 Mixed feelings from member stations about NPR Music site ·Jan 14, 12:13 PM From the Washington Post: “Living in a city without a full-time jazz station, I have to rely on CDs and downloads to hear my fill of Miles Davis and John Coltrane… “But now comes NPR Music, a sprawling Web site from National Public Radio on which I can listen to the NPR jazz (or classical or folk or indie rock) shows that don’t “The Web site, NPRmusic.org, …is meant to break through the limitations that have made radio a primarily local and tightly formatted medium…
“But perhaps the best-known and most original public radio music format, the eclecticism of KCRW in Santa Monica, Calif., is nowhere to be found on the NPR site. Nor is the alternative rock of WTMD (89.7 FM) in Towson, in both cases because station managers believe the new site is undue competition or detracts from NPR’s mission. “‘NPRmusic.org is the first service NPR has created that competes with NPR stations for listeners’ time,’ says Stephen Yasko, general manager of the Towson station, one of four public stations serving the Baltimore area. ‘They’re reducing the number of hours a listener spends with their local public station. NPR Music is potentially taking membership money away from WTMD,’… “Similarly, KCRW General Manager Ruth Seymour told trade newspaper the Current that she saw no reason to put her programming on the NPR site because her station has its own brand and reputation to protect. “Those stations that do share programming with the Web site hope both to stretch their business model — the NPR site will share revenue from corporate sponsors with “‘The Internet is simply very disruptive to our historical model’ of local stations each creating their own mix of homemade and nationally distributed programming, NPR’s Thomas said… “Ironically, NPR Music sounds more like a creative, genre-busting radio station than do many actual public stations. It’s a place where radio adds value, with smart critics presenting and telling stories about music, programs that happily smash through the genre limits that make so much of radio too predictable, and online-only shows such as ‘All Songs Considered.’” **Read the entire article at the Washington Post. share: del.icio.us.  Reddit  Digg  Yahoo  Wink  Windows  Google  Newsvine 
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air on Washington’s public stations — as well as tap into song lists, video and audio of concerts, music-related stories from 
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participating stations — and lure new Web listeners back to the stations’ own sites and radio stations…
