This morning during The Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital conference, National Public Radio’s CEO, Vivian Schiller, had some positive outlooks on internet radio.Here are some of the things she mentions:
NPR’s ratings continue to grow -- just hitting 34 million listeners, averaging 6 hours a week. It’s important that listeners are on every platform, and not just conventional radio. Digital audiences are additive; there is no evidence of cannibalization going on, she says. The idea is to reach the most number of people.
Schiller says that over the next 5 years internet radio will take the place of traditional broadcast radio. And pretty soon, most cars will be equipped with Internet radio in one form or another.
About 40% of weekday listening is now in the car… once most cars have Internet radio, people ideally will listen to the same stations in their car.
Schiller says they won’t charge for listening; at the heart of the mission is to make the content available to people for free. Only 10% of listeners give. We will be free, if you choose not to support us through membership, then we will still be there for you.
The iPad, she says, has been phenomenal, with almost 300,000 downloads of their app for iPad. She says it is designed specifically for that device; not for the iPhone, or the Web. You can listen, and experience NPR content in difference ways.
