WBUR BizLab’s mission is to identify and test ideas for new revenue in public radio.

WBUR strongly believes that all of us in public media and nonprofit journalism need to remain vibrant and financially strong, so that we can continue to serve our mission of being a trusted and indispensable source of news and information. And to do that, we need to work together to identify paths forward in sustainability. And that is what BizLab’s year and this Summit is about: all of us coming together to learn, and to openly share what we’ve learned, to collectively become stronger.

2019 was an exciting year for us. Because of funding from CPB and Knight Foundation, BizLab was able to work with a diverse group of NPR stations across the country, all with different challenges and different opportunities. The 2019 cohort of stations were the DCist from WAMU, Louisville Public Media, WDET from Detroit, Capital Public Radio from Sacramento, WLRN from Miami, and Vermont Public Radio. The challenge put forth to these stations was to spend 6 months with us identifying a new path to revenue.

How does an organization find a new path to revenue?

There are a lot of ways to launch a new revenue stream within an organization. Many of us have experience in doing this, both at our stations and in other industries.

One way is through acquisition of a business or expertise. For example, NPR, WBEZ, WNYC, and This American Life acquired the podcast distribution platform Pocket Casts. By acquiring a revenue-generating business in an adjacent industry (in this case podcast distribution), an organization can add a new revenue stream and valuable new assets to its portfolio: new technology, skills and expertise, and podcast consumption data insights. The acquisition of non-revenue-generating assets allows organizations to further branch off to create new products or to use the assets to increase revenue in existing revenue streams.

For organizations where acquisition of new products and other organizations is not a viable option, the best option for creating new revenue is by innovating internally, using the skills and resources already available to the organization. While “innovation” can be a buzzword, and R&D and innovation labs can be more flash than substance, there are known methods that work: Design Thinking and Lean Startup methods are used by startups and entrepreneurs of all shapes and sizes to identify product ideas and test them quickly and efficiently. This model for new product design has been used for over a decade by both  fledging startups and top corporations.

But we are a mission-driven non-profit. How do the principles of product development apply here?

Although we are in public media, where our content is provided as a public service, the principles of product design still apply. Even when we do not directly charge for the goods and services we provide, that doesn’t mean that the value we provide cannot be monetized. The example of corporate sponsorship is probably most clear: when corporate underwriters provide support for our station, they are receiving something of value to them: access to new customers. Our underwriters need access to our audience, and the on-air underwriting spots provides this to them.

This concept of value exchange also applies to a donation. Our public radio members donate to us because of what they get when they donate. It varies per donor: some donate because it makes them feel good that they financially supported something aligned to their values. Others donate because they want the tote bag or exclusive premium — they are purchasing a good. Others donate because they want to reinforce their identity as a “public radio nerd” and be an insider. By projecting to the world that they donate, they are making it clear they are true insiders.

Self-declared Public Radio Nerds on Instagram

The point is that new revenue comes from us providing new value to our audience, and asking them to pay for it. And the tighter the connection we can tie between the value we produce and the benefit people get from it, the more likely it is that the audience or user will contribute, by taking action and paying. 

The first step of product development is identifying a problem people want solved

With the six BizLab stations, we set out to understand the values, needs and wants of the target customers of their ideas. Through interviews, focus groups, surveys, and data analysis, each team spent two months focusing on listening and learning about what matters to the audiences, companies, and external stakeholders who interact with public media. Several themes emerged. From audiences, we heard statements like:

“I need my news delivered when and how I consume it.”

“I want to be up to date on what is going on near me.”

“I want the latest news on the topic I am passionate about.”

“I want access to exclusive events.”

“I want to be in the know.”

These needs and wants speak volumes to personalizing our delivery of news and information, on their terms and on their platforms. If we make their lives easier, we will have earned a place in their news landscape. From companies and potential sponsors we heard:

“I want to connect with people who care about my type of business.”

“I need a simple way of creating ads that work.”

“I need a one-stop-shop for buying ads across multiple regions.”

These statements reveal how complex the advertising world has become, and if we can simplify the landscape and enable connections between companies and their customers, we will be solving concrete problems for them.

Cohort Station Product Ideas

With these values identified, the six stations were each able to define a product around a specific need or want they could solve.

• WAMU designed a membership for the DCist, distinct from a membership to WAMU with perks designed for the loyal DCist reader.
• Louisville Public Media launched a new membership program for Do502, an events listing website, centered around exclusive events and ticket discounts, again, distinct from a membership to Louisville Public Media.
• WDET tested the product offering for small businesses in Detroit — a social media sponsored content product, designed to reach their desired customers.
• Capital Public Radio reimagining a cross-network underwriting sales product, converting a longstanding 15-second spot agreement between CapRadio and California public radio stations into a regional underwriting product, giving new access to underwriters to reach the state of California.
• WLRN created a new climate and environmental newsletter product, launching it with an eye towards it being a new membership donation channel and sponsorship opportunity.
• Vermont Public Radio focused on deeply serving Southern Vermont residents by delivering localized and targeted news on multiple platforms, to increase their engagement with VPR content and to increase donations from the region.

Lean Testing

Today’s Summit will share the details of these projects through lightning talks and panel presentations. Because teams followed our innovation process, they did not launch these products immediately after determining these ideas met user needs. Instead they tested them. They each created the tiniest example of what the idea was and quickly showed it to customers in as much of a real way as possible. In this way, the teams collected evidence that the idea was a good one. And sometimes it wasn’t good! But because they had moved quickly and hadn’t spent many resources on their test, the failures were quick and painless. The teams could move on, glad to have not expended more time on the idea. 

Stations each went through four months of testing each idea, launching experiments as frequently as every two weeks. After each test, they refined their product idea. They continually built evidence of what was working, pivoting and changing as they learned what didn’t work.

Some examples of tests include: DCist and LPM asked people to join non-existent membership programs. LPM printed membership cards for the first 12 members on their office printers. WLRN posted sign-up sheets for non-existent newsletters to gauge interest in topics. WDET asked small businesses to sign up for a pilot program, simply to see if anyone would sign up. CapRadio pitched an advertising product that didn’t have a name yet. VPR asked people to register for a news & brews event that ended up being cancelled. But they learned in that test that people wanted to attend.

These teams went out on a limb and asked potential users to take action, so that they could see if there was tangible interest in this concept. They ran small, fast tests and earned small amounts of revenue in the process, in order to determine what would work and what would not work. It was through this process that the stations identified ways of expanding existing station revenue, whether that was through entirely new products or through new donation channels, or with new content to drive new donations. 

The Financial Results

Each project has many lessons learned embedded in the details you’ll hear today. In aggregate, the projects also tell a compelling financial story. During the testing phase, stations collected $83,000 in revenue. Remember, our goal during testing wasn’t to make revenue, but to learn what was working. And it was from this testing, that each team made proposals to their stations to launch a new product, defined based on the lessons learned. And their collective revenue targets for 2020, the first year of each product, totals to $600,000. The charts below break down these numbers by product type and by station. These teams deserve applause for these results!

Summit Overview

This introduction gives you the basic framework of how these stations went from a challenge to find new revenue to actually finding it. They took on the role of entrepreneurs this year, and through flexibility, speed, and curiosity they found new opportunities for their stations.

The rest of today will be about sharing our collective discoveries of what works, what doesn’t work, and the challenges we faced. The day begins with each station telling you more about their projects and results. Then we will discuss the organizational and cultural challenges of introducing new ideas and launching new products at an organization. We have a fantastic panel on leadership and innovation. And we will wrap up the day with concrete case studies of tools and tips for using text messaging platforms and asking for podcast donations.

In Conclusion

Lean in today, and have conversations and capture ideas that you can apply at your own organization. This work is not easy, but it is urgent, and we are in this together.

I want to emphasize one thing: all of us can do this. Every public radio station can identify new possibilities for revenue and quickly test and size the opportunity and choose to take it forward. When hearing about how BizLab cohort stations did it, in addition to observing what they learned, pay attention to how they did it. You can take both their lessons learned and their techniques home with you today.

[Download slides from this presentation or watch the video.]

BizLab stations across the country spent 2019 testing news ideas for revenue at their stations and in their communities. At the BizLab Summit, each station gave a six-minute overview of their project.

• Download their slides (PDF)
• Watch WDET, Vermont Public Radio, and WLRN’s panel discussion, followed by their lightning presentations
• Watch Louisville Public Media, WAMU, and Capital Public Radio’s panel discussion, followed by their lightning presentations

WAMU, in Washington, D.C., acquired and revived the digital news outlet DCist in 2018, helping to fill a void in D.C.’s news ecosystem. DCist.com has a large and loyal audience, but until now the audience was not directly supporting the website.

DCist’s project with BizLab aimed to craft a robust and unique membership program, distinct to the brand of DCist: knowledgeable, playful, and engaging. To test the team’s assumptions, their BizLab project invited previous backers of a Kickstarter campaign to join a beta membership program. That group was used to test hypotheses about which membership benefits and offerings would resonate. A few months later, the DCist launched its membership program to the public on November 1, 2019 and has seen a heartening initial response.

Louisville Public Media’s work with BizLab centered on integrating their new digital property, Do502, into their existing network of stations and membership offerings. Do502.com is an event listing site with a focus on curated lists that help people find new things to do and new places to explore in Louisville, KY.

Louisville’s BizLab experiments focused on creating and curating events specifically for the Do502 audience. Early research in the project uncovered that Do502 readers crave limited-access engagements and exclusive series, and the team used their project to explore how to engage their audience in this way. The team also experimented with how to launch and promote a membership to Do502, distinct and separate from Louisville Public Media’s existing membership program.

WDET, Detroit’s NPR Station, has identified many local, small businesses who are aligned with the station’s values, but can’t afford typical radio underwriting pricing. Additionally, it is neither efficient nor profitable for a WDET underwriting representative to pursue sponsorship at the level of a small business budget.

WDET worked with BizLab exploring social media underwriting opportunities for small businesses. Through in-person interviews, WDET discovered that small businesses frequently use Facebook and Instagram to promote events and drive traffic. They also learned these businesses care about the local community, telling their unique story and providing a niche service and product. They love WDET’s non-profit mission and its reputation within the local community. With this information, the team tested a WDET-branded social media post product on Facebook and Instagram that affiliated the small business with the WDET brand and halo, reaching a network of potential consumers. By prototyping it as an online, semi-automated process to sell and produce, WDET created an affordable underwriting product.

Capital Public Radio, in Sacramento, CA, has an existing network of NPR stations across California where in exchange for Capital Public Radio’s State Capitol reporting, partner stations provide weekly underwriting units on their airwaves. The BizLab project was focused on re-designing the function and mission of this network, Capital Public Radio Network (CPRN).

CPRN enjoyed financial success in its early years, through selling these partner station underwriting units, but revenue began to decline in 2009 and eventually fell to zero. Through BizLab, the team explored how to resurrect, restructure, and return CPRN to financial sustainability, by redefining the product in terms of the value it offered to underwriters: a one-stop-shop for reaching NPR listeners across the state of California.

WLRN in Miami has invested in their local coverage of the environment and climate change with a commitment to hosting local events and hiring an environment reporter. WLRN’s goal in their BizLab project was to explore how to generate revenue through this topical coverage and the creation of an environmental newsletter.

Their BizLab experiments tested different newsletter content, styles, and format, and then expanded into a technology integration project: the team brought in News Revenue Hub to integrate their newsletter, payment and CRM platforms. The final environmental newsletter product combines journalism and community engagement through the delivery of specialized content on a significant community issue. The newsletter is driving new membership, increasing current levels of giving, and is a vehicle for targeting specific underwriters for this newly developed product.

Vermont Public Radio’s vision is “exploring the whole Vermont story, together” – no small task when you consider VPR is a statewide public radio service in a rural state with few concentrated population centers. In 2018, during VPR’s 14-county listening tour, listeners consistently asked for more coverage of their local communities. VPR’s BizLab project centered around the idea of making the station “feel more local” in Windham County, located in Southern VT, to determine if this would increase loyalty, engagement, and ultimately, revenue.

To accomplish this, in partnership with VPR’s dedicated Southern Vermont reporter, the team worked to raise the visibility of regional content and the reporter’s profile in the community via social media and a new email newsletter. They also increased engagement with the community by soliciting story ideas and planning a “News & Brews” event to involve residents in the news gathering process. They are now also exploring the possibility of geo-targeted underwriting opportunities that would allow local businesses to reach their local customers.

Panel Video

Moderator:

• Adrian Ma, Bostonomix Reporter, WBUR

Panelists: 

• Brendan Kinney, Senior Vice President for Marketing and Development, Vermont Public Radio
• Giselle Reid, Director of Strategic Initiatives, Friends of WLRN
• Meta Stange, Digital Producer, WDET

Side-Panel: 

• Howard Weiss-Tisman, Reporter for Southern Vermont & The Connecticut River Valley, Vermont Public Radio
• Katie Lepri, Engagement Producer, WLRN
• Toby Tabaczynski, Associate Director, Business Development & Marketing, WDET

Audience Questions

[The panelists provided written answers to audience questions not covered in the live discussion.]

Did you find opportunities to better serve your audience by collaborating together?

• Meta (WDET): Absolutely. Editorial/business collaboration allows us to present a more cohesive product to our audience, both on-air and online.
• Howard (VPR): Yes. Our project opened a direct link with some listeners. I think they felt closer to the station in communicating through our newsletters. 

What are ways you fostered communication between your business & editorial folks? Cross-departmental team meetings, Slack channels, email groups—what worked?

• Meta (WDET): We’ve found that periodic cross-team meetings are effective for fostering communication across the station and breaking down silos. For our station, the ability to connect in-person reduces miscommunication and enhances understanding of what everyone is working on. We have bi-monthly membership meetings and a monthly marketing meeting, both of which have representatives from membership, marketing, underwriting, and editorial. Also, the business team is always welcome to pop in to our morning news meetings to keep a finger on the pulse of what’s going on editorially, and they often do stop by!
• Toby (WDET): Adding on to what Meta said, the ability to work together comes from building respect and trust which is what we do at WDET.  If you have that, conversations and mutual commitment can take place. We are fortunate at WDET that we have those relationships.
• Howard (VPR): Since I don’t work in the same office as the development team, we swap email messages regularly. I felt like I was always in the loop and knew what was going on. There were no surprises.
• Brendan (VPR): We formed a podcast committee a number of years ago that brought representatives from various departments together to coordinate our efforts. As a result, we have built the infrastructure necessary to sell and deliver sponsorships, hold events with impact around the state and promote the shows more effectively. We use in-person meetings, Slack channels and email to communicate.

Is the concept of a firewall outdated? Should we be more concerned with transparency, disclosure and truth as opposed to separation and sequestration?

• Toby (WDET): Yes. All departments can still protect their unique goals and mission AND have open conversations to explore areas to work together and compromise as needed. 
• Howard (VPR): We have to stop using the word “Firewall” when talking about BizLab projects. Firewalls are real. They are important and they should not be penetrated. A development project can never direct content. Ever. The reason I think it is so damaging to continue using the word is because I don’t think these projects have anything to do with firewalls and continuing to use the word will scare away people who might have some legitimate issues with this. 
• Brendan (VPR): The firewall plays an important role in ensuring integrity in our editorial process. However, organizations can respect the firewall and better coordinate efforts to make our organizations sustainable for the long term. 

Is “engagement” on the revenue side or the content side? Some of the comments seem to imply that focusing on engagement is bad for journalism.

• Meta (WDET): For us, it’s both. We rely on community-first reporting for a significant number of stories which requires engagement to be at the forefront of our editorial process. What we’ve found through that process is that our content is more thorough and representative of the communities that we are reporting on. 
• Katie (WLRN): For us at WLRN, it’s both, too. Although, when I talk about engagement, I’m strictly speaking about editorial. Stories about the economy, immigration, healthcare, education, etc. are told through the lens of the experiences of people who reside in our communities. The community is a big part of our newsroom. 

Why is it an either/or? Why can’t engagement be on both revenue and content? 

• Brendan (VPR): Engagement has largely been the purview of development at VPR. Over the last few years our thinking – and practice – has evolved thanks to two initiatives: the first was the launch of Brave Little State, a “people-powered” show that uses Hearken to engage the audience in helping choose topics; the second was a 2018 statewide listening tour that brought us to all 14 counties in Vermont to learn how we could better serve our audience (and to help our new CEO learn about his new home state). 

How do you balance the need to set editorial priorities early enough to raise money, while keeping flexibility to respond to changing news events?

• Howard (VPR): From the start my development people said, “Just continue doing what you do and we will find ways to get your stories to the audience.” So they never directed my reporting to raise money. 

Is having reporters “pitch” on air in a pledge drive considered “okay” or “not good”?

• Meta (WDET): Our pledge drives are an all hands on deck process. Everyone gets on air at some point, and our listeners seem to appreciate hearing directly from the reporters, hosts, and producers that they already hear from every day. 

Have any of your content people made a suggestion on how to word a donation ask?

• Katie (WLRN): As far as I know, no.
• Howard (VPR): No 
• Brendan (VPR): As I mentioned during the panel, many of our news staff “pitch” during membership drives and craft an ask on the air. They have the opportunity to word their own asks. 

From a pledge perspective, do you consider a reporter issuing CTAs a firewall breach, such as giving phone # and web address?

• Meta (WDET): Without member support, there is no reporting. Our news team is keenly aware of this and willing to make direct asks during pledge drives.

I’m getting the sense that newsletters seem to be controlled by the business side of the house. Is this the case? Why?

• Howard (VPR): For me this whole project has come out of business. So when they say they want to send a newsletter or link a story on Facebook I’m happy to do what I can to make it happen. With my workload I am more than happy for business to lead it, though there was some back-and-forth when we were deciding how to word some emails. 
• Brendan (VPR): We have worked collaboratively to develop newsletters at VPR. We have a daily “headlines” newsletter that is curated by our Morning Edition producer. We also launched a newsletter for our BizLab project which automatically ships whenever a new story is posted to our website about Southern Vermont. Our development team worked with our digital team to develop the template and the technical capability to have it go out with minimal intervention. 
• Meta (WDET): At WDET, our newsletters are editorial products, but we work with marketing + underwriting to determine if there are additional opportunities for support/sponsorship. 
• Katie (WLRN): At WLRN, we currently have a “member” newsletter that’s controlled by Friends of WLRN. But our BizLab project opened the door for our first newsroom-written newsletter. We’ve since launched another from the newsroom and a third will be coming in 2020. 

For WLRN – has your relationship with the other side changed at all as a result of your project? 

• Katie (WLRN): Yes, definitely. It’s more open than it used to be. Before this project, I could bet that business didn’t know what was happening in editorial and vice versa. That’s changed. Employees from Friends of WLRN frequent editorial’s weekly story meetings. And they will definitely be more collaboration in the future. 

How important is it for development/business staff to be regular consumers of the content your station is making? Should it be required? 

• Meta (WDET): Our business/development staff is constantly consuming the content that the editorial team creates, which makes it much easier to work collaboratively and nimbly because the business team already has a baseline understanding of what we’re working on. I guess the bigger question is if the business staff isn’t interested in consuming your station’s editorial content, why would they want to sell it? 
• Brendan (VPR): Much of our “case for support” is about the work of our content team, so our expectation is that staff are also listeners and readers of our content. I would consider it a big red flag if you have to “require” staff to consume your station’s content! 

At most entrepreneurial news startups, editorial and business sides are working closely together on new initiatives. Is public radio handicapping itself?

• Toby (WDET): There are certainly some legacy habits and structures that exist in public radio and for that matter, have existed in all traditional media.  Other media have been making changes for years. Public radio has a unique opportunity to change this now. 

Not necessarily a firewall breach, but ALL content people have to be aware that they ARE revenue generators. I know many who *aggressively* don’t get that.

• Toby (WDET): If everyone understands they can help and have a connection to helping generate revenue, mind sets are changed and doors open.  Often, people feel they need to “stay in their lane” and not look at the bigger picture of how they can help. Some of the best revenue ideas we have have come from staff outside of the Underwriting team. 

Thanks, everyone!

Tamsen Webster, a 20-year brand and message strategist and former TEDx Executive Producer, will be the keynote speaker, explaining how to make it easy for your team to say “yes” to your innovation ideas by creating the right message and presentations.

This video recap summarizes Tamsen’s approach for making the case for your innovation, with a special guest on stage, Rebecca Lavoie, from New Hampshire Public Radio. Rebecca and Tamsen build the case for a new podcast focused on a beloved New England store, Market Basket.

Moderator:
Joan DiMicco, Executive Director, BizLab, WBUR

Panelists:
Andi McDaniel, Senior Director of Content and News, WAMU
Ellen Oost, Director of Development, Louisville Public Media
Paul Adams, Director, Corporate Underwriting, Capital Public Radio

Moderator:

Joan DiMicco, Executive Director, BizLab, WBUR

Panelists:

Tina Pamintuan, General Manager, KALW, using Give Lively for donations

Katie Lepri, Engagement Producer, WLRN, using GroundSource for audience engagement

Kathleen Moura, Membership Manager, WBUR, using Hustle for donor engagement

We shared best practices, tools, tips, and real life examples of this work, enabling attendees to hit the ground running at their own media organizations. The Summit covered revenue generation through digital audience engagement, spinning off new brands, event monetization, text-to-donate platforms, and podcast donation strategies.

https://youtu.be/dIqNF0-vSXg

Now is the time to try out new revenue ideas

WBUR launched BizLab because of a desire to ensure public radio stays financially strong, vibrant, and relevant to our audiences. BizLab is dedicated to evaluating new membership and revenue sources, identifying new markets for content, and developing new partnerships with business, education and tech communities. 

Since I joined WBUR a year ago, my team at BizLab has earned a little revenue and a lot of sweat equity. We are at a point where we are looking for stations to join us in this approach to finding and testing new ideas for revenue. To shed light on what that means, I’d like to share a bit of what we’ve learned and our approach to running revenue and innovation experiments in public radio.

Use the best tricks of User-Centered Design, Lean Innovation, & Agile Development

I’m a believer in the methods of user-centered design, lean innovation, and agile development, but I’m not a stickler for the details on how you apply them. My advice is to use these methods in so far as they get you towards your goal. And in the case of revenue and innovation experiments, your goal is to figure out if the idea has revenue potential.

You need these essential pieces:

1. Create a project plan with an end date. I’m talking about documented deadlines and a realistic, week-by-week schedule so you know if you’re on track. Define what “done” looks like for your experiment (and take inspiration from Agile’s two week sprint).
2. Document your hypotheses. Why do you believe this idea is a good one? If you can’t articulate it, you can’t make progress. As soon as you define why you think this idea will work, you can think of a way of proving it will work. I like using the Strategyzer’s Test Card as a way of planning out an experiment.
3. Create an artifact for testing your idea. Whether it is a webpage, a survey, or a paper sketch (e.g. the Lean Startup MVP) you need something to show your idea to others. The only way to find out if others like your idea is to show them, not tell them.
4. Collect as much feedback and behavioral data as you can. User data is your guide — collect as much behavior data as you can (e.g. any method from UCD). Our natural biases, opinions, and stubbornness can only be put in their place with lots of hard evidence contradicting us. We’ve used interviews, surveys, click throughs, as well as completed purchases and donations.
5. The moment you learn something, reflect & adjust your course. Use every lesson learned. Change the project plan. (e.g. Lean Startup’s Pivot.)
6. Talk regularly with your peers about these learnings. The people in your organization who will be impacted by your projects… keep them engaged with your progress. Put another way, if you want your projects to have impact, you need your peers to be engaged and interested in what you’re learning. Your only hope for transferring successful projects out of the test/learn cycle and over to the core operations of your station, your peers must be engaged. Must read: The Stage Where Most Innovation Projects Fail.

Biggest Opportunities

BizLab ran three experiments last summer engaging our listeners in different ways and there were a couple of common themes which likely apply to other stations:

• Content is king. Our target market is looking for deep, engaging content. We found that WBUR’s listeners love our book content — articles and lists of books. And it was easier to get users to click on links for books than ads for t-shirts.
• Curation is our unique value proposition. WBUR shares content that is pulled out from the deluge of information available to us. Our listeners appreciate us for our curation, and they trust the voices and people who make these editorial decisions.
• Women are leaning in. We have more female than male donors, and our merchandise store had 60% women shoppers, and the women’s shirt was the top seller.  In every opportunity, the female perspective should be the first use case we focus on.

Biggest Challenges

I’ve been surprised by some of the challenges we have encountered while designing and running our experiments. We have so many loyal listeners and only 15% of them donate, so I thought it would be easy to find the 85% and engage with them. It is not. In each of our experiments, the people signing up, filling out the surveys, buying the t-shirts, and looking for book recommendations are… existing donors.

Reaching new audiences and engaging them will be challenging. Whether you are looking for younger, digital-only, non-donors, or a new demographic, the path to them has not been tread, or else they’d be engaged already. I’m looking forward to cracking this open next.

The other enormous challenge is culture. We like to say at WBUR “culture eats strategy for lunch,” and no matter what the best laid plans we have, if the culture of the station isn’t ready to receive the project’s findings, there is no point in doing the project.

Your Station’s Context Matters, A Lot

When considering an idea for new revenue for your public radio station, your ideas are naturally constrained by your station’s capabilities and resources. For example, if your station does not have a website with significant traffic, then you cannot monetize that traffic (with ads, cross-promotion, etc.). If your station doesn’t have any email addresses of non-donors, any email marketing campaigns will be handicapped.

But the constraints go beyond this. This summer we opened an online merchandise store to test out if merchandise, separate from a pledge drive, would sell. We hoped that non-donors, who like WBUR, would buy a $25 shirt, even if they don’t donate. We also hoped donors would spend money on getting an item they really wanted. We found that the market for WBUR merchandise was much smaller than we’d anticipated. Of the customers we obtained, 60% were already donors. And from many informal comments we got about the merchandise we’ve concluded that WBUR fans 1) automatically assume WBUR merchandise is a gift from us (so FREE) and 2) already have more than enough fan merchandise because we’ve given it to them (for FREE). In short, we eroded any market for merchandise by supplying our best customers lots of free stuff.

Your existing revenue channels are influencing the available market for your revenue idea. It is important to know those factors going in, and make deliberate decisions about how to work with or around them.

Staffing and Skills

I had the amazing good fortune of hiring three fantastic Fellows last summer (hi, Wendi, Suzie, and Cynthia!) and they taught me a lot about what kinds of skills a station needs to kick start some innovation experiments. The BizLab summer experiments couldn’t have happened without a bunch of this:

• Hustle — given a goal they run with it and update you two hours later.
• Can quickly move past blockers. Inevitably there are a lot of “no, that can’t be done” moments, and your team needs to immediately come up with a new game plan that gets you to your goal in a new way.
• Visual design sense — know how to layout a webpage, create a logo, and use imagery for conveying the right message. This is important for designing prototypes, user interfaces and internal presentations.
• Social media savvy — know how to write a tweet, post on Facebook, and ideally know how to run paid social campaigns.
• Can learn new platforms very quickly — Facebook ad manager, Google Ad words, Shopify, Google analytics — all these tools were learned by my fellows within a day so they could build something, test it, and move on.
• In awe of NPR and public radio — If your team has respect and admiration for the station’s work, it goes a long way in establishing trust and rapport with collaborators. And when this is the case, you do not need your staff to know much about how radio actually works.

Onward!

If you’d like to chat with us about your innovation experiment, reach out: bizlab@wbur.org.

BizLab is very excited to announce the 6 stations we will be working with this year on testing new revenue streams: WAMU, WDET, Capital Public Radio, Louisville Public Media, WLRN, and Vermont Public Radio. We are kicking off work this month with WAMU and LPM, and will ramp up with the other 4 throughout the year. Stay tuned (by following us on Twitter) as we progress through the year, building, testing, and learning.

In the process of receiving and reviewing applications to collaborate, we gained insight into the existing innovations and creative revenue experiments already running at many stations. But the most illuminating insight was hearing about the revenue challenges every station faces. Every type of public radio station is looking to identify new revenue streams: urban and rural; big, medium, and small, all-news, mixed-format, and music-focused; CPB-funded and community-funded; north, east, west, and south. It was fantastic to see the variety of stations, but eye-opening to realize that we are all concerned about financial sustainability of our stations.

It is the time of year to make predictions, so I would like to predict where stations will experiment this year to establish new revenue streams. I’m confident some of these will come true because BizLab is planning on doing them , but many of these will be happening at every type of station across the country.

• #1 Monetizing local events. Many stations are building out new event programming to engage their audiences in local, community-focused programming. Events are big business, and other industries can show us the way to make these events sustainable through sponsorship and ticketing. Public radio will seriously enter the events business this year.

• #2 Engaging audiences who aren’t listening to the radio. Every station is looking to reach younger, more demographically-diverse audiences to maintain their listenership. This year more will attempt to do this by bypassing the radio. A way to do this is by acquiring digital properties (see do502.com, purchased by Louisville Public Media, and the DCist, purchased by WAMU). Another way is by working with local artists to engage local communities (see Framed by WDET). Acquiring audience is not a direct path to revenue, but creating engaging content for these audiences and sustaining their engagement is a first step.

• #3 Monetizing digital through digital offerings. Display advertising on public radio websites does not, and will not, generate significant revenue for stations, so stations will be looking critically at their digital strategies to pursue efforts that do generate revenue. Digital distribution channels – social media, smart speakers, and mobile apps – have growing audiences (good news!), but few stations have successfully converted users in these channels into donors. The experiments in this area will be around offering digital content, digital add-ons, and digital services to audiences, and monetizing these offerings.

• #4 Establishing podcasts as revenue generating products. For stations with successful, national podcasts, there will be investigations and experiments around how best to monetize the podcast, through sponsorships, ad networks, and asking for listener donations. The time is now to figure this out and roll it out into a station’s operations.

A year ago, before getting to know this ecosystem, I would have made predictions all about how digital technologies are key to the financial sustainability of public radio. “The smart speakers, the podcast apps, and the mobile apps are the answer. And Kickstarter, Patreon, and text-to-donate is how we’ll do it!” — said a technologist new to public media and journalism.

Yes, these technologies are disruptive, and yes, they will influence the industry. But they are not providing public radio listeners any value in and of themselves. They are the platforms, the delivery mechanisms, and the payment systems, not the customer value. The value is in the content and our audiences will pay for quality content. On-air content will continue to be free, but my long term prediction is that online, on-demand, and on stage content created by public media stations will be available through paid subscriptions, tickets, and access fees.