All-station webinar: April 2 at 3pm EST

Posted: January 8th, 2009 | Author: Rekha from Public Radio Player | Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off

Greetings from the Public Radio Tuner team!

We want to thank the hundreds of you who are participating in this important project. Your streams and promotional efforts have made the Tuner an amazing success: 1.3 million downloads in just a couple of months!

The Public Radio Tuner team would like to invite you to an all-station webinar on Thursday, April 2, at 3pm EST. Click here to register for the Public Radio Tuner webinar

This webinar is open to anyone in the public radio system, particularly stations, whether or not you’re already in the Tuner. Please join us to learn more and contribute feedback and ideas. The webinar service can host 1000 people — we’ve got big hopes for attendance. So forward this email to people at your station who you think should attend.

We strongly encourage stations already in the Tuner to attend, as you need to be aware of several developments planned for the next few months.

—Public Radio Tuner so far—

As you may know, American Public Media launched the original Public Radio Tuner in December 2008 and has been handling stream submissions ever since. APM joined up with NPR, Public Radio International, Public Interactive, and Public Radio Exchange to develop the version of the Tuner that’s in the iTunes Store today. This unique collaboration of major public radio organizations was conceived of by PRX, which applied for the generous grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that is funding the project through May. PRX is leading this collaboration, which has brought together the talent and resources of all the collaborators to make the Tuner what it is now.

Since the release of the latest version in early January, things have really taken off. The app has consistently been in the top ten free music apps, and has spent significant time as the top free app in the iTunes catalog of over 25,000 other apps. People have expressed their love of (and sometimes confusion about) public radio in App Store reviews as well as comments at publicradiotuner.org. Media coverage has been generally very positive. NPR’s “All Things Considered” was even moved to interview PRX Executive Director Jake Shapiro about public radio’s own new media phenomenon.

But that’s just the half of it.

—What’s next for the Public Radio Tuner—

*An updated version of the Tuner will appear in the iTunes App Store in April, bringing improvements to how the Tuner handles stream connections.

*This version will move from the APM store to the PRX store in iTunes so PRX can more efficiently manage the project.

*The new app location means we won’t be able to automatically “push” an update to current users. Instead, they will need to download what’s effectively a new app in a new store. We have designed a user experience to facilitate this process.

*These changes will position us for a truly major Tuner update scheduled for late May. The May version will be called the Public Radio Player. It will include a dynamic, searchable program schedule and access to select on-demand content.

Leading up to the May release, we are planning a big marketing push that we hope will include testimonials from individual stations. If you’re in the Tuner, we invite you to post your experiences at publicradiotuner.org for inclusion in promotional materials.

You can all promote the Tuner, too. I know some of you are already having fun with this (share what you’ve done at the Tuner site!). We have graphics and suggested copy in the Guide for Stations, and we’ll be adding more soon.

These improvements are intended to further the Tuner’s original and enduring purpose: to grow awareness of public radio and engagement with public radio stations, and to simply reach public radio fans wherever they want us to be. This project has resulted in code, process, and promotion insights that we plan to share with all of you to support your own mobile efforts.

—Not already part of the Public Radio Tuner? Sign up!—

People already using the app are asking for their local stations’ streams. It’s never too late to submit your stream for inclusion in the Tuner (you don’t need to be an APM station to create a login.) We’re continually adding stations.

See you in April,

The Public Radio Tuner project collaborators

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