Way back when I walked uphill both ways to my first reporter job at a local public radio station… I liked to experiment with narrator-less first-person style packages. This was one of my first efforts: Office/Gallery, a profile of an artist/insurance salesman who curated art exhibits in his office on the down low.
Studio 360 re-ran it three times. Then I posted it on PRX, a sort of online distribution site for public radio style audio content. I believe PRX’s original plan was to pay producers for their material when the content aired. But now they’re advertising “free” content.
Fast-forward a few years. Watch podcasts bloom and flourish, public radio programs be born and die. Until yesterday, when my ancient story ran again, more than a decade later, on New Hampshire Public Radio’s Word of Mouth.
There’s nothing like an evergreen package that can run over and over again — a producer’s dream! But I probably got paid no more than $500 for that story. Too bad there’s no residuals for underpaid public radio reporters!