Wired posted a great story today on how podcasting is affecting local public radio affiliates during this year’s fund drive.  It’s titled: Podcasting Roils NPR Fund Raising.  Local stations are concerned that listeners will tune out and start downloading nationally syndicated programs during the week or two of fund drives

I think they are probably right and I think: Good!  Don’t get me wrong, I love NPR programming and I want to see my local station continue to thrive (even though I probably now get 90 % of my audio entertainment from other podcasts).  My point is, if the fund drives are causing people to stop listening to terrestrial radio and start subscribing to the RSS feeds, then maybe the local stations need to rethink the strategy of their local fund drives.  Maybe there’s a better way that they can solicit funds AND use the technology that people are adopting?! 

With cooperation from the national organization, the local stations should be able to understand how many people are listening to their podcast content.  Using location specific IP address data, they could customize their content to what their local constituents are downloading.  Podcast listeners could be given extra incentives to become a station member when signing up online.  If the listeners are receiving podcasts, they obviously have access to a computer.  Adapt the fundraising to the needs of the donor and use the tools that are available.