What was accomplished with NPR's "Bryant Park Project" venture?

[Steve Behrens]

Short-term, Bryant Park Project, which ended July 25, certainly served and pleased the listeners who found it (Current, July 28). But what longer-term and lasting effects could it have, if any, on conception of possible target audiences, on projects that aim to serve younger and/or hipper audiences, on multiplatform production, and on program-development practices in general?

[John Proffitt]

I don't know what lessons NPR has learned, but as an observer I've picked up some tips for future projects of my own. Perhaps NPR learned some similar lessons?

* If you're going to create something new that threatens the old regime, it has to have a protector installed in a very high position, one with enough power to defend the new thing. BPP didn't have this. Maybe they did with Ken Stern (I don't know), but when push came to shove there was no one prepared to protect the investment.

* Find and hire and activate the best people you can. This is true in all things, but doubly true in startups. Don't let the good people slip away.

* Plan to keep everyone on the team actively participating, with minimal off-time, during that first year. Avoid pregnancies, terminations / defections, illnesses and extended vacations as best you can.

* Start small, iterate, learn, innovate, keep cycling the changes as you search for your niche and hit your stride. BPP was successful in bringing online community elements into NPR in an organic and meaningful way. I'm not sure whether that was the goal from the beginning, but it worked out well.

* Don't setup a new venture using web economics and then expect it to....

* If you're investing in something new and untested, plan on doing it for more than 1 year to reach critical mass. Two years would be better.

* Yes, it is possible to create a web-based media property within NPR. They may never try again, but it can, in fact, be done.

* You can, in fact, reach a generally younger audience. BPP wasn't my cup of tea as a "younger" property (even though I'm still under 40), but it worked for some people and it definitely wasn't the same (increasingly bland) version of NPR we hear in M.E. and A.T.C. That it found a sizable audience with virtually no traditional air play is remarkable and suggests there's a real market out there behind the Boomers, and they're not tied to transmitters.

* Money doesn't solve all problems / you can have too much money. Had BPP started as a web property, with web DNA and web goals and a web budget, it could have started smaller and cheaper and flown under the radar for a lot longer. By the time the powers-that-be came hunting it down, it might have been profitable.

* If you're creating a web property, don't put it under the control of a legacy media unit. They don't understand it, will resent it and will kill it at the first opportunity because they want that money for their own purposes, especially when budgets are tightening. Where possible, start "the new" as far away from "the old" as you can.

---
And perhaps the most important takeaway I've found in the wake of the BPP cancellation...
---

* NPR and the stations need to go back to the drawing board and renegotiate their relationship. The "New Realities" discussions apparently didn't have any effect. It's possible that the BPP could have succeeded on direct funding from the audience, though now we'll never know. It wasn't tried because NPR isn't "permitted" to use new business models under the watchful gaze of a majority of the NPR Board (stations), a Board that is protecting the legacy business model.

But the current business model will not ultimately hold. It's wasteful and duplicative and it's not setup to compete on web economics terms. It's too centralized; it's not federated enough. It would be better to devise a new relationship now -- while the money is still flowing -- rather than to wait (like newspapers) for the bottom to fall out of the market.

It's not that the BPP was the best program ever -- it wasn't. But it proved there's a new way to operate, to engage audiences, to build community, to serve a segment of the public that's largely under-served today. It proved we can do it; we can make it to the next model, we're ready for the challenges ahead programmatically and technically.

We're just not ready organizationally or politically.

[Rob Paterson]

I have said a lot already about BPP even in Mike's article. I would like here to add to John's points about the future.

I think that the time has come to accept that the business model is bust. NPR and a lot of PBS content has to be able to go direct at any time in any way that the customer wants - anyone who participated in New Realities will recall that. The block to the place we all know we have to get to, as John reminds, us is the current deal with stations.

This model is based on a situation that does not exist anymore. That good content is scarce and can only be found in the broadcast area of a local station. This model is broken now and can onyl get worse. Support for stations who hold onto it must decline but their costs remain the same. Death is inevitable. It gets worse, as the crunch on the revenue and costs side increases, stations will have to cut costs. They will start to think about reducing the program feed from NPR and PBS - they will have no choice

If we all hold on to the past, we may all sink.

So how can we get out of this deadlock? Here are some directional thoughts that are welling up

* Accept that NPR and PBS have to be able to go direct and also unlock their archive

* Continue on air but reduce the NPR/PBS fees over time - set up a schedule.

* Raise money to Relaunch the system as a whole

*Split the revenues form the direct model - easy to do - I join say the Nature group - I am forced to add in the station that I support. Revenues go to the producer and to the station I support.

*Why should I support a station - it won't be about the programs anymore. It will be about what the station does to make my community better. The station's main new role is no longer rebroadcasting shows that are no longer scarce but shifts into being hyper local both in terms of content - using their local Tribes and also in helping their cities deal with tough problems as KETC is doing with the Mortgage Crisis. The station is a convener of content and of local resources.

*Disengage as fast as possible from the costs of the old - being tied to the infrastructure of the broadcast era. Ask can the NYT last and still produce a paper? Can a local station generate the revenues it needs, go to the web AND keep the broadcast stuff up?

* Accept that the web is where it is and that what is left of "air" is the dying legacy - put the web in charge of the station not have it as a junior partner. Staff accordingly