This might old news, but it’s so nice, you might as well hear it twice: Last October, National Public Radio, American Public Media, Public Interactive, Public Radio Exchange, and Public Radio International teamed up to create the Public Radio Tuner. And in late January, they unveiled the latest version of the iPhone application that takes this love-at-first-sight gadget into take-you-home-to-meet-the-parents territory.
Well, almost. Previously, public radio enthusiasts could only listen packaged versions of their favorite NPR programs, but never stream their local affiliates directly. The new application allows the latter, but not the former, which still leaves room for improvement. In the meantime, there’s NPR Mobile, an independently developed application that offers access to programs, Fresh Air, Morning Edition, and the rest of NPR fare, but without access to non-NPR stuff, like This American Life. For that, you have to subscribe to the free podcast, or use the Tuner to listen live.
The Tuner itself isn’t without problems. Part of the beauty of the iPhone is its ease in multi-tasking, say, talking on the phone and browsing the Internet. But the Tuner only works if the application is open and up on your screen. Try to do anything else, and, poof! your radio shuts off.
But even though it’s not perfect, it’s an exciting step in the right direction, and not just for the growing ranks of iPhone users, because the application puts public radio into the hands of a tech-savvy audience, previously not assumed to be the classic NPR crowd. Urban dwellers, for instance, who don’t listen in their cars, can now listen on foot.
It’s also worth noting that the Tuner makes use of the Internet to stream public radio content, because the iPhone doesn’t have radio hardware. For now, it’s an acceptable workaround, but it would be better if public radio could get Apple to add actual radio functionality, which would give the app more reach. Plus, it would be nice if the development process were open source, which would make it a more public enterprise.
But, the Public Radio Tuner is an ongoing project, so there will be changes and tweaks in the future. To learn more about the project, such as whether the application will be available on non-iPhone mobile phones, check out their site.
Hi Katia,
Thanks for the nice write-up on the Public Radio Tuner. I wanted to clarify a few things:
-American Public Media created the first version of the app; they had invited, tested, and deployed most of the streams in the Tuner before the collaboration got going. APM then opened the code and resources to the collaborators, who together worked on the early January release. The collaboration is led by Public Radio Exchange and funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
-We would love for the Tuner to run in the background while you're doing other things on the iPhone, but Apple reserves this feature for its own apps only.
-As for the development process, we're sharing code and resources mostly among the collaborators in order to keep things moving along. We do plan to share the code and lessons learned with the entire public radio system so stations and networks can create their own apps, too.
There's a big Tuner release coming in May, which will have all sorts of great new features, particularly the addition of on-demand access to everyone's favorite shows (and new ones, too). If you're already using the Tuner, you'll get prompted by iTunes to download the update. We continue to add new station streams all the time. If your public radio station isn't on there, ask them to submit their stream here.
We read all comments at http://www.publicradiotuner.org... so tell us what you think!
Rekha Murthy
PRX
http://www.prx.org
#1 Posted by Rekha Murthy, CJR on Tue 24 Feb 2009 at 01:44 PM
Has anyone else stumbled across the new format/programming that they have on 1680 AM in Grand Rapids? I was flipping through my radio and planned on reminiscing to a little Radio Disney, which has apparently been replaced. Anyway, it is now billing itself as Public Reality Radio. I only got a chance to listen for a little bit, but they announced a URL as http://www.publicrealityradio.org. I checked out their site, and there is some interesting programming that they have. If anyone else has listened to this, I would love to hear some opinions, and if you haven’t heard it yet, I would give it a listen. I was particularly fond of “The Infidel Guy”.
#2 Posted by Bob, CJR on Fri 13 Mar 2009 at 01:04 PM