WBUR’s BizLab is an innovation lab developing and testing new models of support for public radio. Operating as a lean startup, BizLab is a team of product managers, experience designers, and business analysts. We work with public radio stations to uncover new avenues for revenue generation, distinct from traditional approaches including on-air drives, direct mail, and underwriting.

WBUR, Boston’s NPR News Station, created BizLab in 2015 believing it is critical that public media invest in innovation and experimentation to identify new revenue channels to sustain public radio into the future. Given the changing landscape of journalism, media consumption, and digital advertising, there is an increasing urgency to test and measure the effectiveness of different funding models. 

2019 WBUR BizLab Summit

December 10, 2019

WBUR’s BizLab and NPR stations from across the country met for a day of learning about methods, techniques, and ideas for new revenue streams in public radio

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BIZLAB'S LATEST EXPERIMENTS

WEBINARS

NEWS

Team

JOAN DIMICCO

Executive Director

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Sarah Bloomer

Experience Strategist

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Lindsy Goldberg

Program Manager

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Ted Fuller

Business Technology & Analytics Lead

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Nancy Mann

User Experience Research

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2018-19 BIZLAB FELLOWS

Wendi Ding, Cynthia Yue, Suzie Hicks, Matt Aufiero, Sarah Barden, and Brian Kelley have joined us during summers to run revenue experiments.

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Our Station Collaborators

Funding

BizLab is funded through the generous support of WBUR, individual donors, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Knight Foundation, and The Lenfest Institute for Journalism.

“CPB has been supporting journalism capacity building among public media stations for many years, and this project will find new, innovative ways to sustain that important work. Keeping audience at the center of the project is exactly the right business approach and should provide valuable lessons for the entire public media system.”

Kathy Merritt

“The way people consume news and information continues to transform at an accelerated pace. As listeners increasingly turn to digital and on-demand methods to access news, it’s critical for public radio stations to collaborate and exercise new strategies that bolster audience retention, engagement and support.”

Jennifer Preston

“WBUR will expand efforts in earning revenue by exploring new mechanisms for listeners to purchase items through affiliate programs. Affiliate marketing has been successful for publications such as The New York Times with the Wirecutter. We want to see if that success can be translated to the local level, which doesn’t have as much scale.”

Burt Herman

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