If this catches on, it might disintermediate (EDIT: or accelerate the existing disintermediation of) the local public radio stations, which will then lose donations, which will then be less able to do local reporting. (Of course I'm not sure our Houston public radio station does all that much local reporting to start with.)
Although they're separate entities, they seem to understand that they're all in it together, and cooperate. If this results in a drop in donations, I imagine they'll add in-app donations and pledge drive info and whatever else would be appropriate, directed towards your local station.
I don't understand why this needs to be an app. I listen to many things that aren't NPR, and I don't want to switch between BeyondPod and NPR One just to get some sort of curated list. This reminds me of a few years ago where a bunch of podcasts were offering personalized apps that just downloaded the archives and maybe some extra content. I might have paid for the extra content, but I didn't need an app on my phone…
The alternative you suggest would be better for a tiny number of highly sophisticated users, and a lot worse for most people. Also, I see no reason both shouldn't exist. Why not make the thing you want?
Both can. Every service that runs under the hood (recommenders, raters, story fetching, login, etc.) is an agnostic API that can be used elsewhere. Some of the auto manufacturers and TV apps were already using a scaled down version, albeit without all the features and services of NPR One
I love the idea. I listen to NPR a fair amount but it's always a bit hit or miss as to whether I'll catch it at an interesting moment, since my listening is basically "whenever I happen to be in the car, or possibly out for a walk where I don't want to enjoy quietude." I work around it to an extent with podcasts of shows I like, but that works poorly for anything related to news.
This is all well and good, but why does everyone need to have their own damn app? This is the biggest problem with audio apps these days - you get everyone trying to make a similar thing, and because they're all competing they all try and lock each other out of their own products. What would be so much better is a content-agnostic platform, that'll let you play whatever the hell you want - whether it's music, talk ra…
I agree with the annoyance of everyone and their mother wanting their own app, but NPR seems like a big enough piece of a lot of folks entertainment/news lives that it makes sense. (I say this as someone who never listens to NPR.) The question is whether the product is used frequently enough and can actually make use of a custom interface, compared to whether a more generic app would actually provide value. If I woul…
They have to play all sides. Replacing FM listening is like replacing oil: there's no one platform that big. Half of listening occurs in cars, and as the fleet turns over to TCP/IP listening over the next decade, NPR has to be there wherever. There will be branded apps, they will serve third-party apps and car specific apps, etc. Another audio provider (i.e. Pandora) could license NPR content and have access to the same APIs. I am not suggesting this is in the works, just a pure hypothetical argument. I haven't worked there since February but I did work on APIs and worked on this listening app a few years ago.
Scroll down broken here. First I have to click on the page to get scrolling to work. Then as I use the space bar to scroll down, the dots change but often the text does not.
Are you using NoScript or some other javascript killer? Usually these are driven by some custom js.
Not on this machine. Plain Google Chrome on Windows.