Why don't they tie the local stations into the apps so revenue can be tracked by either sposorship or geolocation? As well as locally relevant content?
I would imagine that would open a whole can of works for clearing licensing for clips used on shows produced at the local NPR stations. Right now, you can be pretty well assured that there's a limited audience for these based on signal propagation. The moment that you take a local station and put it online the agencies through which you clear these clips are going to squeeze you for more money because the potential audience size is larger.