BOB GARFIELD: And, I'm Bob Garfield. NPR’s new President and CEO Vivian Schiller officially took the reins of the company on January 5th, soon after NPR announced the cancellation of two shows and layoffs of what amounted to seven percent of the staff. But financial troubles are not the only challenges that Schiller faces in her new role. Another is how the Web will affect NPR’s vast network of member stations. As NPR becomes more and more about content available anytime on the Internet and less about appointment listening on the radio, member stations are wondering how they fit into the future of NPR. We're also wondering. Vivian, welcome to the show.

VIVIAN SCHILLER: Thank you very much. It’s great to be here.

BOB GARFIELD: So, the economy’s tanking. Your endowment has lost God knows how many tens of millions of dollars in value. The digital revolution is wreaking havoc on all media. Hey Vivian, congratulations on the new gig.

VIVIAN SCHILLER: [LAUGHS] Hey, thanks, great times all around.

BOB GARFIELD: Okay, enough small talk.

[LAUGHTER] Can we get to the immediate crisis? The revenue situation for National Public Radio at the moment is pretty bleak. At a time like this, can you chart a bold course to the future?

VIVIAN SCHILLER: At a time like this, we have to have a vision. We have to rethink what we're doing. To quote, you know, Rahm Emanuel, which is not something I'm used to doing, but I'll do it here: “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.”

BOB GARFIELD: What’s your vision for NPR five years from today?

VIVIAN SCHILLER: The vision is very much what it is now, which is to provide non-commercial, unbiased news and information and entertainment programs to people in every city, town, campus, community in America. But it also is incumbent upon us to take the same qualities that people love about NPR and try to transfer that to the Web and fill a void in media right now, which is local news and information, local tools, local resources, combined with national/international news gathering.

BOB GARFIELD: Local, local, local.

VIVIAN SCHILLER: [LAUGHS]

BOB GARFIELD: As your predecessor Ken Stern learned the hard way, NPR’s structure is an immense obstacle to what would seem to be a logical transformation to the digital world, because the network gets most of its revenue from member stations who, at least ‘til now, have seen digital media as more of a threat than an opportunity. I mean [LAUGHS], if you started to stream All Things Considered online in real time instead of at 7 p.m. Eastern, for example, you'd have to hire bodyguards, right?

VIVIAN SCHILLER: [LAUGHS]

BOB GARFIELD: And for good reason.

VIVIAN SCHILLER: Yeah.

BOB GARFIELD: You'd be siphoning off local audiences, and their pledge dollars. How can you reconcile the technology of the brave new world with the financial structures of the cowardly old one?

VIVIAN SCHILLER: Look, NPR Online should be not a monolithic place that is in competition with the stations, it should become a network of 300, 400, 500, 800 local sites that together form the public radio system. And the way that I am going to develop our digital path is to be the enabler for the local stations, that they can have the tools they need. We will collaborate with them on newsgathering, so that once we're done with this plan, if somebody types in npr.org in their browser, it will take them directly to their local site. And there they can listen to All Things Considered streamed, and there they can get NPR news from around the world, and there they can get the kind of local resources, tools and information that their station is providing. We need to completely change the paradigm around this.

BOB GARFIELD: I'm curious whether the transformation from where we are now to whatever life will be in public broadcasting in the near and intermediate future, do you think it will be gentle, noticeable, violent? What?

VIVIAN SCHILLER: [LAUGHS] Well, I certainly hope it’s not going to be violent. There are some things we need to do right away. First of all, we need to test a lot of these concepts, which we are doing. In terms of the kind of digital collaboration, we're setting up a, you know, what we're calling [LAUGHS] a Coalition of the Willing to launch [BOB LAUGHS] pilot programs for this idea with some of the stations big and small. We are testing national/local news collaboration. That’s an area we can grow. And then one of the biggest things we need to tackle – and I do not have an answer for you [LAUGHS] on this yet, I'm sorry – is we need to figure out how we can work together to raise money because, you know, America, this needs to get paid for.

BOB GARFIELD: Everything you've said makes absolutely perfect sense, and it’s more or less exactly what your predecessor Ken Stern told me about a year ago. And, you know, he ran headlong into about a thousand Mack trucks going in the opposite direction. What can you do differently with respect to your relationship with the stations that will give you more political success in carrying out this vision?

VIVIAN SCHILLER: I can build trust. There’s some caution from the stations to NPR, and vice versa, frankly. I am a great believer in the power of the local station and what it represents in the community. That is something that doesn't exist in media. So when the stations hear me say that I think that NPR’s role is to enable and facilitate local stations to present their content with whatever content of ours they want to take, customized to their community, and it’s not Big Brother coming in and saying, here’s how we're going to do it, those are the kinds of things that begin to build trust. At least I hope so, because that is what I want to do.

BOB GARFIELD: Vivian, thank you very much.

VIVIAN SCHILLER: Thank you.

BOB GARFIELD: Vivian Schiller is the president and CEO of National Public Radio. And, man, do we wish her well.