Podcasts Called 'Godsend" For NPR

Jarl Mohn

Jarl Mohn, the soon-to-be-retiring CEO of National Public Radio, makes no secret of how he thinks podcast has helped the network, reports InsideRadio.

 “It’s been a real godsend,” Mohn says in the latest weekly podcast “Math & Magic,” hosted by iHeartMedia chief Bob Pittman.

“NPR has been in the podcasting business for a long time,” Mohn says. “A lot of it began being able to listen to some of the programming the network did on-demand, on your own, whenever you wanted to. We had a leg up, and because we’ve been doing spoken word for 48 years, we have that expertise in audio and in storytelling and that gave us a real advantage in scale.”

He adds, “When podcasting as a category took off, with listeners and advertisers, we had a pole position. It’s been a real godsend. It’s been really great for the organization in terms of expanding our mission and bringing new people into public radio, particularly a younger and a more diverse audience that maybe doesn’t have the affinity for the news service initially.”


Regarding those younger listeners, Mohn adds that “another interesting effect” of podcasting came when the network linked “people who have been on the network for years, traditional journalists and correspondents, in a podcast with a younger group of talent.” The result, he says, has “really affected the sound of the network. We keep the journalist standards high, but make it more accessible, more conversational, more informal. It has really expanded the audience.”