5 ms·

The interesting point for me here is NPR's revenue model. They're supported by tasteful sponsorships and donations, and they give their content away. They're m

by GavinB 17y ago

The interesting point for me here is NPR's revenue model. They're supported by tasteful sponsorships and donations, and they give their content away. They're more successful at this model than any website that I can think of. They are the one traditional news outlet that isn't damaged by changes in distribution methods. The only change might be that they need to spread their pledge drives out more broadly so that it's harder to skip or tune out.

neilk 17y ago
They still don't use peer-to-peer sharing. Every now and then Ira Glass will plead with podcast listeners to fund the hundreds of thousands of dollars in bandwidth that This American Life costs. I emailed them once about why they didn't simply send the cost of this down to zero by going peer-to-peer, and they said they'd looked into it (and didn't supply further details). Possibly there would be problems tracking downloads for sponsors. Or, maybe it's the structure of how pledge drives work, where a breakout show like TAL helps fund the entire station.
tjic 17y ago
> They're supported by tasteful sponsorships and donations They get 50% of their budget from taxes, and most of the "tasteful sponsorships" are large companies that either get large subsidies from the overnment, or work under lots of government regulation and want to buy favor with congress. The largest sponsor of NPR is Archer Daniels Midland, an agricultural corporation. Want to know why Scientific American is talking about how food shortages could kill tens of millions over the next few years? http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=civilization-food-shortages&page=4 http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=civilization-food-shorta... It's because ADM has been using its NPR sponsorship to buy access in Washington, where it can push biofuel mandates, turning food into a poor substitute for gasoline, thus boosting the price of it beyond the reach of the global poor.

by GavinB 17y ago

neilk 17y ago

They still don't use peer-to-peer sharing. Every now and then Ira Glass will plead with podcast listeners to fund the hundreds of thousands of dollars in bandwidth that This American Life costs. I emailed them once about why they didn't simply send the cost of this down to zero by going peer-to-peer, and they said they'd looked into it (and didn't supply further details). Possibly there would be problems tracking downloads for sponsors. Or, maybe it's the structure of how pledge drives work, where a breakout show like TAL helps fund the entire station.

tjic 17y ago

> They're supported by tasteful sponsorships and donations They get 50% of their budget from taxes, and most of the "tasteful sponsorships" are large companies that either get large subsidies from the overnment, or work under lots of government regulation and want to buy favor with congress. The largest sponsor of NPR is Archer Daniels Midland, an agricultural corporation. Want to know why Scientific American is talking about how food shortages could kill tens of millions over the next few years? http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=civilization-food-shortages&page=4 http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=civilization-food-shorta... It's because ADM has been using its NPR sponsorship to buy access in Washington, where it can push biofuel mandates, turning food into a poor substitute for gasoline, thus boosting the price of it beyond the reach of the global poor.