Ramsey delivered Saturday’s keynote at the PRPD Conference last Saturday – the audio is now available. Ramsey is the President of Mercury Media Research, and he delivered a compelling call to stations to create new content, experiment, and focus on serving the audience. It was one of the highlights of the conference, and if you missed Ramsey’s talk, it’s well worth a listen. In fact, I think it was one of the best moments of the conference.

PRPD will be posting audio from all the sessions in the coming days, with general sessions and keynotes available to everyone. (disclosure: I’m on the PRPD board)

UPDATE: Thanks to Dan Misener for the link to the mp3 download. It’s the third link I’ve posted – let’s hope it sticks!

CPB and the Association of Independents in Radio (AIR) have announced the Public Radio Makers Quest 2.0 to disburse up to $400,000 in grants (each ranging from $20k-$40k) to producers who are “reshaping programming to fit new media.”

Ingrid Lakey, former PD at WETA in Washington and Executive Producer of Justice Talking, is the talent manager for the project.

This is exciting news and is another example of a growing commitment at CPB to “throwing open the doors” as Theriault said in his address this morning.

Promotions
Michigan Radio, Ann Arbor
runner-ups: Oregon Public Broadcasting and WUNC, Chapel Hill

Classical Programming
Classical Minnesota Public Radio (for the third year in a row)
runner-up: WSHU, Fairfield CT

Jazz Programming
KXJZ, Sacramento
runner-up: WNYC, New York

Triple A Programming
KUT, Austin

News/Information Programming
KNAU, Flagstaff AZ
runner-up: North Country Public Radio

On-Air Fundraising
KCRW, Santa Monica AND WGLT, Bloomington/Normal IL
runner-up: WSHU, Fairfield CT

PRPD had a record number of entrants this year, and you’ll be able to hear all the entries on the PRPD web site in the coming days. (I also published this to the PRPD blog)

Our best practices are no longer enough. The one thing that will take us into the new era is to throw open the doors. The real reinvention of public radio will be accomplished as new people with new ideas change what public media is and can be.

Opening to diverse communities: our audience is 82% white and they look like most of us. Not becoming more diverse damages our service to our communities.

Chicago Public Radio’s Vocalo is all about inviting new people in to share their content. WBEZ wants to become necessary to their community. WNYC and PRI’s The Takeaway sounds different because it’s trying to attract a new audience. PRI is using a new metric to measure success – the share of college-degreed listeners, particularly among blacks and hispanics.

In Los Angeles we’re trying to create a new 24/7 English service for Latinos. We have tremendous opportunity to serve this audience. It’s a huge challenge but if we’re successful we can serve new audiences.

WILL’s Youth Media Project is reorienting the station toward the community.

Public radio needs to throw open the doors to young people. Youth Radio is an amazing multimedia center in Berkeley, CA. This isn’t new media to them – it’s just media.

Technology has caught up with our aspirations to serve many audiences with content when they want it.

The broadcast-only world is gone, and we’re now in the world of converged media.

CPB is funding a new project with AIR. AIR will find a dozen producers to create small projects that show us the potential of converged media.

What happens if we don’t open the doors: we will no longer find the support we need and we will be replaced by others who understand the potential of converged media.

We must risk change. We cannot satisfy ourselves with past successes. We must throw open the doors.

I’ve come to know Jody in my time on the PRPD board. What I appreciate most about her is that she’s always focused on goals and the strategies to get there.

Jody is one of the best program directors in the system, and she’ll be an appreciated and integral part of the leadership team in Austin. (Can you imagine Jody Evans and Hawk Mendenhall in one workplace? Boggles the mind.)

So, congratulations to Stewart Vanderwilt and Hawk Mendenhall: you’re building a great team.

In last week’s PRPD Webinar about Social Media on a Budget, Bruce Warren talked briefly about video. He told participants it was easy to get started, and the cost was low.

If you’re looking for examples, here’s one from Poynter Institute’s Al Thompkins. His kit is versatile and reasonably low-cost. Check out his video below.

Thanks to Dan Misener for blogging this!

That Flip camera is pretty cool – it takes apparently great video and is dirt cheap. The New York Times’ David Pogue put it through the paces a few weeks ago. Watch his review here.

Want a great example of public radio doing video well? (This is just one of a few good examples) Check out WXPN’s Radio Video.

By the way, PRPD Members can now download Bruce Warren’s Powerpoint from his excellent webinar presentation “Building your Social Media Community on a Shoestring Budget.”

Disclosure: I’m on the PRPD Board of Directors, but if I thought this webinar was crappy I wouldn’t be writing about it, would I? PRPD has introduced a new series of regular webinars for PRPD members to have access to thinking across a number of disciplines, from traditional radio programming, to fundraising, to online, etc

Bruce covered a lot of ground in the 75 minutes, from the basic esoterica (what is Web2.0 and social media?) to some basic ways for stations to be more social. Bruce recommended blogs as one of the easiest ways to get into a new kind of interaction with your audience. He also talked about forums and the rising use of video, including examples of a number of stations which are experimenting with video.

Other subjects included ways to measure the effectiveness of social media initiatives – and this question of metrics is causing a lot of conversation right now., inside and outside public media.

PRPD will post Bruce’s presentation online, for members only, sometime in the next few days.

In the next couple weeks, we’ll publish the results of the member survey on the PRPD site, but the findings won’t surprise anyone. Program directors understand that, now, they’re the guardians of multiple channels of audio streams on multiple platforms. They must understand two or three formats rather than one, and they have to manage content on the web, too, “get” how listeners interact with our content, and how content should morph as it moves across platforms. And did I mention video? There are so many opportunities, and program directors need a wider range of knowledge and training to make smart decisions with limited resources. PRPD has to step up to the challenge.

And I think we will. The plan we’re assembling will chart priorities and identify tactics and strategies – expect more details in the next few weeks.

We have a real treat this year – Paul and Fred Jacobs are with us this year, presenting the results of what we hope will be the first of a series of annual surveys of PRPD members. There’s some really interesting stuff for us to learn and I expect we’ll be sharing – on the main PRPD blog and here and elsewhere.