
around working within existing media companies
that made their bones, whether in television,
or radio, or Internet 1.0, and working with
the assets that they had built up in that
first generation, and trying to rethink how
those assets can be reimagined, re-purposed,
re-interpreted in new forms that match, or
map to the changing behaviors of new listeners,
viewers, what have you.
And so, at NBC, for example, and we're now
going back almost twenty years, but back in
the late nineties, when I was with NBC Entertainment,
I was running NBC.com.
And, part of our goal was to take the riches
of NBC's programming, and NBC, at the time,
was the number one network; "Friends," and
"Seinfeld," and "ER," and all those shows.
And, to work with producers of NBC shows,
and almost re-imagine or extend the stories,
the premise, the content of whether we're
doing on-air for online.
So, we created, for example, an online spin-off
of a show which many of you might remember;
a great show called "Homicide: Life on the
Street."
So, we created a kind of online spinoff, or
sequel, or second… called "Homicide: Second
Shift."
It was actually an extension of the premise
of "Homicide" in new ways, telling stories
online.
So, that was one way of thinking about capturing…
taking the essence of what we were doing really
well in one medium, and re-purposing them,
re-imagining them for the purposes of another
medium.
And, fast-forward to today, this is something
that I think about and work on all the time
at NPR.
So, we produce programming.
We’ve been doing that, as I said, for nearly
fifty years now.
We continue to do that, and we continue to
do that very successfully.
On-air ratings, again, are doing very, very
well.
The radio listening is still very, very strong.
That’s still a very vital part of our business;
a very important way in which we reach our
audience.
You know, nearly 38 million people per month
are listening to our on-air broadcasting by
way of our member stations.
But, part of my challenge is to think about,
“Okay, we’ve got that great asset; the
great stories, the great stock of content
that we produce today and that we’ve been
producing for some time, and how do we think
about mapping that or reimagining that in
new ways, for new audiences?”
So, how do you…
Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt…
So, how do you, then, take an existing set
of assets and re-think it, re-imagine it,
to fit the needs of different technology;
different user expectations?
Different ages and backgrounds of users?
And a different political climate?
How do you rethink that?
How do you do it?
Well, from a product perspective, maybe this
is the best example or the place I would start;
is we have a product called NPR One and an
NPR One mobile app, which is available on
iOS, available on Android, it was…
It's been an experiment in taking our content
and slicing it and dicing it, and atomizing
it and making it in ways that are available
to, and conducive to, behaviors of the post-radio
generation, if you will.
So, you and I grew up listening to the radio.
Turn on the knob, and then, you know, the
NPR member station did the rest of the work.
They curated a fully-programmed experience.
Well, that still has, again, that still has
a lively, vital generous audience.
So, there’s nothing wrong with that and
it’s not going away anytime soon.
But, there's this new generation, we'll call
it the "Pandora generation," the "Spotify
generation," which comes to a listening experience
expecting not just a fully-curated, lean-back
experience, but something that was a product,
and offering that knows who they are; where
that enables them to customize, tailor the
experience based on…
Personalized.
Personalized.
Exactly.
And so, NPR One is an attempt to do that.
It takes our core assets, the content, specifically
the spoken-word content that comes out of
our news magazines; it marries that to that
very special local-national blend, that value
proposition that ties the big national entity
of NPR to your local member station, which
is the main outlet for distribution of that
NPR content.
It takes that national-local value proposition,
reinterprets that…
And again, if you download NPR One, it is
going to localize you to your local member
station, be that WNYC in New York, or, you
know, Aberdeen Public Radio in Aberdeen; wherever
you happen to be, it will send you to that
local brand, which is then the programmer
of that localized, personalized experience.
And so, it also enables us to take our membership
model, which again, is a very core part of
our economy; it's part of the basic, essential
element of our business model, and NPR One
enables us to cultivate membership in new
ways.
Again, membership, historically, has been
driven by the pledge drive.
You turn on, at this very week, many stations
are having pledge drives; turn on your local
NPR member station, and there is an ongoing
appeal for individual membership.
Well, that works.
That worked for many years now, but as the
audience gradually migrates online, and as
digital becomes, whether it's a […] websites,
smart speakers, what have you; as that becomes
increasingly central access point to public
radio and public media, that invites us, or
forces us, challenges us, to think in different
ways about membership.
And so, NPR One has an interesting approach
to membership, personalization, building the
affinity and engaging the audience in new
ways that, hopefully, will encourage their
loyalty and their generosity in ways that
broadcast in the pledge drive has done so
successfully for generations.
But… try to summarize…
For me, transformation and dealing with disruption,
job one is not to panic at the velocity of
change and the brave, new world of digital
disruption and challenge in technology.
But, instead, to actually retreat, look into
your own corporate soul, understand what it
is that differentiated you in the first place,
and to reinterpret those core values, those
raw assets, and try to find ways to re-channel
them, reimagine them, repackage them in ways
that suit new technologies and new behaviors.
That's what we try to do at NBC twenty years
ago, it's what we're trying to do in public
radio today.
So, I love that!
I love that notion of face disruption by number
one, don’t panic.
And then, number two, retreat into your corporate
soul, which is another way of saying, really
understand what differentiates you; what makes
you unique.
But that’s for an established organization,
that’s hard.
Start easy, but it's a great challenge.
And look, I count my blessings every day that
I come to work at NPR because what we do is
so important.
The quality of what we do, I think is so great
and it has been for so long, the assets, the
treasure that we have to work with, is really,
to bask in my own glow here for a moment...
My coming to NPR, to me, has been the summit
of my career because I'm at a place where
I've been able to take the learnings that
I acquired back at NBC or AOL, or in the earlier
chapters of my career, and now apply it to
something that I believe is great and greatly
important.
So, it is hard.
It is hard, but it's a great challenge.
And fortunately, where I am today, and I've
been fortunate in previous chapters of my
career, to have a similar situation, I have
the support of those around me, my peers,
certainly my boss, our CEO Jarl Mohn could
not be more supportive of the mission, this
journey that we're on, to, again, stay true
to who we are but challenge ourselves and
look beyond the current day to when the landscape
will be very, very different.
And so, we also have a great brand to work
with.
We have…
I spend any number of workdays per week not
just working internally with my team, and
with my peers within the organization, but
also, working with third-party platforms who
are very eager to work with NPR because of
the brand, because of the audience that we
bring and because of the content that we offer
and the way that we offer it.
So, I feel very fortunate in that the buffet
of offerings on the table here is really very
tasty.
Now, we need to be very careful about how
we put that together and what menu we construct
and how we start all up.
But, as a starting place, we’re in a very,
very fortunate position.
So, the mission, for you, drives everything;
it sounds like…
Yeah, it does.
But, I mentioned earlier that, you know, this
was a celebratory mode these days because
of the fiftieth anniversary of the public
broadcasting act and the coming fiftieth anniversary
of NPR, there is…
I have in front of me a mission statement
that was drafted back in 1970 by a fellow
named Bill Simmering, who’s still very much
with us, and he drafted a sort of charter
what National Public Radio should be.
And, I won’t read the whole thing, but he
said, “National Public Radio shall serve
the individual.
It will promote personal growth.
It will regard individual differences with
respect and joy rather than derision and hate.
We’ll celebrate the human existence as infinitely
varied rather than vacuous and banal.
It will encourage a sense of active, constructive
participation rather than apathetic helplessness.”
Well, those words still ring true and just
last week, for example, I was in a board meeting
here and we were talking about our strategic
plan and these very words, from Bill Simmering,
from 47 years ago, were projected.
They still are our north star.
And so, we still abide by these principles.
Obviously, the world is a very different place.
The programming format that Bill rolled out
back in 1970, well, it’s changed.
But Morning Edition, All Things Considered,
the shows that he helped incubate, those are
still very much around.
But, he was not anticipating the internet
necessarily, or smart speakers, or the Internet
of Things, or connected refrigerators, or
what-have-you.
But, again, if we stay true to those values,
and then take a sort of free imaginative around
the corner entrepreneurial view of where the
marketplace is going, what I find is that
we connect those dots very, very nicely.
I would say, you know, when I look into my
corporate soul, you know, when I think about
the quality of our journalism, as we’ve
been talking about; number two, that national-local
value proposition that we have, NPR is…
I’m sitting here at 11 North Capital in
Washington, we have a newsroom with about
400 journalists downstairs and this is the
headquarters.
This is the hub; the national hub of our national
content apparatus.
And yet, we have 263 member stations out there,
which are effectively 263 local bureaus.
And so, that idea of a distributed, journalistic
network, that’s something that is a great
asset to us and it is something that we are
trying to leverage and capitalize on more
and more.
So that too, that’s another great asset.
Thirdly, again, membership, which I’m happy
to talk more about… but membership, the
idea of individual pledge and support for
what we do…
When you think about it, we invented crowdfunding
in a way.
And if you talk to somebody from Kickstarter
or Patreon, they will often tell you that
I got my idea for Kickstarter or Patreon from,
among other things, public radio.
You've been doing crowdfunding for generations
now.
And so, we invented, in a sense, that idea
of crowdfunding.
That is an important part of our economy;
it's also something that really sort-of strengthens
that compact that we have with our audience.
The fact that they are supporting us financially,
they're not paying for something, they're
giving.
And that's an important distinction, but that,
I think, is part of the glue that really cements
our place in public discourse, I would like
to think.
So, if you think about that, take those assets
and tie them to where innovation, investment,
digital opportunity is, and you see a nice
through-line.
So, a few things here.
First, I don’t want to, just on the value
of NPR and I don’t want to politicize this,
but we are also in an age where we need media
outlets that we can trust.
And certainly, personally, NPR is that.
And on the subject of inventing crowdfunding,
I mean, our business model for CxOTalk, we
do not charge people to be on the show and
you can’t pay us to be on the show.
People offer us money, we turn it down.
And we don’t charge people to watch the
show.
And so, NPR has been the model.
We have some comments from Twitter.
First off, Jen Phillips says, "Thank you for
bringing you, Tom Hjelm, to talk shop and
your thoughts on using media powers for good."
And so Jen, thank you so much for watching.
And, we have a question from Sal Rasa, who
is asking, and I just lost his question…
He's asking about radio…
He's saying, "Radio has always been a hub
of communication.
How does radio fit in today's digital networked
world," which also, addresses, at the same
time, a question that I wanted to ask you
which is more fundamental, "What is radio
today?"
It has nothing to do with the airwaves alone.
It's not about the airwaves anymore.
What is radio, anyway?
Yeah.
That is a good question!
The way […] abstract things maybe a little
too far, but there’s…
Instead of thinking about radio, I think about
a kind of continuum of curation, if you will.
So, in other words, you have lean-back experiences
and you have very lean-in experiences, right?
So, radio is the ultimate lean-back experience.
If you turn on the knob, and then we do the
rest, right?
We’ve been doing that expertly and that
still has a very vital place in the media
marketplace.
Again, I just want to emphasize radio, unlike,
say newspapers or other media, has not fallen
off a clip.
Far from it!
Morning Edition, All Things Considered, all-time
highs; those are our two most popular, most
listened-to talk radio shows anywhere.
But, the…
Go back to your question.
So, there is a place for, and there's a value
in that fully-curated experience which, today,
is essentially radio.
But, more and more, if you look at the analytics
for websites across the public radio system,
if you…
I used to work at WNYC, for example.
And, I looked very closely at the analytics
and what are people doing when they go to
WNYC.org or using the WNYC app?
And, in my time there, the number one behavior
was to hit "listen live," so people were essentially
using the website, the app, what have you,
as essentially a radio; a fully-curated experience.
And then, they would do what they were doing…
Cooking, working, what-have-you.
Okay, so that’s one extreme and that’s
something that will continue to have a very
strong place.
[The] opposite extreme is “roll your own.”
Find your own show, your own segment, your
own podcast.
And so, we are competing in that marketplace
as well.
We produce podcasts out of NPR.
We produce any number of podcasts where we
are, by a wide margin, the number one producer
of on-demand audio, the number two producer
is WNYC, the number three producer is Ira
Glass.
Again, public radio is top in the charts here
when it comes to podcasts.
Most of those podcasts are being listened
to on third-party platforms.
Maybe, it’s the third-party podcast on Apple;
maybe, it’s overcast or pocket casts, or
“name your favorite podcast” app.
But essentially, people are finding and curating
their own experiences based on podcasts that
they’ve heard about or been recommended;
that have been recommended.
So, that’s […] on the opposite extreme,
right?
The fully self-curated listening experience.
That’s another part of this landscape that
we’re exploring.
And then, again, visualize this sort of continuum,
curated to un-curated.
In the middle, that’s where NPR One lives.
One example: That is a curated, and yet personalized
experience.
So, if you want to listen to NPR One, we will
give you a sort of stream of segments and
podcasts and the more you use it, the better
we get to know you and the more we will tailor
that experience, the sequence, the topics,
the nature of the segments that we’re delivering
to you based on your interests, your location,
what you like, what you don’t like.
And so, it’s finding the middle ground,
the white space between the fully-curated,
the fully un-curated.
And so, as a radio or an audio-first, not
audio-only, but audio-first organization,
we have to, and are eagerly exploring that
entire spectrum.
So, radio’s still going strong, we’re
all about podcasts, but we’re also very
interested in exploring this in-between zone
of the next generation, the personalized radio
listening experience that I was describing
earlier.
So, radio, per-say, then, becomes, one product,
for lack of a better word, or maybe it’s
better to say one channel, through which you
distribute your content.
But ultimately, it links back to the mission
and the mission, then, drives the type of
content and then, the distribution channels
for that content are another layer on top
of it.
Is that a good way to look at it?
That’s a good way to look at it.
That’s absolutely right.
We are mission-driven and I do want to emphasize
that.
We are also a business.
I mean, in descent, we are a nonprofit, but
we are also very assertively exploring new
revenue opportunities so we talked about membership
earlier.
There’s also sponsorship.
So, our sponsorship business, corporate sponsorships,
has been going very well over the last couple
of years, particularly driven by the podcast
market.
So, we do have a sales team which is selling
sponsorships that are integrated into our
podcasts, and then, another part of our business
model has to do with major philanthropy, foundations,
some degree of government funding as well.
So, I don't want to just suggest that we're
in this kind of "blissy" space where we don't
have to think about money at all; we're just
driven by the mission.
That certainly informs what we do.
It's the reason, ultimately, so many people
are here.
But, we do need to keep an eye on the bottom
line and just how we are funding our operations.
And so, how do you manage, then, that tension
between the mission-driven aspects of what
you do and the basic reality that if you don't
have the funding, you don't have a building,
[or] you don't have a studio in distribution
and all the things that you need?
Umm, tension.
I don’t sense a lot of tension here.
Look, we have a terrific sales team who are
very, very enterprising and aggressive, and
are, and I’ve spent a lot of time with these
folks, they’re thinking always how to monetize
our content in the best way possible.
But, there’s not a mercenary aspect to this
place.
And, unlike other commercial places where
I’ve worked, I’ve never had the feeling
that I am essentially working for the sponsorship
team.
They are working very much with us.
And, the groups that are selling sponsorships,
they too are here for the mission.
We do the quality of our audience.
They’re looking at it through a different
lens, but it’s not like there’s this urge
within the organization to sell out or go
commercial or compromise our editorial or
mission values just to chase after a dollar.
That really doesn’t happen here.
There is…
If there’s tension, it’s a healthy tension…
one that keeps the mission orientation that
is so inherent in the organization tied to
the reality of what the marketplace is, but
the mission also tempers whatever instinct
there might be, and I don’t think there
is one, to again, just sort of go wherever
the sponsorship dollars are being waved at
us.
So, there’s a healthy balance there.
I wouldn’t call it a tension, but a balance.
That’s really quite extraordinary and probably
is one of the key factors…
I’m speculating here, it’s probably, I’m
thinking is one of the key factors that has
enabled NPR to remain durable through these
decades where there has been so much change,
so much upheaval and so much pressure to…
just to, in our commercial world, so much
pressure to conform to business dimensions
first, above the editorial.
Yeah, I think that’s right.
To look at it in another way, maybe a more
tactile way, part of our success and part
of our endurance, as you say, has to do with
having our multiple revenue streams.
We’re not dependent on one business model
versus another.
So NPR, I believe, in the current fiscal year,
about 30% of our revenue is coming through
sponsorship.
About 40% of our revenue is coming via station
fees, mainly licensing of our newsmagazines
and other shows that we make available to
public radio stations across the country.
And then, 15%, thereabouts, we’re a little
bit north of that, comes from grants, from
contributions, philanthropy foundations.
So, there’s a pretty healthy mix there.
And by the way, our goal for grants and contributions
and investing in that pretty significantly,
so I expect even greater parity going forward
among those three main revenue streams of
sponsorship, station fees, and foundations
and grants.
And, that’s almost a mirror of what you
would find at the station level in the sense
that, for the typical station, maybe 35-40%
of their revenue comes from individual membership.
Roughly 20%, thereabouts, from corporate sponsorship.
Again, that’s going to vary from market
to market.
You have some huge markets, you have some
very, very small ones.
But, it’s a general rule of thumb.
Maybe, 40% for membership, 20% for corporate
sponsorship, and the rest from a mix of maybe
local government, from university feeds, from
the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
But, even there, and I’m not trying to gloss
over the fact that some stations are truly
challenged in terms of their revenue models
going forward, but, there are some tight times
out there.
But, in general, we have a pretty diversified
set of revenue streams that have enabled us
to weather some high times and low times.
Now, what about the element of community?
How do you think about that?
That’s another one of those dimensions in
today’s, say, distribution landscape; distribution
of products and services, and audio and video.
What about community?
How do you think about that?
Yeah.
So, community can mean many things.
The way…
My first definition of the many definitions
of "community" has to do with the community
of stations.
So, just to backtrack to my own autobiography
for a second: I came here to NPR about a year
and a half ago from New York Public Radio.
And, I'd spent a little over five years as
the Chief Digital Officer for New York Public
Radio.
New York Public Radio comprises multiple businesses,
WNYC, which is the largest NPR member station
in the land, WQXR, which is a classical station;
there is WNYC Studios…
A little brown-out there…
WNYC studios, which produces Radio Lab, Freakonomics
Radio, New York Radio Hour, etc.
But, essentially I was coming from a quote-on-quote
local member station, crossing the aisle to
NPR.
And, part of the reason, after a lot of thought,
that I agreed to do this and take this job
was because I believe, in my bones, in the
power of the network.
That is to say, the collective power and value
in NPR as the centerpiece of a very broad,
distributed community of local radio stations
and local producers across the land.
And, I will say that in all candor, from a
digital perspective, the value of that network
has not always been fully realized or capitalized
on.
NPR, over the last generation or so, has had
a very strong digital strategy, it’s been
building out its digital scale.
The audiences for NPR.org, NPR One, the NPR
News App, the NPR social channels are pretty
big; pretty impressive.
But, they have been built without necessarily
the station expression being fully woven into
them.
In other words, NPR, to put it bluntly, NPR
has had a digital strategy, but the stations,
200+ of them, have been more or less left
to their own devices.
And so, we have a multiplicity of digital
strategies, digital platforms, across the
system, which adds up to number one, a not
fully-coherent user experience; “What is
NPR.org for relative to name your local website,
if you’re a local member station?”
Or apps…
I mean, it’s just a big, busy constellation
of digital products for local stations, national
producers, NPR, etc. etc.
It’s not necessarily a collective strategy.
So, there’s a lot of duplication from a
user experience perspective, and there hasn’t
necessarily been a coherent strategy for how
these pieces interlock and how we are driving
the audience or building the audience; following
the audience; across this ecosystem.
In other words, part of my strategy, really
job one for me, has been to try to take the
measure of all the activity and all the innovation
and growth, and investment that’s happen
across this very distributed system, and try
to come up with ways in which we can think
more coherently and more as a collective.
One of the geniuses of public radio is the
fact that it is so distributed; the fact that
you got local voices, local talent, local
stories being told across whether in Maine,
or Alaska, or Kansas City.
That’s great, and that’s really, really
important to, again, the fabric of the media
society.
But, there’s also something to be said for
collective thinking, and for coordinated investment
and innovation; and so, the fact that I came
from the station side of the aisle, I think,
gives me some advantages or some perspectives,
in how NPR and stations might work together
in a smarter way to think of itself as a digital
network.
And by the way, my compatriots on the journalistic
side are thinking very similar thoughts.
Our Senior Vice President of News, Mike Oreskes,
my colleague, he came from the AP.
So, he’s all about, it’s in his bloodstream,
the idea of a national local news network.
Again, the national hub and all these newsrooms
across the country and around the world, for
that matter.
My boss, Jarl Mohn, […] one of his main
strategic focuses is collaborative fundraising.
How might he link arms with the senior folks,
development folks, general managers of local
stations, and together, raise funds for public
radio?
Leveraging the national brand, local philanthropy,
local foundations, etc.
So, again, there's a new generation of leadership
here that really is about doubling down on
that sense of network.
And, that hasn't necessarily been a strong
focus for us in the past.
And so…
When you ask about community that’s where
I go.
Yeah, it makes sense.
And certainly, as there’s greater personalization,
people feel that more intimate connection
to the content and may then want to start
exploring that content and exploring other
people who are interested in that content
at the same time.
Yeah, that last piece is really, really key.
One of the things that always blows me away,
whenever I go to some public radio convening,
particularly a live event of some kind, the
almost palpable sense of love that the audience
has for whoever’s on the stage, be that
Ira Glass or a local host, it fills the room;
the love from the audience to the talent.
But, the love in the room, the affinity, incredible
affinity that public radio people have for
one another, the audiences have for one another.
That, too, that’s part of the really strong
connective tissue that I think makes public
radio special.
And also, you know, the total we talk about
the tote bag being the, more often than not,
that’s the premium that one gets for becoming
a subscriber or a member of a local radio
station.
The tote bag, though, when you think about
it, that is the badge.
You wear that at your side, you are proud
to be a supporter of WNYC, or name your station.
And, it identifies you as a smart, informed,
cool person and by the way, if you feel similarly,
come up and say “hello.”
I know that it really is true.
There are few commercial logos, maybe Apple,
that inspires, or Tesla; I don’t know; that
just inspires that.
And, it’s different because…
But, in any case, certainly, for me, I mean,
I’m just tickled pink that, you know, I’m
talking with you and you’ve got those NPR
logos to your side.
So, what’s next for NPR and how… where
are you going with all this personalization
and community, and all the things that you’ve
just been discussing?
Well, first of all, we're at a good place.
I'll just start with the present day.
Again, I've been said a couple times now just
how strong the ratings picture is, and that's
something we take very seriously.
We're also just about at the tag-end of our
current fiscal year.
This has been a very solid year for us financially,
and the sponsorship market, again, has been
a primary driver; one of the principal drivers
of our financial security over the last year.
In the past; I will, again, in all candor,
point out that NPR has not always run the
tightest financial ship.
There have been a few occasions in the last
several years where NPR had some budget problems.
There was even a catastrophe more than a generation
ago, when NPR almost went belly-up and the
stations came in and bailed it out.
So, that’s a distant past, and yet it’s
something that we still keep in mind as a
kind of cautionary tale.
But, we have our financial house in order.
The audience is very strong, the brand, as
you point out, is incredibly strong.
It’s just a fast company survey that came
out recently identifying the twenty-five strongest
brands, or…
I forget the exact… what the term was…
but, the affinity that folks had for the…
People like you a lot!
… People like us a lot.
And we were the only, the top-25, we were
the only media brand, the only nonprofit brand.
So, that brand does mean a great deal.
My point, though, is that we have…
From my perspective, we have a pretty solid
runway.
But, that gives us the opportunity, again,
to my earlier point not to panic, but we definitely
need to be thinking ahead but right now, we’re
in a secure place and we have a certain amount
of latitude to experiment with new forms of
content production, finding new voices, distributing
via new channels, experimenting.
And, experimentation; part of my role, as
I see it, is to encourage that sense of trial,
error, failing fast, all the good mantras
that one hears from a digital leader.
That’s part of what I want to try to bring
to the culture.
What else is next?
We're all about smart speakers, these days.
You know, a year ago, had we been having this
conversation, we probably wouldn't be talking
too much about it but in the last year, the
Alexa…
The phenomenon of how successful Alexa has
been, and Google Home, and Apple has announced
similar entrees into the smart speaker space.
That is something that I'm really excited
by and excited about.
And that, too, just going back to what we
were talking about earlier, sort of looking
at what are your core assets and how might
they be reinterpreted, reimagined for new
contexts; when you think about it, the smart
speaker, the voice-activated device, I can't
think of another technology innovation that's
come across my plate in the last five or ten
years that's better suited or speaks right
to our strength.
Conversation; that's what we do, and it's
what we've been doing since day one.
Call and response, you know, rendered communication;
that is right in the heart of the value proposition
of public radio and it's very much what the
folks at Alexa, and Google, and Apple are
thinking about as well.
Also, when you think about it, the […] voices
of NPR or of your local member station, they
are news deliverers, but they're also companions.
They're concierges through the course of the
day.
When I worked at WNYC, I was always seeing
this email or testimonials from listeners
saying that, "WNYC is the soundtrack to my
day."
Soterios Johnson, who back in the day, was
the morning host; I mean, "He is my buddy,"
"He is the guy I wake up to," "He tells me
the weather; the traffic; the headlines,"
"He is almost in the room with me," "He is
a companion;" and I think that sense of companionship
is also in the DNA of public radio.
It's in the DNA of Alexa.
Surely, there are ways for us to think together
about that.
When you come to visit here, the NPR Headquarters
in Washington, you step into the elevator
and push the button, it's the voice of Susan
Stamberg who says, "Fourth floor, News," or
"Seventh floor, […]" or what have you.
That sense of not just the source of the headlines,
but the friendly companion, the voice in your
ear, that is something I think is special.
That’s in the mojo of public radio and I’d
like to explore ways in which that value can
also be translated for what is an increasingly
voice-activated smart world.
Okay!
Well, this has been a very fast forty-five
minutes.
Thomas Hjelm, Chief Digital Officer of National
Public Radio, NPR.
Thank you so much for taking this time and
being with us, today!
It is my pleasure!
Everybody, you have been watching Episode
#254 of CxOTalk.
Please “like” us on Facebook and subscribe
on YouTube and we have great shows coming
up, and we will see you again next time.
Thanks so much.
Bye-bye!
