Think! Question! Connect! say the banners atop NPR’s headquarters in Washington DC, as I beckon the taxi driver to stop. (I can’t help it. I think of Stop! Look! Listen! – and a slightly odd West-Country sounding Dave Prowse telling me to be careful when crossing the road. Must get that out of my head.)

NPR – National Public Radio – produces and provides programmes to 797 radio stations in the US – both news programmes, but also some entertainment programmes too. NPR stations are all non-commercial, and revenue is raised by sponsor credits (‘underwriting spots’) and listener donations, as well as grants from universities, state governments, and around 11% of its revenue comes via the CPB, which is mainly goverment funded.

NPR is the closest that US radio gets to BBC radio – but with a difference. NPR reaches 27.5 million people each week – that’s 12% of the total adults in the US – with expenditure of around £64million per year. The BBC, on the other hand, reaches 33.5 million people each week – 65% total adults – with expenditure of, well, it’s hard to say, but I’m guessing BBC radio’s figures come to around £300-400million a year. It’s already clear that NPR is punching way above its weight.

I sit down with Andy Carvin, a man important enough to have his own Wikipedia entry. He tells me far too many interesting things to condense into a blog post, so here are some of the notes I took:

NPR does extensive transcripts
I’ve written before about the tremendous benefit of doing transcripts: their system involves a human checking automated output and publishing it “within a few hours” of programmes being aired. These transcripts – here’s one – make it into Google pretty quickly as a result; and stay on the site – with the audio – in perpituity. They have a team who ‘make transcripts web-friendly’: who understand that writing for the web isn’t, quite, a copy/paste job. This team’s a couple of dozen; though some of the people doing it are the reporters themselves – they understand the story best, after all.

NPR is all over user-generated-content
I’m pointed to Wonderscope: asking the audience to explain science in video form. They’re using YouTube as their upload mechanism (and were a launch partner for the YouTube API with Google). Uploading a new video, as a result, does not involve leaving the NPR website; yet will still result in my work, if I entered, appearing on YouTube anyway. Nicely done.

NPR are open about their technologies
The way they share content with their stations is nicely advanced, and uses a number of APIs, but they’re open to sharing these standards for other people. They regularly contribute to the web as a whole – witness this article about their content management system, for example – or their discussion of their site redesign process. “Agree on technology, compete on content”? You bet.

NPR’s API is a huge asset
Produced for their partner stations, but mostly opened-up to anyone, NPR’s API is flexible and content-rich. It enables anyone to produce anything with NPR content, subject to a few terms and conditions. This comes with risks as well as rewards: NPR was itself pipped to the post when launching an iPhone app, when a part-time software writer wrote and launched NPR Addict himself. Still – it’s no matter; Andy’s view was that it made their own iPhone app better as a result.

NPR’s iPhone app is huge
Their iPhone app contains full text from their news website, as well as on-demand and live audio. It’s wonderfully done; I’ve had it since it first came out. But here’s the rub: already 33% of all of NPR’s traffic is done on iPhones – and none of this is automated requests. And while their website has a fairly average 2.5-minute average user session, their iPhone’s average user session is 15 minutes. That’s a significant traffic generator.

NPR’s audio content never times out
Seven days after broadcast? No matter – NPR’s content is still there. Indeed, their API offers access back to audio from 2001.

Perhaps one of the benefits of NPR is that it’s not too large, so can innovate without being criticised; perhaps it’s also comparatively strapped for cash, so is forced to innovate to make best use of its content. But what was surprising is that the NPR staff that talked to me after my presentation were all keen to point out how much they wanted to “be like the BBC”. Me? I’d rather the BBC was rather more like NPR: because NPR is doing everything right.

I’m grateful to Andy and his colleagues for their kindness in giving up their time to meet me.

I’m travelling round the world, meeting radio stations and sharing experiences. I’m next in Montreal, Vancouver, San Francisco, and Dallas; and in the far east after Christmas. Please do contact me if you’re in one of these cities and I can come and see you; either for a chat over a beer, or a full presentation about new media in the UK radio industry.

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