A CONVERSATION WITH ERIC NUZUM - DIRECTOR OF PROGRAMMING AND ACQUISITIONS FOR NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO
Conversation from February 2006 with NPR Liaison to Independent Producers, Paul Ingles

If you have the next great idea for a weekly public radio show or special series, and want NPR to get behind it, you'll wind up communicating with Eric Nuzum. He and his staff are the ones who will lend an ear to your idea. He talks about some realities of the marketplace, best practices for pitching him, the qualities of proposals that get him interested, and the potential of podcasts as a place for new creative work. If you have an idea for the "next Car Talk," be forewarned. Eric sees a lot of those.

Tell us about your duties at NPR.

I do a lot of talent development in various roles - hosts, contributors, that kind of thing. I do a lot of show evaluation and development - taking ideas and making them into pilots or taking pilots and helping them transition into shows. I also do evaluation of shows, trying to make them better than they are, trying to make them stronger.

I also hear a lot of pitches for specials and shows. We get 400 submissions and we listen to every one of them. We don't necessarily listen to every one start to finish, but we do lend an ear to every one of them. And we've actually found people that have just come in over the transom. I also manage a lot of the programs that I develop, for example, I'm programming manager of our podcasting initiative, also I've done all the development on our HD channels.

When you think about the world of independent producers and how it would intersect with this office, what are some of the most important things that you would want to communicate to people whose ideas for programming might wind up on your desk?

One thing is there seems to be a cultural background, or a "way things used to be" mentality. As in, "I have an idea, I get funding for that idea, I produce it, and a bunch of stations carry it." I've been in public radio for 20 years and paying a lot of attention what goes on nationally with programming but I don't remember a period of time when that was true - that ideas would just cascade through this funding to distribution ubiquitous process. And I think often times when I hear pitches, or hear people talking about what they want to do, they kind of expect that there's one linear way to success like I just described. That someone should write them a check to pay for it, that some network should get behind it and spend a lot of money on it as well, and that every station in the system should be airing it.

I think the reality that we have now is that things have to be pretty extraordinary to get a large degree of coverage. The marketplace for new shows is really very segmented and fractured and the funding for it is as well.

When I talk to people in the independent community, there are some misconceptions that play out of that. The first one is that we turn down all these great ideas from established producers. Of the 400 ideas that we get in here, we get probably 6 pitches a year from people who are established producers in public radio who would be members of AIR or independent producers of note.

So where are the pitches coming from?

A lot of people like Bob and Frank want to do a public radio show. They do it at their local public radio station in Arkansas and they figure it might be interesting or useful to distribute it. Or it's just a couple of guys and they have an idea so they get into a studio and do a pilot and send it to us. I don't want this to sound dismissive - but a lot of it sounds very amateur. It's not people with a lot of public radio background. When you look at all the people who are established in public radio, their ideas don't come to us for some reason. So that's one of the misconceptions, that we're turning down all these great ideas from established producers.

As to the reasons that we say "yes" or "no," look at that document that Margaret Low Smith gave you, the guidelines for specials document. That really guides our decision making. That's really our bible of deciding if a program is something that we're going to get behind or get connected with. So when a pitch comes in, it's really got to be extraordinary.

For example, if someone calls up and says they want to do a six-part series on the music scene in Austin, Texas. We say, "great, why is that interesting." And they say, "Well, it's the music scene in Austin, Texas! Trust me, it'll be interesting." Well that's not good enough. It's got to be something that'll stop somebody in their tracks when they hear it. Also, in this example, we'd say "why six hours?" And they might say, "Oh I don't know, my last series I did five years ago was six hours." And we might say, "well how 'bout you do 13 or 1 or 2." Sometimes there's not a lot of openness to switching those things up. Also, we might say, "this doesn't sound like an hour special to me, it sounds like a segment for the news magazines - a good one." And they still say, "No, I want to do an hour special." So there needs to be a little more flexibility.

When the pitches come in, the ones that get some traction are the ones that are just fantastic ideas. It's clear that the producer has done a little bit of legwork to figure out what's really the best way to distribute this material. They're saying having it as a series distributed by NPR or a one-off special is the right way to do it, and here's why. You know they say, "I've looked at podcasting, I've looked at streaming it online, I've looked at making it a website, I've looked at doing it as a feature. And none of those things make as much sense as doing it this other way, and here's why."

So of all the ideas, we only have three specials in the pipeline right now for 2006. Only three. All of them have on-air connections to the news magazines. So not one of them has come through as "Here's my great idea for a special" and we've taken it.

You get proposals for weekly programs from folks who think they have a germ of a good idea. Maybe a local program that's ready to bust out the way Car Talk did.

Yes, we receive - sometimes several times a month - proposals that are "this is like Car Talk but it's for lawyers" or "this is like Car Talk but it's about cooking."

So where is NPR in terms of being open to those kind of ideas?

I firmly and sincerely believe that this institution is never going to say no to a good idea. That's why we listen to all those submissions. We have a gentlemen who's working on one of our HD projects (the multi-channel digital transmission project). He just submitted us a program idea over the transom. Never had any connection to public radio at all - ever. We really liked him. And we said, "we're not going to do this program idea but we have an idea of something you can do for us." So we're trying to make that work now. So there's always an ear for talent.

Is HD, as a new open landscape, making it more possible for emerging talent to have a place to go?

I think there's some degree of truth to that. I think that the risk can be lowered in that arena. The risk is lowered because there's not that much audience to it and there won't be for several years, so you can afford to put things on that would have a niche appeal, or a very strong niche appeal. If you look at organizations that have been streaming music online - the ones that do well, that have regular listeners that stick with them, listeners that develop relationships with those services and have a relationship that has a high degree of value associated with it, much like public radio does - it tends to be organizations who are programming to very strong niches. Folk music, bluegrass, Latvian traditional music. It's something that has a real fine focus and it's something that you're not going to find on AOL radio, or elsewhere. Those people with those real tight niches are the ones that actually do real well in podcasting. To me that shows that there is not necessarily simply an appetite for more, it has to be something that's unique and distinct.

You guys aren't out of that business then, the way some people think you are. You're still looking for possibilities for daily programs or weekly programs that could strike a chord.

Yeah, but they have to be solid, good ideas. We're very aware that if we're going to put our stamp on something, that it has some meaning. So we're working on defining what that stamp means. I think that we look at that NPR brand as "this is the best." That we've looked at this and that we've looked around at a lot of other things and this particular program is the best right now.

And practically, do you want to share what's a good package for producers to submit. Is it a 15 minute sampler, is it a full show, is it a very tightly described couple of paragraphs why they think their show works?

I think the things that, to me, make a good pitch…One, is the audio. It doesn't matter what form it takes. Basically, I need to be able to get it from listening to the first five minutes.

Two, the description. I think it has to be tight. If it's any more than a page, then I think you're asking a lot of somebody when you're looking at a pitch. Like the audio, if I read a couple of paragraphs and I get it, I think that's fine.

But again, if someone pitches an idea and I say, "Look, don't make this a 6-part series. That's not going to work. It's either going to be 1, 2 or 13 or something that fits into the way stations schedule." But if someone says, "No, it's 6." That to me says a lot about the way they work and that usually shuts a pitch down right there.

I'm very involved in the crafting of an idea. Not really taking an editorial role at all, but really trying to focus it and trying to make it work. I do like to be involved.

What about one-time specials? A producer sees an historical anniversary coming up - something that they're keenly interested in or have done a lot of research on - so they feel they're the one who should produce something on it. What's the pitch path like for them? Is it basically the same, to send it in to you?

Yeah. There are a couple of things that can hurt a pitch that has a timeline or a date peg to it. One is that the producer just doesn't give it enough lead time. If a pitch comes in three months before an anniversary, we can't even talk about it at that point. We have kind of a mental flow chart of when we want things to happen that starts six months out from the date. So if we haven't received the pitch at least six months before hand, we're already compressing down off our ideal scenario. Things like "This I Believe" and "Story Corps," we started talking about a year before they started happening. It takes a long time to do things, to get them done right.

It's important for producers to understand that a lot of what we do is driven by the interests of our stations. If I think that a program that's tied to a certain anniversary is an interesting idea, but I don't think anyone's going to carry it, it just doesn't make sense for us to invest the time into something that stations just aren't going to pick up on. That's the reason that we end up turning down a lot of the proposals for one-hour weekend shows, because we've heard from stations who say, "we're full, we've got more than we can deal with already." It just doesn't make sense for us to be doing the Car Talk of dry cleaning or the Car Talk of olives, or whatever. So that's one of the first litmus tests I apply - is it something that stations are really going to want to use.

And sometimes a one-off special does make sense. We do those. Last one I can think of is this one we did with Murray Street Productions on the 75th birthday of Stephen Sondheim.

How big a factor is the truth that so many NPR stations are classical, jazz or talk formats and that a subject matter doesn't fit comfortably into any of these formats so you have to say, "we don't have stations that are going to want to carry this."

Well, if you had a history of polka music, for example, you'll get a small number of stations interested in that…

Or "Iggy Pop's World…" (Nuzum's a fan...)

Yeah, exactly! I think there's a reality check on a program that's not going to fall on a lot of stations, you have to ask if you're really shoving a square peg in a round hole here. Is this really the right way (using NPR) to distribute this program. Would you be better off with a website, would you be better off with a podcast, or something that would probably reach more people in a much more efficient manner.

If producers get an idea through that you guys like, is there acquisition money that can help a producer?

NPR does not have acquisition funding. The reason is that…if we had enough stuff so that we could say o.k. 52 weeks a year, we're going to have something every week, we could go to stations and say, if you make a small investment in this, you'll have something interesting every week, then we would be in that situation. Outside of like a Car Talk or a Fresh Air, out of 19 acquired programs, outside of those two, most of the others, the amount of money they make off the distribution is very small. Because of the amount of money that it costs for them. Production funding really has to come outside of the distribution. When we say we're going to distribute a program, we pay for satellite time, we pay for marketing to stations, we pay for getting the word out and tracking carriage. That is our contribution to the relationship in addition to just having our NPR editorial stamp on it.

There are occasions when we do make investments in programming, but they tend to be for longer term things that are going to have much more of a chance of establishing themselves long-term. But for an hour or two special, or a thirteen part special, that's just something we don't have resources to put into.

Anything else you'd like to say to producers?

I have had little to no feedback or interest from the independent producer community about podcasting. We've sent out RFP's for podcasts, and I've had pitches come in from all over the place but I've never seen a familiar name from an independent producer on one of them. And that really surprises me because we put that RFP out on Pub Radio and all sorts of organizations and we've heard from stations and from people out in the broader world but there've been no independent producers who've pitched a single one.

We actually do have a small acquisition fund for podcasts - and when I say small, it is a tiny small budget to help defer the costs of producing these podcasts. We pay for all the distribution, we market them, and we've had real great success with them.

At this point, you can't quantify the reach, right? So if I'm talking to a funder and I say, "I'm working on a project that is intended to be a podcast," how do I suggest how many people will hear it?

Well it's impossible to guess for radio too because you would need audience and carriage for all those stations that might pick it up.

Yes, but that is a concept that funders seem to be able to understand. When you say, it'll be on 50 to 80 stations including 5 or 6 major markets, they seem to know what that means.

Well you could say that for other podcasts that we've had, X number of people have downloaded that podcast. We have some podcasts that are getting 400,000 people a week. We have some that are reaching 3,000 people a week.

Is there a way to describe what you're looking for in podcast programs?

I'm looking for things that are unique that fill in a space that is not being filled in right now. If we turn one down, it's probably because it echoes something we already have. For example, we're doing a podcast with WXPN from Philadelphia. Then a whole bunch of music stations and music producers at those stations come up and say, "oh we want to do this too." And I say, "Great. What is it about what you want to do that is different than WXPN. Because I already have one of those. Why would I want to do another performance/chat thing? I've already got three of them. Why would I want a fourth?"

Look at the selections on alt.npr podcasts, where we're putting a lot of these. We've got an NPR reporter who's reporting on something that's got nothing to do with his job. It's gambling and it's fascinating. We have a PRX-curated feed of a selection of the best material from youth producers from around the country - which is an amazing podcast. We have a guy who has a huge internet music streaming site and he does a review of some of the latest CDs that have come in and it's all sort of off-the-beaten track kind of stuff. We have Benjamin Walker's "Theory of Everything." He's an independent producer, so I guess there's that one. No I take it back, there's two! There's a guy who used to work at Minnesota Public Radio who's started a podcast. He got out of radio and moved to Southern California to jump headfirst into the wine industry and his podcast is about his life in the wine community.

So it's all stuff that is just unique. These are programs that are regularly updatable?

Episodic, yes. But we're playing around with programs that have multiple parts to them but are terminal. Like it might be 3 or 4 parts and that's it. And we've had good success with this because what we find is that we put up the 4 or 5 episodes, and then it's done but it continues to have a life afterwards. Like recently we did the Sam Alito hearings when he was testifying in Congress. We put that stuff up and it was still getting thousands of downloads a day for some time from people who were interested in that. And NPR's Neal Conan came up to us and said, "you know, over the years I've done a lot of reporting on World War II. Could we put together a collection of those and put one out a week, until they're done?" If an independent came out with an idea similar to that, it would receive the same kind of treatment. If it was unique and interesting then we'd say, "yeah, let's do it."

Here's our concept document on alt.npr.