June 4, 2009 | Read Time: 1 minute
Public radio’s bet that the iPhone would be an important platform for reaching out to listeners appears to be paying off.
Several major public-radio organizations — including National Public Radio, American Public Media, and Public Radio International — joined forces to develop the Public Radio Tuner, which allows people to listen to more than 300 live streams from stations across the country on either their iPhones or iPod Touch players.
The free tool has been downloaded more than 1.5 million times since its release in January.
The collaborative has submitted a second version of the application to the iTunes store and expects it to be released sometime this month, at which point it will be called the Public Radio Player.
The update will let people listen to both live public-radio streams and on-demand programming, says Jake Shapiro, chief executive of PRX Public Radio Exchange, the Cambridge, Mass., organization leading the effort.
“You could search to listen to Fresh Air, and find out when it’s playing on local stations,” he says. “But if it’s not playing live anywhere, you can also get the latest episode as a podcast that will stream within the application.”
The collaboration received a $180,000 grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for the project.
For more information: Go to http://www.publicradiotuner.org.
