Public Radio Exchange

PRX Goin’ Down, But Not For Long!

Audrey posted on Friday, May 10th, 2013 | PRX | No Comments

Got pieces to upload? Programs to buy for air? Don’t do it from 11 p.m. – 3 a.m. Eastern on Saturday, May 25 into Sunday morning May 26.

PRX.org and Networks will have a scheduled outage and will be down during that time as our hosting provider migrates our servers from one datacenter to another.

We’ll be monitoring our Help Desk during that time and will have a maintenance page in place at PRX.org where we will provide a status update if the work extends beyond the maintenance window. However, we’re expecting this to be a smooth move.

Please contact us if you have any questions or concerns.

Thank you!

-The PRX Team

Now, relax and listen to Bruce Springsteen.

It’s Not Old, It’s New!

Audrey posted on Wednesday, May 8th, 2013 | PRX | No Comments

When a producer uploads a piece on PRX, it will join a vast and wonderful archive of stories, going back many years and spanning many different topics. Once created, the piece will stay up on PRX forever or until the producer takes it down or until the Apocalypse happens.

The lifecycle of a PRX piece is long and well-lived.

Let’s take a look at one:

Birth by Thin Air Media was added to PRX five years ago and has been licensed a few times each year since, some of those licenses being from major market stations like WGBH in Boston and KCRW in Santa Monica.

A piece on PRX has value over the long-term. The piece you made last year may be relevant to a station next year, which is why you should always pay attention to time elements that might date your piece.

Additionally, don’t be afraid to use social media and station contacts to remind programmers about the value of your works, especially if they might apply to a holiday or a recent news item. The piece you made about veterans would most likely be relevant to stations around Veteran’s Day, or a story like Birth, might be relevant to stations leading up to Mother’s Day, perhaps. Always consider these programming Date Pegs, and remember to remind us at PRX about your work too.

Consider your editing process. Remove any information that might date your piece and you will help ensure it can be listened-to and licensed year-in and year-out and see a happy lifetime on PRX.

PRX Reduces

John posted on Tuesday, May 7th, 2013 | PRX, Station Newsletters | No Comments

Memorial Day picks, breaking the cycle of poverty, and cool found interviews.

PRX Considers Beer

John posted on Tuesday, April 30th, 2013 | Station Newsletters | No Comments

Picks for stations: Plan ahead for Memorial Day, a timely potpourri, and the best of Texas (including Willie Nelson!).

PRX Declares the World’s Most…

John posted on Wednesday, April 24th, 2013 | Station Newsletters | No Comments

Hey stations, check out our Zeitfunk Award winners. Oh, and some Peabodys and Murrows as well.

Long-lost radio interview with David Foster Wallace, animated!

Roman Mars posted on Tuesday, April 23rd, 2013 | PRX Remix | No Comments

A long-lost radio interview with David Foster Wallace from Blank on Blank.

Global Story Project Feature: The Symphony of Sirens, Revisited

Genevieve posted on Thursday, April 18th, 2013 | Blog, Global Story Project | No Comments

This post is part of our series highlighting productions from our Global Story Project.

Have you ever thought of your home town as having its own sound? What about how different your city probably sounded 90 years ago?

Moscow-based producer Charles Maynes introduces us to composer Arseny Avraamov, whose 1923 Symphony of Sirens, with no existing recordings, makes it the stuff of legend… and perfect for a creative, experimental audio piece. Take a listen to The Symphony of Sirens, Revisited:

Charles filled us in on what attracted him to Avraamov and his symphony:

“You know, this is a story I first became fixated on several years ago but had no idea how to make. How do you produce a radio story about a music performance from nearly a hundred years ago that no one had recorded? I didn’t know. And so after doing a bit of research, I decided there wasn’t enough ‘there’ to carry a story. So I did what I thought was the smart thing — I dropped it.

“I guess in that way, the title of the story — ‘Symphony of Sirens, Revisited’ — is truer than you might think. With a gentle nudge from PRX (my way of saying thanks!), this is literally me taking another swing at the Avraamov legend. I still don’t know if it ‘works’, but I do find it interesting to think, production-wise, about the little things I do now vs. what I would have done then. The conceit of the piece was to do it as a (kind of) detective story, but the mechanics of the production involved attention to transitions, pacing, and the occasional hint of audio pyrotechnics. Production tricks, in other words. They may not be good tricks, but they’re my tricks — except, of course, for the ones I stole!”

Radiolab App is a Webby Nominee. Please Vote!

Rekha posted on Thursday, April 18th, 2013 | Blog, Tech | No Comments

Another year, another Webby nomination, win, and/or honor. We’re proud to be recognized this year for our user experience design and development work on the Radiolab app for iOS and Android.

Please vote now to help us get a People’s Voice Award!

We worked closely with the Radiolab team and design gurus One Trick Pony to build a beautiful app that also does things. Listen to the entire archive, read the blog (yick alert: latest post is about eating cicadas), and even submit audio, text, or images in response to various assignments.

The sound of other people’s laughter is indeed contagious. This and thousands of other audio submissions can be heard here.




Did you vote yet?

(Originally posted on our PRX apps blog.)

PRX: Keep Running

John posted on Tuesday, April 16th, 2013 | Station Newsletters | No Comments

Thoughts for Boston this week.

Sound and the Scientific Method

Lily posted on Friday, April 12th, 2013 | PRX, STEM Story Project | No Comments

“It is the tension between creativity and skepticism that has produced the stunning and unexpected findings of science.” -Carl Sagan

By now, you may have heard the news that PRX, with support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, is holding an open call for radio stories about STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) topics. We’re seeking highly creative, original productions that question, reveal, explore, and inspire.

Earlier this month during a tweetchat, we asked producers what public radio could offer to STEM. We were thrilled with the enthusiastic responses:

The inherent beauty of the scientific method lays in the fact that it’s sparked by curiosity, fueled by skepticism, and results in an approximation of the truth. If you think about it, both science and art strive to achieve just that – an understanding of a higher truth about the world. As a journalist, writer, or producer, what ardent questions do you have about the world around you? What ensnares your senses, drives you mad, or makes you wonder? And how do you capture that with sound?

This is PRX’s challenge to you–to be curious, skeptical, hungry for the truth–and we believe that you can rise to the occasion.

Radio producer Paolo Pietropaolo offers some creative inspiration on exactly this nexus between science and radio:

We hope that you consider participating in the STEM Story Project, PRX’s latest audio experiment. The deadline to submit a proposal (April 22, 2013 at 11:59pm ET) is approaching at light speed! We hope to see yours soon.

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Find the application and more details here.

Still have questions? PRX held a STEM Story Project webinar recently to talk about the project.

If you’re a producer looking to make connections with other producers or join the conversation about the STEM Story Project, join the STEM Story Project Facebook group to keep in touch.