The future of public radio isn't its past

A couple of weekends ago, I attended "Radiolab Apocalyptical," a live show presented by Radiolab hosts Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich at the landmark Chicago Theatre. For those of you who aren't familiar with Radiolab, it's a weekly hour-long public radio show that covers science topics in an incredibly engaging way. The Chicago Theatre was packed, but what was really interesting was who it was packed with. The audience was young--most of the people I saw were in their 20's and 30's--not at all what you'd expect from a public radio audience in the U.S. Cast and crew members from NBC's "Chicago Fire" and "Chicago PD" tweeted pictures of themselves backstage at "Apocalyptical."

For much of the last two decades, public radio has been wrestling with a big problem: Its audience, while growing, is getting older. Twenty years ago, I was a member of one station's "big donor" club, and I attended several of its events. Other than the radio station's staff, I was by far the youngest person attending; most of the attendees appeared to be in their 60's or 70's. The public radio audience is, quite literally, dying off. Listeners have historically been older, well-educated and high-income. That's great when you're seeking donations, but not so good when you're trying to attract younger listeners and get them to become members for decades.

Public radio stations have been torn between keeping their older audiences and attracting younger ones. That becomes more difficult when even the hosts of shows that attract older listeners start retiring. Tom and Ray Magliozzi, the hosts of "Car Talk," one of the most popular shows on public radio, retired last year. Instead of cancelling the show or taking a chance on new hosts, WBUR Boston and National Public Radio (NPR) decided to rerun old episodes. Some of the episodes being rerun are 20 years old, and since they cover car repairs, Tom and Ray are talking about cars that many listeners may not have ever heard of. (Geo Metros, anybody?) Just about every public radio station runs Car Talk at least once a week; some run it several times a week.

Another show that's very popular with older audiences is "A Prairie Home Companion." Creator and host Garrison Keillor caused panic at public radio stations when he told the AARP in March 2011 that he planned to retire from the show this year. In December of that year, he changed his mind, and now says that he'll keep doing the show as long as he "love(s) doing it."  "Car Talk" and "A Prairie Home Companion" are two examples of public radio shows that appeal almost entirely to an older audience, but they're far from the only ones.

There are shows on public radio that draw younger audiences; "Radiolab" is one, along with "This American Life," "The Moth Radio Hour," "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" and Roman Mars' "99% Invisible." But, shows for younger listeners are far outweighed, both in number and in scheduling, by those that target older listeners. If public radio stations are serious about attracting younger listeners, the first thing they can do is cancel "Car Talk" and put a show for younger listeners in its place. There's no excuse for giving prime radio time to 20-year-old reruns of a radio show that many listeners found banal when the shows were new.

And, while we're at it, let's get rid of pledge weeks (a misnomer, because most of them now run two weeks.) Pledge weeks give regular listeners to public radio a strong disincentive to contribute, because everyone has to put up with having their favorite shows interrupted whether they pledge or not. With the wide availability of smartphones that can receive streaming audio, public radio stations can offer subscribers apps that would enable them to listen to uninterrupted programs, so long as they maintain their subscriptions. Pledge weeks would continue on the broadcast station, but paid-up members could avoid them by listening through their smartphones. That's what younger listeners are doing already with Pandora, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Slacker and other services. These services typically offer free and paid versions; with the paid version, subscribers have to sign in with a username and password, but they get their music or talk commercial-free.

Public radio already has the shows to attract younger audiences (although it could have a lot more,) and it has the technology to do away with pledge weeks for listeners on smartphones. If public radio stations are serious about getting younger listeners to become members, the ball is in their court.

"This American Life" and the Daisey affair

You may have heard that the public radio program "This American Life" retracted an entire episode that it aired last January based on portions of Mike Daisey's one-man show "The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs". The radio program focused on a visit by Daisey to Chinese plants that manufacture Apple's iPhone and iPad, and the allegedly bad work conditions he found. I won't rehash the entire story, but Daisey lied about a number of key events that he either witnessed or participated in during his trip to China.

After the "This American Life" episode aired, Rob Schmitz, the China correspondent for the public radio show "Marketplace", became suspicious about the story. He tracked down and interviewed Daisey's interpreter, who said that many of the things that Daisey told "This American Life" and said in his one-man show were partial or complete fabrications. For his part, Daisey lied to the host and a producer at "This American Life" about the name of the translator, and said that he could no longer reach her mobile phone number.

Here's an incomplete list of Daisey's alleged or acknowledged fabrications:

• Daisey said that the guards at the entrance to the Foxconn plant were armed; both Schmitz and Daisey's interpreter said that only the military and police are allowed to carry guns in China, not security guards. Daisey's interpreter said that the guards were unarmed.
• Daisey claimed that he spoke with a Foxconn worker who admitted that she was underage--13 years old--and that other workers he spoke to at the same time were 12 years old. The interpreter said that some of the workers who Daisey interviewed might have looked young, but that none of them were underage or admitted that they were underage. For his part, Daisey sticks by his story, but in his defense, he said that one or more of the workers spoke fluent English to him, a statement that his translator denies and that Rob Schmitz found to be extremely unlikely.
• Daisey claimed that he spoke with a group of workers who had been exposed to n-hexane, and that every person in the group was shaking from nerve damage. His interpreter said that the meeting never happened, and Daisey admitted under questioning that he fabricated the entire incident.
• Daisey said that he spoke with a man who was so injured by repetitive work building iPads that his hand had become claw-like. His interpreter said that Daisey met the man, but the man had never worked building iPads, and the entire episode where Daisey showed him a working iPad for the first time never happened.
• Daisey said that he visited Foxconn worker dormitories and saw bunk beds stacked nearly to the ceiling and security cameras inside dormitory rooms. His interpreter says that Daisey never visited dormitory rooms. Daisey claims that he did visit the dorms without his interpreter, but that the security cameras were in the halls, not in the dormitory rooms. Given that Daisey doesn't speak Chinese and, as discussed above, it's extremely unlikely that the workers Daisey encountered spoke English, how could Daisey have visited the dormitories without his interpreter?
• Daisey claimed that he was told by a group of workers protesting working conditions at Foxconn that they met at Starbucks to discuss their strategy; Schmitz said that was as likely as a group of United Auto Workers organizers in Detroit meeting at a Chinese tea room.
• Daisey also said that he was shown a government "blacklist" of people who would not be hired by Shenzhen manufacturers because they had protested working conditions; his interpreter said that the document didn't have any government stamps or seals, and was most likely a fake.

No one denies the work conditions at Foxconn and other manufacturers--they've been widely reported and have been documented by Apple's own audits. However, the most interesting parts of Daisey's allegations--that he actually spoke to underage workers, to workers injured by exposure to n-hexane, and with a man so injured by repetitive work building iPads that his hand had become claw-like--were all acknowledged or likely fabrications.

Ira Glass, the host of "This American Life", has repeately said that when Daisey told him and his producer that his interpreter could not be found, he should have killed the story. However, so much of the story checked out that they believed Daisey. When the story aired, Glass went out of his way to say that the story had been extensively fact-checked by "This American Life" before it was aired, which raises the question: Why did Glass stand behind the story when the interpreter, the only independent witness to everything that Daisey claimed happened, had "disappeared"?

Rob Schmitz of "Marketplace" said that it was very easy to find Daisey's interpreter--he simply entered the name that Daisey used for the interpreter during the radio show (Cathy Lee), and the words "interpreter" and "Shenzhen", into Google, and she came up as the first link. Couldn't the "This American Life" team have done the same thing? Finally, the authenticity of some of Daisey's monologues has been questioned in the past, including by the New York Times. Shouldn't that have raised "red flags" with the "This American Life" team?

Even though the theater where he's performing his one-man show says that the show will continue, Mike Daisey's credibility has been destroyed. The question now is, given how many errors got into this "This American Life" story, how many other bogus stories have gotten on the air?