The Public Radio Exchange is a nonprofit web-based platform for digital distribution, review, and licensing of radio programs. The organization claims to be the largest on-demand catalog of public radio programs available for broadcast and Internet use.
Mission
According to PRX's site, its mission "is to build a fair market for creative audio content and an online community of increasing gains; to create more opportunities for diverse programming of exceptional quality, interest, and importance to reach more listeners." The company enables terrestrial radio stations to audition pieces and download broadcast-quality audio to share with their listeners over the air or online. PRX catalogs thousands of pieces and allows users to search by topic, length, format, tone and time of the year. The site also provides a community space open to public radio listeners, producers and stations, where users can discover, rate and review pieces. In addition to providing feedback, the rating system brings work to the attention of stations, who are able to sort pieces by their rating. When a piece is licensed by a station PRX provides the producer with a royalty. PRX provides stations and producers with tools to manage and monitor transactions, rights, usage statistics and payments within their individual and group accounts.
History
The PRX site and services launched in September 2003 after a two-year planning, research, and development phase supported by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Ford Foundation. Since then PRX has received additional support from the NTIA Technology Opportunities Program, the MacArthur Foundation, the Open Society Institute, the Surdna Foundation, and Google Grants. PRX offices are located in Cambridge, MA. On February 28, 2007 PRX and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting announced the Public Radio Talent Quest. This competition is an open search for new public radio talent, and gives producers the chance to produce a pilot show for public radio. Finalists will be chosen after a five-round competition voted on by fans, public radio professionals and celebrity judges. On May 14, the first round of submissions ended with 1,452 entries. As of May 22, 2007, the Public Radio Talent Quest site had over 14,600 registered users. On April 9, 2008 The MacArthur Foundation selected PRX as one of its 2008 recipients of the MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions. In late November of that year, PRX soft launched PRX 3.0. The launch included their Remix Radio project which provides a sampling of the content available for licensing on the site. On January 1, 2009, PRX, Inc became a Massachusetts 501c3 nonprofit corporation. Previously PRX had been a project area of the Station Resource Group, a Maryland nonprofit. On January 28, PRX Remix was added to XM Satellite Radio on channel 136. Later that year, on July 19, PRX launched the Public Radio Player 2.0, an iPhone app for public radio developed by PRX, NPR and other public radio partners, and funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. On August 11, PRX was included in CPB's agreement with SoundExchange through 2015 as a covered public radio entity for music webcasting royalties. In 2010 PRX launched two iPhone apps: the This American Life app on February 1 and the WBUR Boston app on July 7. That same year, PRX won a Peabody Award for The Moth Radio Hour Also, PRX was announced as a winner of the 2010 Knight News Challenge for Story Exchange, a crowdfunding journalism project, on June 16. On September 8, 2010 PRX announced $2.7M in new funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Ford Foundation. On December 8, 2011, PRX announced $2.5M in funding from Knight Foundation to create the Public Media Accelerator. In May 2014, PRX received a Peabody Award for the Reveal show "The VA's Opiate Overload". On August 15, 2018, PRX and Public Radio International announced they would merge, though both networks would maintain separate identities and programming.
PRX Remix
Formerly known as Public Radio Remix. As of 2011, two radio stations, KPBZ in Spokane, Washington and WREM in Canton, New York, air a full-time schedule of programming from PRX, branded as Public Radio Remix. Both stations are owned by the same organizations as their markets' primary National Public Radio affiliates. PRX Remix also airs on Sirius XM Channel 123. Several other public radio stations air some, but not all, Public Radio Exchange programming in their schedules.
Numbers
As of May 22, 2007 PRX has 12,167 available radio pieces, 28,149 members, including 445 radio stations, and 2,782 individual producers
