A CONVERSATION WITH MARGARET LOW SMITH - Vice President for Programming at NPR overseeing acquired programs and specials
Conversation from February 2006 with NPR Liaison to Independent Producers, Paul Ingles

Is NPR interested in one-off documentary specials?

We're in sort of a funny position - because as a network, I think we want to stay in the business of hour long documentary productions but the marketplace for them is so minimal - the one-off specials.

The place to get audience from NPR is on the news magazines. What concerns me is that people wind up wanting or needing to do hours because they wrote their grants that way. And so you end up having this incredible expenditure of time and resources creating something that very few people are going to hear. And that makes me nutty. There's an appetite for offering hour-long specials to stations here at NPR if they are really, really spectacular. But the hour-long special is a difficult thing to market - that's the bottom line.

There are so many things that are wonderful ideas and the question is what is the value of the time spent and the resources invested if not a lot of people hear it. You can be as mission-based as you want but if you're not reaching people, it's not the best use of people's time or talent or resources.

So I think about that a lot. And if some program idea is wonderful, I think, "you should do two pieces for the news magazine, have millions hear it and do a really excellent job." But that, sometimes, doesn't bring in grant money. And that's the conundrum.

I've been in that boat a few times myself, writing grants. The key element is getting the news desk to say, yes, we're interested in this. To me, the hour-long program piggy-backs onto that commitment from the NPR news desk, because of the audience. I'm guessing that when the NEA (National Endowment for the Arts), for example, looks at that in a grant application, they know the reach of Morning Edition, so that's what peaks their interest.

Right.

When you are considering a special though, are you trying to evaluate it on likely carriage? As in, o.k., this special would likely get on 100 stations so NPR's interested. But if it'd only get on 50 stations, you're less interested?

I think part of my calculation is inherently that. How attractive would it be so therefore how many stations would carry it? How much could we promote it so that stations would even know about it.

One of the things that happens is (that producers sometimes don't consider when pitching) - if a program is going up on satellite in two months - we're way too late. Because stations need to put it in their program guides, they need to promote it, all that kind of stuff.

And then the other part of the calculation is, within our own little group here handling programming at NPR, what sort of manpower it would take to get it on the air just from us and how worth it is it? Because on top of one-off specials, we're dealing with 20 acquired programs that we're dealing with every day. Our unit is responsible for everything from Fresh Air to Car Talk. So that's our calculation.

Every one-off special requires this elaborate contract procedure. So we're doing everything from working on the contract, to getting promos ready, to getting information to our colleagues in Program and Member Services so they can communicate with the stations, and getting ads ready for Current. It's the nature of the beast but we have to decide where should we, as a network with limited numbers of people, be focusing our energy. If a special is going to get on 40 stations and it takes loads of hours of department time here and there's no revenue and the audience is small, then it's not worth it.

Some years ago, I can recall proposing a ten-hour folk music series to NPR and Andy Trudeau (then programming VP) politely told me that NPR wasn't really looking for that kind of thing because carriage would be minimal. But, he said, if I could come up with a holiday special, they'd be interested. So I worked with many of the same folk artists I was going to work with on the other series and have produced three holiday folk specials hosted by Judy Collins.

Right. The holiday specials get carriage. Some more than others. I actually think we desperately need to retool our holiday approach too because I think we offer way too much stuff. My goal is to really evaluate all the Christmas programs that we've done and assess their value. Because it doesn't make sense for us to do a program if only 15 stations are carrying it.

Recently on the AIR email list, a producer said he had an idea for a weekly program and wondered if NPR would be interested in carrying it, what should he do? A number of us weighed in with our anecdotal experience. But what would you say that person should do?

To start with, I think there's way too much emphasis on national carriage. I think, especially for new shows, get a local station interested. Tool around with the show, make it a hit locally to see if it has legs.

And one-time specials?

We get ideas sent to us all the time for specials. My feeling is that specials have to be spectacular event-wise, hitting some sort of relevant thing in the culture at the moment so there's an answer to the question of "why are we doing this now?"

The Music Unit, for which I'm also responsible, does take in specials - especially around holidays.

I think some producers just don't think NPR wants to hear about program ideas so they go elsewhere.

We absolutely want to hear about them. What we want to do is to be very selective and purposeful and we don't want to get out of the documentary game.

I don't want NPR to be seen as this impenetrable, behemoth organization that's not open to imaginative ideas. At the same time, people have to understand the ballpark that they're playing in. Primarily we're a news organization, so whatever an independent might come up with, has to fit into the context of what we're doing everyday. And there are different Gestalts with different shows and different ways to do things.

NPR still wants to be in the conversation. The documentary business is still a wonderful business.