Audience Service Resources — Station Resource Group

SRG is pleased to publish an important and thought-provoking article on the implications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Generative AI by Mike Reszler, the former Chief Digital and Chief Strategy Officer at American Public Media Group. This article focuses on how the ethical implementation of Generative AI technologies can free up resources for local public media institutions to better serve their communities. This article is not a comprehensive overview of all the potential benefits, drawbacks, or ethical concerns about the adoption and implementation of AI and Generative AI technologies. Rather, our hope is that publication of this article prompts discussions within public media, generally, and at local public media institutions, specifically.

Public Radio Meta-Analysis:
Descriptive Report
We worked with City Square Associates, Greater Public, and the Public Radio Program Directors Association (PRPD) to compile more than two dozen local audience research surveys from stations across the country—from stations with a variety of music and news formats—to perform a “meta-analysis” of this research that delivers actionable intelligence to a range of station decision-makers by identifying common opportunities and threats for both news and music stations. The article is a descriptive report that identifies consistent strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, risks, and mitigations present throughout the different studies.

Public Radio Meta-Analysis:
Prescriptive Report
A prescriptive “playbook” that details how the findings from these reports can be translated into specific strategic actions. Our “playbook” is designed to help local public media organizations transform themselves from legacy broadcast stations to multi-product, multi-platform community media institutions by engaging with their communities, expanding potential content offerings, and providing higher levels of service to more of their communities.

In addition, we hope the combined reports will inform subsequent research initiatives for public media. We have identified key knowledge gaps and research initiatives that could help close these gaps. Addressing these “known unknowns” would simultaneously reduce the cost and increase the likelihood of success for new content and service initiatives while also improving their effectiveness and impact for our communities.

Grow the Audience is SRG's most ambitious effort to to set out a roadmap for program innovation and news services that will significantly increase the reach, use, and diversity of public radio's audience.

Local content creation is central to many stations' mission and a path to distinctive identity and significance in a competitive and crowded media landscape. SRG is exploring the costs and benefits of this work, case sutdies of especially successful work, and benchmarking local programming performance.

Charting the Territory explores content and service strategies that are taking today's public radio stations to the public service media companies of the future. Read about the assumptions, design, and findings of the initiative.

Read Envision a Larger Success , SRG Co-CEO Tom Thomas's thoughts on public radio's victories, missteps, and future based on a 1999 presentation at the Public Radio Program Directors annual conference.

The Program Ledger: Evaluating Program Performance - a framework for evaluating the performance of station programming.

Audience Intelligence Understanding Public Media's Digital Audiences

Fundamental service strategy concerns are ascending at many SRG stations. Primary issues ahead include the vitality of members' current schedules, the content and audience priorities for additional services, the control and management of our current content as it moves to new delivery modes, and the development of new content appropriate to new media.