Radio on the computer

Ira Glass, I'm a huge fan.

Of your show. Not your website.

Today I listened to last week's This American Life episode about maps. Not the unfold-and-block-the-whole-windshield kind in the glove box, but very specific maps that when layered, function almost as a neighborhood novel, the show explained. The interviewee, Denis Wood, compiled non-traditional views of his Raleigh neighborhood—traffic signs, overhead electric wire, pools of street lamp light, houses with holiday decorations, addresses that appear in the local newsletter—into an atlas. Ira promised a few its images were posted on the easy-to-remember thisamericanlife.org.

I immediately booted up my computer while the rest of the show was still running, intrigued by these maps. But once the site fully loaded, no web banner brought me directly to the visuals mentioned on air. I poked around to find the episode's page, and even then, the one associated image was tiny and static. (See?)

A link within the episode's line up took me to the atlas' publisher's site where an animated banner flashed through a few of the book's pages, but nothing I could manipulate and inspect at my leisure. (The introduction was written by Ira, which makes me wonder about the integrity of his sources. Conflict of interest?)

This whole exchange makes me want to do a UI study on public radio websites, a long-standing latent desire.

Scene: When a radio anchor offers a call to action on air, the transferability between media—radio to web—should be seamless. Keeping me on your site longer is not accomplished by making me dig—digging just frustrates. Give me what you advertised—big, bold, and beautiful—then direct me to related stories, leading me down a bread crumb trail. I'll hardly even notice how much I've wandered.

So, how can we improve the jump between radio and web? Now that I'm streaming radio podcasts through apps like Stitcher, the transition should be smoother than ever. Both things—radio listening and web viewing—are done via mobile.

Here are a few basic improvements I've thought of:

• Calls to action given on air as vanity URLs?
• In-app banners that take you directly to the online story?
• Scrolling photo/link gallery above the fold of every online story to supplement streaming audio?

Now it's your turn. How would you stitch up radio and web?