NPR Tightens Belt But Sees Podcasts Still Driving Future Strategy.

As public media federal funding cuts have already led to staff cuts and even some station shutdowns, NPR has announced its own belt-tightening. While listener donations have surged, it’s unclear how long this generosity will last or how severely local NPR member stations will be affected. So NPR plans to trim more than $5 million from its budget in the next fiscal year, aiming to maintain a balanced $300 million budget as it braces for financial uncertainty.

Those cuts have led to questions about where podcasting fits into the future plans. Kelly McBride, NPR’s Public Editor, doesn’t addresses the funding dark clouds head-on in a new post to listeners, but she says that podcast revenue now surpasses the amount of revenue that over-the-air radio underwriting brings in for the network.

“Our sponsorship commitments are not disturbed by this moment, I think because we are serving our audience so well around arts and culture,” VP Yolanda Sangweni says in the post. “Our podcasts are getting an excellent amount of sponsorship, but also we are growing.”

The financial role may help insulate podcasting from potential cutbacks, but McBride says that the network’s podcast strategy continues to be hinged to the goals of audience growth beyond traditional public radio listeners as well as audience engagement.

Senior VP of Podcast Strategy Collin Campbell says in an interview with McBride that the overlap between podcasts across our network is “pretty low” and one of their focuses is on enticing fans of one series to try another.

“We’ve got work to do there,” Campbell says. “There aren’t very many people who just listen to all and only NPR podcasts. People hop around a lot, and they get their podcasts from lots of different places.” He said they watch closely the conversion numbers on promo campaigns, and when something isn’t working, they pull the ad and rework it to find a more effective pitch to listeners.

NPR Senior Director of Brand and Marketing Kristin Hume also says in the post that they have had the best success when the promos offer a specific role for the show to play in a listener’s life. One example has been the positioning of the “Short Wave” series as a smart distraction. They have also stepped up the number of live events.

But Campbell also tells McBride that podcast promotion in places like Spotify and YouTube is difficult, because algorithms and user behavior determine much of what the audience is recommended by the apps. “We’re trying to figure out how we get our shows in front of more people in those environments, so that the algorithms pay attention to our network and basically do some of that work for us,” he said.

NPR has also been an early adopter of distributing its podcasts on YouTube, striking a deal with the video platform in 2022 to offer more than 20 shows. NPR only has one video podcast, however — “Wild Card with Rachel Martin.” Campbell says that show is a “very new look for what NPR could be” in the coming years. “Those things all add up to us presenting NPR to audiences who don’t know us, or don’t have a strong relationship with the brand,” he explained.

Read McBride’s full post HERE.