Public Radio Exchange

A Spike We Like

Emily posted on Friday, May 20th, 2011 | Blog, PRX | No Comments

Earlier this month PRX launched new sharing options that allow producers and stations to embed PRX audio players in their websites, blogs and elsewhere.  KFAI was one of the first stations to try it all out.  When their acting News Director, Todd Melby, began embedding their pieces on the KFAI homepage and Facebook… this happened:

Do you see the y-axis? Those page views are in the thousands.

Didn’t catch the big news about embeddable players? Read up. Try it out! And then tell us what you think.

Tags: Emily

Remix is on WREM 88.7FM

Emily posted on Monday, May 16th, 2011 | Blog, PRX, PRX Projects | No Comments

Today Public Radio Remix — our 24/7 stream of audio awesomeness — went live on WREM 88.1FM in Canton, NY. WREM is a brand new acquisition of North Country Public Radio, owned and operated by St. Lawrence University. Take a look at their spiffy Remix webpage, which has current and upcoming playlists, links to each story, a feed of the Public Radio Remix blog, and more.

WREM joins KPBZ in Spokane, WA as our second terrestrial station carrying Public Radio Remix.

We want to thank North Country Public Radio Program Director Jackie Sauter, Chief Engineer Bob Sauter and General Manager Ellen Rocco for making this launch as easy as pie. We’re thrilled!

Tags: Emily, Remix

Same Great Taste

Emily posted on Friday, May 13th, 2011 | Blog, PRX, PRX Projects | 1 Comment

PRX’s 24/7 radio stream — formerly known as REMIX Radio and formerly broadcast on XM 136 — underwent a few changes last week.

New Satellite Channel: 123

The first thing to know is that our XM channel has changed to XM 123. Not bad numbers, right?

We’re not the only ones with a new channel. After Sirius and XM merged in 2008, SiriusXM has finally remapped their channel lineup to integrate stations from both networks into a single program schedule. It all went down last week.

New Name: Public Radio Remix

To go along with our shiny new SiriusXM Channel, PRX is also announcing a new name for our 24/7 stream of public radio goodness: Public Radio Remix. We liked our old name, REMIX Radio, but rather than eschew our public radio heritage, we want to embrace it. We are Public Radio Remix, public radio that sounds and feels decidedly different, but is still very much, public radio. Public radio rocks.

Although our blog has moved to publicradioremix.org and our XM station is now parked at XM 123, we are still streaming from the same place online and broadcasting on the air in Spokane, WA on KPBZ. Not listening yet? Come get some Remix.

Get In Touch

Are you a radio maker? Submit your stories to Public Radio Remix.

Are you listening to Public Radio Remix? Let us know what you think at remix (at) prx (dot) org.

Tags: Emily

Rejoice! Embedding and Sharing Are Here

Emily posted on Tuesday, May 10th, 2011 | Blog | No Comments

Say hello to the new PRX embeddable audio player. It was launched today along with sharing options for social media which allow both producers and listeners to share full-length playable PRX pieces on Facebook.

Learn more about sharing.

Try the new embeddable audio player:

See how it looks on Facebook – ready to play:

We’re also offering short URLs for sharing on Twitter and elsewhere.

Note: The embeddable audio player can only be enabled for pieces on paid PRX accounts. All producers should update piece permissions in order to get started embedding the PRX player and sharing pieces on Facebook.

Learn more about sharing.

This has been in the works for many months and entailed all kinds of changes behind the scenes. We’re eager for your feedback and suggestions for ways to improve the embedded player and sharing options, so drop us a line at prxhelp prx.org.

We also owe a big thanks to our beta testers who helped us bang away on this over the last month.  Check ‘em out:

Todd Melby and KFAI
KUT
Tom Tenney
Tim Lloyd with Harvest Public Media
the Word of Mouth folks at NHPR

Tags: Emily

Mobile App Picks from the PRXperts

Emily posted on Tuesday, April 19th, 2011 | Blog, PRX, PRX Projects, Tech | 1 Comment

We’re pretty into our phones over here at PRX. And that’s as it should be, I suppose, as many of us spend our days conceiving, coding and promoting mobile apps for public radio.

A couple months ago Radio Diaries producer Joe Richman — equipped with his first-ever iPhone — asked me what PRX’s favorite apps are. I put the question to my colleagues, and return with the following list of our favorite mobile apps.

Matt	John	Robert	Rekha	Jake	Chris	Farski	Kerri	Roman	Jones

Our big list of favorite apps:

Tags: Emily

Press Release: The Moth Wins a Peabody

Emily posted on Friday, April 1st, 2011 | Blog, Press Releases | 2 Comments

We were thrilled to get notified yesterday that The Moth Radio Hour has received a 2010 Peabody Award. Our joint press release with our partners at The Moth and Atlantic Public Media is below, along with the video trailer for our new season of The Moth Radio Hour, opening May 1st.

The Moth Radio Hour is thrilled and honored to receive a 70th Annual Peabody Award for excellence in electronic media for 2010. The Moth Radio Hour is a production of The Moth, a nonprofit organization dedicated to live storytelling. It is presented by PRX (Public Radio Exchange), and produced by Jay Allison and Viki Merrick of Atlantic Public Media.

“Storytelling, likely the oldest art, is revered and reinvigorated by this hour for everyday raconteurs,” write the Peabody judges.

Since its 2009 debut, The Moth Radio Hour has been an instant success, airing on more than 200 public radio stations and delighting listeners across the United States. It is one of an impressive 18 public media productions to win a Peabody this year.

“Just like our live shows, The Moth Radio Hour connects people everywhere through stories of bravery, wit, and humor,” said Joan Firestone, Executive Director of The Moth.

The Moth Radio Hour is a powerful selection of stories from The Moth’s live performance programs: The Moth Mainstage where celebrities appear alongside unique voices from all walks of life; The Moth’s StorySLAM competitions, which are open to all and rapidly expanding to cities across the country; and The Moth’s community outreach program, MothShop, which brings workshops to people whose stories would otherwise go unheard. The Moth storytellers stand alone, under a spotlight, with only a microphone and a roomful of strangers. The storyteller and the audience embark on a high-wire act of shared experience which is both terrifying and exhilarating.

“The Moth Radio Hour is the realization of my ten-year-long dream to bring The Moth to public radio,” said Catherine Burns, Artistic Director of The Moth. “We have long felt that radio was the perfect medium for our stories, and we are touched by the generous response from listeners and stations.”

The Moth Radio Hour, hailed as “brilliant and quietly addictive” by London’s Guardian, features old-fashioned storytelling on modern themes by diverse raconteurs who develop and shape their stories with The Moth’s directors. The Moth organization was founded in 1997 by the novelist George Dawes Green, who wanted to recreate in New York the feeling of sultry summer evenings in his native Georgia, where moths were attracted to lights on the porch while he and his friends told tales.  Since then, The Moth has presented more than three thousand stories, told live and without notes, to standing-room-only crowds worldwide.

“I love the feeling of The Moth.  You can feel the risk each storyteller takes, getting up before us to recount something spellbinding and real. It makes you recognize how rare it is to hear truly honest, vulnerable voices on the airwaves,” says Jay Allison, a veteran radio producer now with six Peabodys to his credit.

“Public radio at its best connects compelling stories to communities to make a difference. We are incredibly proud that Peabody recognizes The Moth Radio Hour‘s excellence, and can’t wait to bring more of it to millions of listeners,” says Jake Shapiro, CEO of PRX.

The Moth Radio Hour is supported by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. The Moth, Atlantic Public Media, and PRX congratulate all the winners of this illustrious prize.

For more information, visit www.themoth.org, www.prx.org/themoth, and www.atlantic.org.

Tags: Emily

PRX 3.12. New release, new goodies.

Emily posted on Thursday, March 31st, 2011 | Blog, Tech | 1 Comment

Since November 2008 when we rolled out the “new” PRX 3.0, our team of developers has been working hard to make the site faster, easier and more useful for everyone who uses it: that’s producers, stations and listeners, too. Last night we released PRX 3.12, which includes some exciting changes.

• The My PRX page (like an accounts dashboard) has been reorganized to help you find what you are looking for. And not only is the activity graph easier to read, but the data being reported is more accurate — thanks to complicated technical changes our Tech Director Andrew Kuklewicz will be documenting on our techie blog, PRX Labs.
• Group, station and PRX Network administrators can now add members in fewer steps from their Manage Members page.
• Audio processing has been improved along with error reporting for unprocessed audio.
• Illinois Public Media’s public radio station WILL will hitherto show up in search results as a station rather than the stop-search word for the future tense of the verb “to be.”
• And lastly (and more seriously), we are pleased to introduce some new sharing options for Facebook and Twitter. You can now share playable 30-second previews of PRX pieces on Facebook, and include PRX short URLs in Twitter updates. Consider these features a preview of the more advanced sharing options we’ll be rolling out soon — which will allow paid PRX producers to make their full pieces playable on Facebook, and embeddable on blogs and websites. Interested in trying out the advanced sharing options as a beta tester? Give us a holler.

Tags: Emily

PRX Zeitfunk Awards 2010

Emily posted on Wednesday, March 30th, 2011 | Blog, Zeitfunk | No Comments

It’s that time of year again! Time to give a little love to PRX’s Mostiest. Get the scoop on PRX’s . . .

Most Licensed Producer
Most Listened-To Piece
Station That Licensed The Most Pieces
… and more!

Check out all the winners of PRX Zeitfunk Awards, and stay tuned for our Virtual Awards Ceremony, coming soon with pictures of PRX’s ever-so attractive Zeitfunk winners bearing their oh-so goofy trophies.

Tags: Emily

Jake Shapiro Receives Ashoka Fellowship

Emily posted on Thursday, March 17th, 2011 | Blog | 1 Comment

We’re excited to announce that our CEO, Jake Shapiro, will be one of 11 new Ashoka News & Knowledge Fellows.  Ashoka is a nonprofit organization promoting social entrepreneurship in what they call the “global citizen sector.”  Jake will join over 100 News & Knowledge fellows, supported by Ashoka’s 3-year-long partnership with the John S. and James Knight Foundation.

From Ashoka’s recent press release:

Jake is democratizing public media by creating an open architecture and marketplace that invites new voices, surfaces compelling stories, and leads the transition from broadcasting to an interactive multiplatform future.

Other new News and Knowledge fellows include: Kara Andrade of HablaCentro, who is “expanding people’s access to information in remote areas of Guatemala, Honduras, and Costa Rica,” and Chiranuch Premchaiporn, who’s “online newspaper, Prachatai, engages tens of thousands of marginalized citizens and interest groups amid continuing government efforts to systemically control and disrupt information.”

Find out about all 11 new News & Knowledge fellows.

Tags: Emily

Sound Opinions Takes First Place!

Emily posted on Tuesday, March 1st, 2011 | Blog, PRX in the News | No Comments

It turns out USA Today’s Whitney Matheson has an awfully good ear for great radio. Last week she rated Sound Opinions as her #1 favorite music podcast. Thanks Whitney!

We’d like to congratulate All Songs Considered who came in 2nd, and our pubradio friends at KEXP and WNYC, also in the top ten. And a clink to Chicago Public Radio, Sound Opinions hosts Jim DeRegatis and Greg Kot, and producers Robin Linn and Jason Saldanha!

Check out Sound Opinions on PRX, subscribe to the podcast, then please! Tell your local station all about it.

Tags: Emily, sound opinions