[greenyoda]

> Lastly, you should note that a lot of our business now comes from selling The Public Radio to radio stations (again, mostly NPR affiliates) to give out as fund drive gifts.

Here in NYC, we have two NPR-affiliated public radio stations that often play different content, WNYC AM and WNYC FM, and their parent organization also runs WQXR (a classical music station) and NJ public radio. So even if you only listen to public radio (like I do), an untunable FM-only radio wouldn't be enough. ("Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.")

My ideal "simple" radio would be one that worked like my car radio: you can preset any number of AM/FM stations and then select them with forward/backward buttons. (And once you have a display that can indicate the station, it would be sad if it couldn't also be an alarm clock.)

[reaperducer]

Here in NYC

There are hundreds of other markets in the United States than New York City (and tens of thousands worldwide), and the vast majority of them have just one public radio station.

This isn't a "public radio tuner." It's a single station tuner.

[pencerw]

So for one, WNYC is actually one of our biggest customers to date. You'll hear our radios being plugged on Brian Lehrer (among others) periodically if you listen closely. Again, our philosophy is that customers are deciding on the station (not parent organization - the actual broadcasting station) they want to listen to every day and staying there.

For two, we definitely tried that early on! And we've had a lot of conversations about replacing the potentiomenter (which controls power and volume) with a rotary encoder (which, if you added a push button to it, could be used to control a lot of other interactions with the radio, including seek/scan, etc). The issue is that doing so would easily raise our cost by $5, which means we need to raise our retail pricing by $15 or $20, which ends up being crazy.

I've said this elsewhere in this thread, but The Public Radio totally isn't for everyone! But a surprising number of people like it just the way it is, and we've worked hard to build a business to support their needs as efficiently as possible.

[WWLink]

The solution is obvious! Buy three The Public Radios! Isn't it genius? :D