Public Radio Tuner 2.0 gets a thumbs down

The Public Radio Tuner is now being offered to iPhone users, but this blogger is less than impressed with the application. "Seriously, you can't mark a station as a favorite and there is no search function. Not the most convenient app I have seen." Web technologists at APM, NPR, PRX and PRI are collaborating on enhancements to the tuner, to be released in early 2009.

NPR newsmags seen as engines for future growth in pubradio news audience

The latest analysis from public radio's Grow the Audience project identifies a "short list" of market factors that drive performance of individual NPR News stations--namely education levels, competition within each market for NPR News listeners and the presence of key psychographic segments. The report [PDF], published online last week by Station Resource Group and Walrus Research, concludes that strategies to grow the public radio news audience start with the two most-listened to programs, NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered. In addition, the analysts predict that the cume ratings for NPR News would grow substantially if hybrid news/classical music stations in Houston, Tampa and Atlanta went to all-news formats.

25 years of Mountain Stage

On Sunday, West Virginia Public Radio’s Mountain Stage will celebrate its 25th anniversary with its 684th production, Joan Osborne, Kathy Mattea and a multilayer cake from Baltimore’s Charm City Cakes (home of the Food Channel’s Ace of Cakes). The show has presented nearly 1,700 musical artists of all genres, produced on stages around the state, in both Charleston, W.Va. and S.C., and as far afield as San Diego and Winnipeg. Traditionally, host Larry Groce invites the performers for a joint number at the end of each broadcast. (The producers also have done 39 standard-definition TV shows and nine HDTV specials.) Next year, the production goes all-digital. Full episodes are archived on the show’s site, www.mountainstage.org, and segments are streamed on NPR Music.