Metafilter on NPR January 12, 2011 10:59 AM Subscribe
Did anyone hear A Way With Words on NPR talking about ask.metafilter.com on Sunday?
Sorry if this was discussed already, I could not find it on search. They were talking about a specific ask.metafilter question about people who did not speak as a child until they turned 3. Anyone have a link to the question discussed?
Sorry if this was discussed already, I could not find it on search. They were talking about a specific ask.metafilter question about people who did not speak as a child until they turned 3. Anyone have a link to the question discussed?
The AskMefi thread is linked on the webpage for the episode.
posted by octothorpe at 11:07 AM on January 12, 2011
posted by octothorpe at 11:07 AM on January 12, 2011
I just listened to that podcast this morning and I was really amused by the concentration of DFW callers. There were at least 5 calls from the area (Denton, Arlington, Irving, Fort Worth, and Kennedale).
posted by kmz at 11:09 AM on January 12, 2011
posted by kmz at 11:09 AM on January 12, 2011
Neat.
posted by Miko at 11:19 AM on January 12, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by Miko at 11:19 AM on January 12, 2011 [1 favorite]
A post on the web page forum links to the wikipedia article for Pittsburgh English, and its rather non-standard cleanup template:
To meet Wikipedia's quality standards, this article needs redd up.posted by zamboni at 11:28 AM on January 12, 2011 [7 favorites]
Rilly bad! Yinz rewrite it t' be at least somewhat cohairnt, n'at. Don't be ascared! Editing help is available anymore.
It looks like Mefi may have featured in at least three episodes.
posted by zamboni at 12:48 PM on January 12, 2011
Hmm. I'd definitely noticed the large number of DFW area callers on there before, but didn't even think about it and thought of the show as being a DFW thing, but I don't think it is. What's up with that?
posted by cmoj at 1:07 PM on January 12, 2011
posted by cmoj at 1:07 PM on January 12, 2011
I always seem to notice quite a few central Indiana callers when I listen. It's probably partly confirmation bias, but largely because the show seems to still have a somewhat limited reach so far: here's the list of radio stations that broadcast it. Major metropolitan areas which get it (for some vague undefined meaning of "major") are DFW, San Diego, Miami, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, and Seattle (and parts of the NYC metro area, mostly in CT). Looks like a lot of NPR stations don't carry it, so calls would naturally tend to come in from those areas having stations that do.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 3:32 PM on January 12, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 3:32 PM on January 12, 2011 [1 favorite]
Exactly right, DevilsAdvocate. We're a national show but independently distributed, so we're not an automatic pickup for NPR or PRI affiliates. We've also got a large podcast following (downloads put us in the top 35 of all public radio podcasts tracked by NPR) across North America. My two radio partners and I took over the show three years ago, and now run it as a nonprofit, so everything we do -- including adding more carriage -- is constrained by our resources. Jesse's talked about the hard work it takes to get a public radio show picked up by more stations, but I'm happy to say we've tripled our carriage in three years.
We do get callers from many of our podcast listeners, and we do put them on the air, but interestingly, most of our podcast listeners live in markets in which we are also broadcast over the air, except for San Francisco and New York City, cities which both have large podcast listenerships but where we are not on the air. Radio is not dead, it's still much larger than podcasting, and it has an evangelizing and propagating effect for the awareness of a show that is difficult to achieve online alone without luck or a great deal more resources (time, money, labor) than we have at the moment.
Right now most of our callers come from the Dallas/Forth Worth area because it's our biggest market (number 5 in the country, I believe), followed by Wisconsin (where we're on statewide) and Indiana, where the show is on two stations but is relatively new there — there's always a backlog of calls in new markets that inevitably start with "I've been wanting to ask someone this question for years." There's also the fact that Indiana sits right on the edge of at least one fairly well pronounced dialect frontier, which brings different modes of speech into contact, which in turn generates lots of questions.
posted by Mo Nickels at 11:28 PM on January 12, 2011 [10 favorites]
We do get callers from many of our podcast listeners, and we do put them on the air, but interestingly, most of our podcast listeners live in markets in which we are also broadcast over the air, except for San Francisco and New York City, cities which both have large podcast listenerships but where we are not on the air. Radio is not dead, it's still much larger than podcasting, and it has an evangelizing and propagating effect for the awareness of a show that is difficult to achieve online alone without luck or a great deal more resources (time, money, labor) than we have at the moment.
Right now most of our callers come from the Dallas/Forth Worth area because it's our biggest market (number 5 in the country, I believe), followed by Wisconsin (where we're on statewide) and Indiana, where the show is on two stations but is relatively new there — there's always a backlog of calls in new markets that inevitably start with "I've been wanting to ask someone this question for years." There's also the fact that Indiana sits right on the edge of at least one fairly well pronounced dialect frontier, which brings different modes of speech into contact, which in turn generates lots of questions.
posted by Mo Nickels at 11:28 PM on January 12, 2011 [10 favorites]
, most of our podcast listeners live in markets in which we are also broadcast over the air,
This is really interesting! I'm a huge radio junkie, but this makes such good sense intuitively. Not only do have the radio on a lot around the clock, but I listen to podcasts too (at work, on the train), and for the most part, they're shows that I also listen to in live broadcast, and only discovered because they were broadcast and I happened to catch them. I find that it's hard to troll for good podcasts using iTunes, because there is so much to wade through, and you really want to listen and understand the feel of a show before devoting a lot of storage space to it. There are a few exceptions - recommendations for podcasts in MeFi threads, for instance, lead to some good ones.
Radio is a beautiful medium. Glad you are putting such interesting content on it (and I wish I could hear this show on my affiliates, but will look for the podcast!)
posted by Miko at 7:55 AM on January 13, 2011 [1 favorite]
This is really interesting! I'm a huge radio junkie, but this makes such good sense intuitively. Not only do have the radio on a lot around the clock, but I listen to podcasts too (at work, on the train), and for the most part, they're shows that I also listen to in live broadcast, and only discovered because they were broadcast and I happened to catch them. I find that it's hard to troll for good podcasts using iTunes, because there is so much to wade through, and you really want to listen and understand the feel of a show before devoting a lot of storage space to it. There are a few exceptions - recommendations for podcasts in MeFi threads, for instance, lead to some good ones.
Radio is a beautiful medium. Glad you are putting such interesting content on it (and I wish I could hear this show on my affiliates, but will look for the podcast!)
posted by Miko at 7:55 AM on January 13, 2011 [1 favorite]
No
posted by dougrayrankin at 10:07 AM on January 13, 2011
posted by dougrayrankin at 10:07 AM on January 13, 2011
Cool. I never saw the original thread but I'll just add that my daughter talked very early and my son talked late and had garbled speech. We got ear tubes put in and he almost immediately started talking normally and much more frequently.
posted by freecellwizard at 2:02 PM on January 13, 2011
posted by freecellwizard at 2:02 PM on January 13, 2011
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posted by Ashley801 at 11:03 AM on January 12, 2011