1. No way. That's what separates them from the others, it's a dangerous path and the analogy of the boiling frog comes to mind. Slowly, inch by inch they're all secretly chasing buzz feed's numbers. 2. They gave "center stage" to Norvo Nordisk by way of World Hemophilia Day, don't kid yourself.
It's a dangerous path? What's dangerous is that NPR will be finished without better funding. If the alternative is goodbye NPR (which may not yet be true, granted), then I'll take ads if it means I get a few more Tiny Desks and so on. Better a health company with an important message than ... I'm not sure. I run adblock so I don't really remember. Better that than some stupid flash game or clothes or whatever.
Am I overreacting? Maybe. But it's a reasonable fear imo.What's dangerous is that NPR will be finished without better funding
-Back that up with numbers, I've seen little evidence that NPR is short on cash. Tiny Desks, btw has to be a really inexpensive production and my guess is that it brings in a good amount of revenue for them. They are content creators and they sell their content to their affiliate stations across the country/world. They have competition, PRI and others that also sell their content to "NPR affiliates." The value of public radio is that it doesn't have to whore itself out via a "center stage" advert. If it needs more revenue then it should be "publicly funded" via pledge drives etc and not via ad's. Period. Otherwise they turn in to the same thing as everyone else. Eventually Norvo Nordisk is going to want to know how many page views they get and then NPR will feel the pressure to get more eyeballs and will chase them via bombastic content.... it all snowballs.
Hey, you're right, honestly I just assumed they were in trouble because a) it's NPR, they're always walking that line and b) why else would they sell out and go ad-heavy. As a last resort thing, I'm totally fine with tasteful, intelligent advertising. Freely admit I don't know if NPR's at that point though.Back that up with numbers
Got something I'm working on for you right now. Post it in 15 min.
Now they've gone and really sold out: I mean, how on earth do they expect me to support them when they give center stage to such opportunism? -sarcasm.
But then I'd miss Center Stage and in all honesty, I'm interested in what sites I like do to generate revenue. There's really no model that I think works better than user generated. Ads suck. But still if I'm not on the home pages, I'm missing out on innovations, right?
I don't know. I'm a member of several private websites that, by virtue of being private or illegal or both, can't really gain ad revenue. They struggle. Constantly. And nearly every time I check them I worry that they'll be gone in a month or two. Erowid, for example, is in trouble again. Ads are stress-free. User-generated capital is transitory. And is it even ideal? hubski is obviously not under any financial burden, but if one day it was ... I'm on firefox with dark theme right now and there are two huge blank vertical areas on either side of this text box. If mk in some hypothetical future could trick a stupid corporation into paying our server costs and the only drawback was that I had something in my peripheral vision sometimes, I wouldn't mind. I might even think he was just being rational.There's really no model that I think works better than user generated. Ads suck.