Obvious Diversion

NPR, a fantastic source of publicly funded content, is about to come to a critical juncture. As podcasts allow consumers to decide what they listen to and when they listen to it, NPR will have a difficult time injecting their five minute pleas for donations from the public.

The Solution? Choose Your Own Price

When I choose the programs I want to listen to, I should have the ability to decide up front how much I am willing to pay per podcast. Most people will choose to donate nothing, and that is perfectly fine, but NPR could encourage people to pay ten or fifteen or perhaps thirty cents per episode. The number of people who have never donated to their local station would easily part with the dimes and nickels in their pocket for the programming they enjoy and NPR would see continuing revenues they never witnessed when they had to cut into their programming to plead for five or ten minute blocks of time.

I would love to see public radio and ultimately public television pioneer a payment model that brings the best of micro-payments and online open marketplace ideals together. This model would avoid the annoyance of pledge drives and bring about revenues public radio has only dreamed of, whether it’s one nickel, one quarter or one dollar at a time.