I was on a panel at the public radio program directors confab with David Weinberger, KCRW’s Jennifer Ferro with On the Media’s Brooke Gladstone moderating (she sounds just like she sounds on the radio and I’m silly enough to find that amazing). Most of the folks I could see were nodding at the right moments (that is, they were agreeing with us, of course). But at the end, there was one guy who sounded just like a big, old, for-profit media mogul, complaining that they’ll lose money giving away programming for free. Ferro dealt with him handily, saying that they all need to use online to reach a wider audience, freed from the schedule. She also said that online is a great means of developing talent, that in the old days you’d have to put someone untried on at midnight on Sundays but now you can give them a show online and watch them grow. Brooke said that OTM is now getting 270,000 podcast downloads each week; that’s impressive new audience growth. David and I merely solved the world’s problems, save one.
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by Jeff Jarvis