NPR courts the post-Boomer, tech-savvy set with "Bryant Park Project" (with Alison Stewart)

[DeepModem Mom]

San Francisco Chronicle: National Public Radio courts the post-Boomer, tech-savvy set
Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Staff Writer
Thursday, October 4, 2007

National Public Radio launches programs about as often as the United States changes presidents, which makes "The Bryant Park Project" - its new morning program premiering in a handful of markets this week - notable for what it says about NPR and the entire struggling news media.

"The Bryant Park Project," which KQED management is deciding whether to carry in the Bay Area, illustrates how the network of Cokie Roberts and Robert Siegel is trying to reach outside what one executive calls "the cathedral of NPR" to pull in younger converts. Through a combination of new technology initiatives - some of which are being piloted nationally at KQED - and a new, hip attitude, NPR hopes to lower the median age of its audience from 53 without straying from its core values....Not only were the show's co-hosts born after the Beatles' "Rubber Soul" album came out, they - gasp! - talk to each other during the show. Music segments abound. Bloggers aren't treated as a curiosity, but as analysts in their own right.

Instead of turning to an in-house NPR expert like Nina Totenberg for an orotund analysis of the day's top headline, the hosts will shamelessly ask an analyst to "make me care" about a story that, as the hosts say, they know they should care about (the conflict in Lebanon, the autoworkers' strike, the premiere of Halo 3) but deep down, really don't. In this recurring "Make Me Care" segment, a clock ticks away in the background as the analyst scrambles to explain why the audience should create brain space for this story. It's part of a sensibility that combines the smart-and-snark attitude of Comedy Central's "Daily Show" and the conversational, yet journalistically grounded, voice of Keith Olbermann on MSNBC's "Countdown."

"Part of it is generational, yeah," said co-host Alison Stewart, 41, who is familiar to TV audiences from her early days on MTV and her work as one of Olbermann's guest hosts on "Countdown." "There is no mystery about being on television to this generation. They don't sit there in awe of the person doing the news. They can make their own videos, or their own podcasts and put it up on their own blog."...

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The show was developed with a Web 2.0 sensibility. While it may have had its terrestrial radio premiere this week, since April it has created 29 online-only episodes on a blog where listeners could offer feedback and help shape the show. This online pilot was so successful (200,000 people checked it out with virtually no publicity) that "it is part of our DNA now," said Ken Stern, NPR chief executive officer....

(To listen to the Bryant Park Project, go to http://www.npr.org/blogs/bryantpark/index.html.)

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/04/DD7QSJ44G.DTL