A CONVERSATION WITH JAKE SHAPIRO OF THE PUBLIC RADIO EXCHANGE
Conversation from March 2006 with NPR Liaison to Independent Producers, Paul Ingles

Jake Shapiro is Executive Director of the Public Radio Exchange, a web-based marketplace for public radio pieces. Programmers find and air work from other stations, independent producers and international broadcasters. Producers - station-based or independent - license their work directly to stations.

JAKE: It's important to set up realistic expectations about how PRX works(www.prx.org). . We're very different than other vehicles - shows and networks. We're a marketplace and sort of an on-demand archival, long-tail marketplace.

Unlike PRI, for example, when we pick up a piece, it's not like we have a short roster of works that we're promoting over a short span of time to get carriage for it. We're trying to create a platform wherein most of the activity in the marketplace is happening by the participants - stations, producers and listeners, reviewers and editorial board members are interacting and finding their own way through it.

We try to play a good role in trying to highlight timely work, make it easier for stations to find things that they might find useful, advising producers about making the work that they do put on PRX attractive to the acquirers who are coming to find it.

Producers need to set their expectations about PRX appropriately. If you put a piece on PRX that doesn't mean it gets on the radio necessarily. You know a "hit" on PRX is a piece that gets licensed 30 or 40 times, not 500 times. It's not like getting national carriage. We say it's somewhat more than local, somewhat less than national.

Part of what we're trying to do is figure out ways to market the things that are on PRX and the service itself to stations so that more of it gets used. And the good news is that that is happening. The trend line is that more stations are using more stuff.

PAUL: How are you connecting with stations to try to encourage use of PRX?

We do a weekly newsletter that goes out to all 350 station members on PRX. That newsletter typically highlights pieces that are on our front page but it has other stuff as well.

We use the DACS in the PRSS system to highlight things. We are always available on the phone, mainly John Barth is, when stations are calling to ask about certain things. He's also sometimes pinpointing stations, calling to say, 'here are some ideas you might want to think about.' So it's a constant process of trying to get program directors to think differently about programming- to be much more flexible and active rather than passively just choosing a few things over a long period of time.

That's one of the big challenges at PRX but we've seen enough evidence that that does work and that program directors and decision makers at stations do get that, that we continue to push that hard.

How do you do that? Are you initiating the conversations, trying to talk programmers, for example, into opening up an hour on a Sunday evening for PRX material?

You should talk with John Barth about this (we will) but I'd say it's more opportunistic as opposed to some sort of blanket plan - marketing out to stations, the way that he does it. Either he's aware of some programming that he thinks a few stations that he's observed licensing things that should be aware of, or stations are calling about things that they've been uploading and he says, 'I want to make sure you're paying attention to this (piece). We don't have 'station relations' in the same way that NPR or PRI does, at all. We try not to do it that way. It's much more conversational, in that sense.

How do you connect with non-member stations to try to get them to give PRX a try?

We're working on that all the time. One way we do that is if a producer has things that they've distributed to stations in the past, through CD or satellite, and they come to PRX with some of their archived pieces, we say, tell us the list of stations that you've gotten carriage on, and we work with the producer to make sure that all those stations are able to use PRX. And it works for us because we want to get more member stations, it works for the producer, because if it's a much more convenient way to distribute their work and much more affordable, then it's a win for them.

Of the 350 station members, how many are especially active?

I'd say there are probably 120 stations that are most active and license something at least once a month.

When you approach a station, what are the chief objections about joining PRX?

Well anytime you ask for money, that's the chief objection.

What does it cost for a station to become a member?

If you go to www.prx.org/calculator you can see it. What we have is a sliding scale sort of like affiliation fees with NPR. So the station chooses a package of hours. Let's say that over the next year they estimate that they're only going to use an hour a week - 52 hours. Then based on the station's budget, the little calculator tells them what the fee is. It could range to as low as $300-$400 for the tiniest stations, to multiple times the dollars for the bigger stations. We even have a deal for low power FMs and really small stations. They can get 24 hours worth of stuff for $150. A major market station that has a $20 million budget is going to pay a much higher rate. And you can see all that in the calculator.

How else are you promoting pieces?

We're also doing these aggregations of date-pegged programming on PRX. We comb through the site and find everything that's related to Poetry Month or Black History Month or Women's History Month or various things that are coming up in the calendar that stations like to program around. And that's proven to be a very good way for stations to find things on PRX and it's a very good way for producers who have work that fits in those date-pegged buckets to get noticed, licensed, or at least, listed.

We try to remind producers, as early as they can, since stations are trying to program ahead of time as much as possible, to upload work that they have that relates to that.

We try to put tips for producers on how best to use PRX in the "For Producers" section of the home page.

Another general trend that we're trying to move PRX toward is to be a broker beyond broadcast distribution. The bulk of what PRX has been distributing to date has been for stations to download and broadcast and simulcast. What we're also trying to do is open up doors for digital distribution. To be a place where a producer can put their work and opt in to new trends of distribution.

Are you talking podcasting?

Podcasting would be one. Audible.com and iTunes would be another. But we're working with Public Interactive to distribute work directly to station websites for on-demand distribution. We're trying a few experiments where we can take work that producers have decided to offer to PRX on an opt-in basis, beyond what they do to stations, to push it into other distribution options -like Music Net and Rhapsody, mobile networks and all sorts of things that are emerging as digital distribution opportunities.

It's far from clear what the total appetite or market is for that kind of thing, but it really is happening all over the world at this point so we want to make sure that public radio producers are able to take advantage of that. And we think we have a good role to play because we're already a place where people can manage their rights and manage their files and then we can be the intermediary that pushes that to other points of download. And then pass back both statistics about usage and royalties when there are royalties.

Which ones of those other digital distribution options have potential for royalties?

Most of them do. There's literally hundreds now, of these kinds of services. Everybody knows iTunes but then there's a cascading list of them beyond that. Most of them are pretty small. iTunes dominates the digital download market right now. They're doing mostly music but there are spoken word and radio elements to that so we're hoping to open that up as much as possible.

It's probably important to say that any program that makes use of commercial music can offer their work up on iTunes or Audible for pay. Unless they have the rights to distribute the music.

Right and that's a big limitation. It's something where the broader legal implications of that might be settled someday but it's not easy right now. There's plenty of grey area - either through Fair Use or pure risk taking where people are distributing programs with some musical content that hasn't been cleared. But that's not a path that we're advocating.

The way that we're handling podcasting is that we're starting to do more of these curated podcasts, rather than just enabling anyone to podcast through PRX (http://podcast.prx.org). We're trying to find certain themes and channels and generate weekly podcasts out of that. So we have four so far. One is a "PRX staff picks," one is the "Youth Cast"(http://podcast.prx.org/youthcast/) which is the youth-produced radio pieces, another one is the "Station Showcase" (http://www.prx.org/articles/224) which is something we're doing in collaboration with NPR and those are station-produced pieces, and a fourth that we've just launch is a nature one with environmental topics and that's something that Jay Allison is curating and the Nature Conservancy is sponsoring (http://podcast.prx.org/nature/).

All of these are following a model where we're working with somebody who's an outside curator who picks a piece a week that they think is an exemplary piece, clears it with the producer, we pay them a royalty and then it gets included in the feed with an intro by the curator and a blog post to accompany it. My hope is to start doing more of those because I think it's a great way to start spreading some more opportunities across the catalog and to create something distinctive as a new kind of podcast channel.

If a piece is selected for a podcast, is the royalty paid at the same rate as a station licensing it?

We've been experimenting with that because it's a new terrain. There's no established rates at all and there's not income, no revenue on the other side. Right now we actually pay better royalties for getting a piece included in a podcast. I think we've been paying flat fees like $50 or $75. And most of those are piece length.

What does your data show about licensing of piece-length material by stations? Most of the stuff that I put up that gets attention is program-length (59/29 minutes).

I do think that program length - hour long- is easiest for stations. Half hours are working well too because we actually have enough half hour stuff available so that they can match one half hour with another to fill an hour.

So it's fair to say that interest in piece-length material is lacking well behind interest in program-length material.

Yeah, I'd say so. The stations that can figure out a way to use it as drop-in material in existing programming or drop-in material during news magazines use it. By necessity it requires a bit more creativity and activity on the stations part. It's a smaller number of stations that is using that kind of thing.

But we're seeing that number grow as more stations launch "showcase shows" - dedicated blocks of time to schedule programming from PRX - and of course for on-demand use where precise length and format is not as much of an issue.

One thing I recommend that producers check out regularly is the live list of licensed pieces on PRX: http://www.prx.org/pieces/licensed/. It's a window into what stations are buying on PRX each day, and it's part of our effort to create an open market and share information that can help producers and stations make the most of the service.

Jake Shapiro is Executive Director of the Public Radio Exchange (PRX), a nonprofit web-based service for distribution, review, and licensing of radio programs. Prior to helping launch PRX in 2003, Jake served as Associate Director of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, where he oversaw projects related to intellectual property, digital media, and Internet architecture. He remains a Berkman Center Fellow. Jake has worked as a producer with The Connection, a nationally distributed call-in talk show from WBUR in Boston. He serves on the boards of the Association of Independents in Radio, Open Source Media (producers of Open Source with Christopher Lydon from PRI), the Integrated Media Association, and the Conversations Network. He is also an independent musician and composer and has recorded and performed on guitar and cello with numerous groups, most recently the Boston rock band Two Ton Shoe.