Talking to PRX
I’ve referenced the meeting this week at PRX already, albeit briefly, and now that we’ve reached the weekend, I have more time to write about it.
About ten of us met up with Jake Shapiro, John Barth and the rest of the PRX team in Boston Monday. The meeting was ostensibly for the benefit of PRX as it prepares for its next phase of growth and development. But it was also a learning experience for me, and a chance to see a little deeper into how PRX is working.
The bottom line: it’s doing quite well, thank you. More than 400 stations are now members, and there are several networks, hundreds of stations, and nearly 1900 independent producers who offer their content to this marketplace – everything from modules to 5 minute features to 30- and 60-minute shows to continuing series.
Disclosure: I love PRX. Iowa Public Radio is finally joining PRX this month, and our producers are chomping at the bit to get access to this content for talk shows, magazine programs, and showcase blocks.)
With about 10,000 pieces easily searchable, easy to audition, easy to license and download, PRX has created a place for stations not only to get what they need, but also an optimal way for us to discover the work of independent producers. I mean, think about it: what has more impact on your future program decision making – the cold call from the independent producer, who sent the CD that now sits at the bottom of the stack on the corner of your desk, despite your best intentions; or the burning need for a 60-minute documentary that sent you to PRX, where you discovered a really great doc by Richard Paul, which helped you realize that this guy has a whole collection of great stuff that you’ve never heard, and that maybe you should check out.
The subtext of the day-long meeting was something like “where do we go next?”
One of the ideas we explored at some length was how we as stations might collaborate to commission work from the PRX stable of producers. Reversioning has already put PRX in the space of enabling the creation of new content; perhaps a group of stations – none of whom could afford to commission a series on their own – could pool their PRX points, and hire a producer; ultimately, the content benefits everyone – and the producer and commissioning stations can reap some revenue as other stations license the content for broadcast. There’s a lot of opportunity here.
Another big opportunity is the user base – the thousands of PRX members who aren’t producers or stations – the folks who love public radio and have discovered PRX through a Google search or an on-air mention. PRX has always provided opportunities for listeners to listen to content, as well as rate and review it. These users have never been a core element of the business plan – the effort to market to them, and even to scale up the infrastructure for more users would swamp the organization. But those users are valuable to PRX and we spent a lot of time talking about how they could be valuable to us as stations. For instance, sitting at my desk at my hypothetical station in Seattle, I notice that PRX has close to 400 members in Washington state. There’s a good chance that a few of them are spending time with PRX regularly, listening to pieces and rating them. How could I engage them? Could I let them discover pieces and recommend them to me for broadcast? Could I encourage more of my listeners to check out the site and recommend content to me? Thoughtful engagement with these users could lead to positive results.
PRX has been around just long enough that now is good time to reassess strategy. That seems to be happening. But a few things are already clear: PRX is public radio’s fourth network; it’s the open source public radio network, and for those of us who are beginning to look for fresh, new voices to add to our schedules, it’s the best place to start.
