A couple weeks ago, I wrote a letter to NPR’s CEO w/ some ideas on how NPR might be able to increase its revenue.
It included something to the effect:
In the recording industry, they’ve seen the money stream shift away from recorded content and into live experiences…concerts. I think public radio may need a similar shift to an experience-based business model. Public Radio needs to find it’s own version of a live concert.
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This American Life’s live broadcasts in theaters around the country are a great example of this shift. I applaud their willingness to try it:
How do you sell out a movie theater on a Thursday night? Well, tonight, hundreds of theaters are doing so with a live broadcast of the popular radio show, “This American Life,” which is hosted by Ira Glass and distributed by Public Radio International.
The actual staged performance is taking place at New York University’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts, which seats under 900. But the show is also being broadcast to 400 theaters around the country which, collectively, have seating capacity for tens of thousands, in cities like Tuscaloosa, Ala., and Provo, Utah.
Four of the five theaters showing it in New York City and are sold out. (To meet demand, it is being rebroadcast on May 7).
I hope that somebody does some number crunching on the venture so we can figure out if this helped w/ their 120k budget gap. (Evidently, that’s what spurred the idea in the first place.)
If this is successful, all of Public Radio needs to think about tinkering in the experience economy.
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All this is making me want to read this book:
In The Experience Economy, the authors argue that the service economy is about to be superseded with something that critics will find even more ephemeral (and controversial) than services ever were: experiences. In part because of technology and the increasing expectations of consumers, services today are starting to look like commodities. The authors write that “Those businesses that relegate themselves to the diminishing world of goods and services will be rendered irrelevant. To avoid this fate, you must learn to stage a rich, compelling experience.”
Baudrillard and Deborg would probably have some science to drop on this…
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