Public Radio Exchange

PRX offers “Pubcatcher” podcast tool

Jake posted on Thursday, July 14th, 2005 | Press Releases

For Immediate Release
Cambridge, MA

contact Jake Shapiro—–617 576-5455—–jake prx.org

July 14, 2005

The Public Radio Exchange (PRX) offers stations “Pubcatcher” – a tool to help listeners subscribe to station podcasts.

The Public Radio Exchange announced today that it has created a new tool, “Pubcatcher”, to help public radio stations offer on-demand radio programs to their listeners.

Pubcatcher enables stations to give listeners a customizable station-branded application that will manage subscriptions to podcasts of the station’s programs as well as other public radio content.

“Public radio is in a great position to take advantage of the podcasting phenomenon”, said PRX Executive Director Jake Shapiro. “Stations can expand their role as trusted sources of programming, and producers have entirely new channels of distribution. Both can serve existing audiences better and attract new listeners through the reach of this technology.”

PRX member KCRW, a Los Angeles based public radio station, is the first in the U.S. to offer the application to listeners. Additional PRX member stations will roll out Pubcatcher over the coming weeks.

“The KCRW Pubcatcher is a perfect fit for our podcasting strategy”, said Jennifer Ferro, Assistant Manager of KCRW. “It gives our listeners a simple way to organize subscriptions to KCRW’s podcasts as well as ones we recommend from other sources. Kudos to PRX for helping public radio stay on the leading edge of these developments.”

Pubcatcher is based on the open-source iPodder software and its development is supported by a grant from the Surdna Foundation of New York.

“This is a great example of how funders can leverage each other’s investments to support innovative projects”, said program officer Vincent Stehle of the Surdna Foundation. “We were able to make a timely grant in part because of the lead taken by the Ford Foundation’s inclusion of PRX in their new initiative to strengthen public media.” (The Ford Foundation recently announced a 5-year $50 million investment in a group of key public media organizations.)

About PRX

The Public Radio Exchange (PRX) is a web-based service for distribution, review, and licensing of radio content. PRX brings new voices to new audiences, creates a fair market for creative radio, and helps radio stations assemble diverse and exceptional programming.

PRX is a collaboration of the Station Resource Group (http://www.srg.org) and Atlantic Public Media (http://www.atlantic.org), with support from public radio stations and producers, The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, The National Endowment for the Arts, The Ford Foundation, NTIA’s Technology Opportunities Program, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Open Society Institute, and the Surdna Foundation. Pubcather is one of several podcasting services being developed by PRX for producers and stations as part of its overall web platform initiatives for station websites.

For more information visit Pubcatcher at http://www.pubcatcher.org or The Public Radio Exchange at http://www.prx.org