The CBC could pick up a few pointers from NPR, who have been earning accolades recently for their strategic vision.

Fast Company recently called NPR “the most successful hybrid of old and new media,” speculating that the organization may well end up “saving the news.” A recent post in Mashable titled “Why NPR is the Future of Mainstream Media” takes the same tack.

Both articles commend NPR for a strategy that puts the audience first while embracing new media. “They’re on a trajectory that will make them a media powerhouse in the future, though, and it is in large part due to their culture of open access,” Mashable’s Josh Catone explains, “The blueprint that NPR is drawing for the future is very promising.”

So how does the CBC compare to NPR? And what can the CBC learn from them?

NPR’s blueprint is actually a three-pronged strategy. They are fanatically devoted to local news, they’ve jumped head-first into social media, and they are commited to open access – putting the content where people consume it.

On the first plank of NPR’s strategy, the CBC compares well. The CBC is again committing to local news, it already has a large local footprint – CBC Radio One alone operates 36 stations across the country.

So the CBC is well positioned to take advantage of what NPR’s CEO Vivian Schiller calls “big, gaping hole” in local coverage. Schiller says that “commercial radio has abandoned the local market,” local newspapers are in trouble and large media organizations like the New York Times can’t cover all the local markets. This creates an opportunity that both broadcasters can exploit with high-quality local content.

The CBC also mirrors NPR’s strategy for social media. Both broadcasters have a big presence on Twitter, Facebook and iTunes; the “ceeb” ranks 11 podcasts in the top 100 in Canada, way more than any other Canadian broadcaster.

But it’s on the third prong of NPR’s strategy where the comparisons begin to break down. NPR is commited to open distribution “they have an organizational level commitment to allowing listeners and readers to access their content on their own terms,” Catone writes.

On the face of it that strategy sounds a lot like the CBC mantra of delivering content “when, where and how you want it,” but NPR’s commitment goes much further than the CBC’s.

For the last several years, and the last two or three in particular, there’s been quite a bit of tension at the CBC between those who feel that the CBC content should be seeded all over the web, including external sites like YouTube, and those that feel that the wider web should be used to drive the audience back to cbc.ca.

“To grow audiences and to stay relevant, media companies have to reach audiences where they are – and they are all over the place,” Steve Pratt, a CBC Radio executive wrote in May, illustrating one side of the argument. On the other hand, others at the corporation feel that this strategy is both time-consuming and provides no revenue. They would prefer keep the content on sites where it can make the most money.

At the CBC this debate between having the content follow the people, or the people follow the content has not been resolved, different shows follow different strategies. At NPR, by contrast, the debate is over.

NPR’s news boss, Ellen Weiss said “We need to put NPR wherever the audience is, and that has to happen online and has to happen on the radio.”

As Schiller explains NPR’s strategy extends beyond it’s own website, “I want the traffic to increase, but to me the ultimate goal is not just bringing people to this walled garden that is NPR.org,” she told mediabistro.com in April. “The idea is to create this network. And then once that is set up, I want to count traffic for the whole thing, and aggregate that into one number.”

Unlike the CBC, NPR is committed, from top to bottom, to going to its audience rather than making its audience come to them. “We have to skate where the puck is going,” Schiller said in a Fast Company article in March. And for a company as cash-strapped as NPR, it’s worth noting how much they’ve committed to the digital strategy. Last year they introduced a open platform to let listeners mix their own podcasts, and, get this, they are putting all of their employees, every single editor, producer and reporter, through multimedia training.

Training all of their content producer’s in multimedia goes way beyond the CBC’s strategy of beseeching us to “think” of ourselves as content producers for multiple platforms. NPR is actually showing all their content employees how to do it.

“It’s got very smart people thinking about its online strategy,” media pundit Jeff Jarvis said about NPR “Like the BBC, it sees itself as a public trust, so its aim is to get its content distributed as widely as possible. Old media expected us to come to them. Now they need to come to us.”

The strategy is paying dividends, traffic to npr.org went up 78 per cent between 2007 and 2008, and since 1999 it’s radio audience has nearly doubled.

But the consequence of how this debate is resolved at the CBC goes beyond audience share and site traffic, it speaks to the relevancy of the entire organization. As consultant and social media strategist Justin Beach wrote recently, “One day the old guard of Canadian media will wake up and realize that rather than lock the barbarian hordes out, they’ve locked themselves in and by then the ‘hordes’ will not longer care whether the gate is open or closed.”

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