The keynote event at the Future of Television East conference here in New York a few weeks ago was a conversation with Paula Kerger, President & CEO of PBS.  During the discussion, the subject of the iPhone NPR app came up as a model of  what digital distribution of PBS content could someday look like.

Although the tremendously successful  BBC iPlayer might have been a more apt example, I was happy nonetheless to hear one of my favorite iPhone apps getting some recognition.

Of course, the ability of internet radio to provide access to any station regardless of the geographical limitations of its over-the-air broadcast range were touted -  Kerger, as it happens, enjoys listening to Maine public radio (where she has a summer home) while traveling.  However, what was left unsaid about the NPR iPhone app was what I feel is its most notable feature:  the “Programs” section, a comprehensive implementation of all available on-demand streams organized by program rather than station.  Not only that, but news shows such as “All Things Considered” are broken down by individual segments, so one can actually browse within the show (of course, for a more passive experience you can still play all segments sequentially via a playlist).

So in addition to freeing us from geographical constraints, the NPR app now frees us from temporal constraints as well.  To an avid NPR listener such as yours truly, this is huge.  One could argue that vast number of NPR podcasts available address both issues as well, but the streaming app frees me from having to constantly sync my iPhone to my home computer, saves me from having to manage individual podcast files, and saves disk space on both the computer and the iPhone.  Maybe more importantly, though, listening via streaming is much more conducive to spontaneous browsing and discovery of new local programming organized by station (visit the California/KCRW listing for an example of a station that does a lot of local programming).

There’s one major drawback of of the streaming approach, though: as with all things iPhone, unless you have access to a 802.11  network, you’ve got to live with the AT&T data network, which in the New York City area remains a work in progress.  Want to listen to NPR while walking the streets of Manhattan?   Be prepared for the stream to drop regularly, in my experience about once per block.  It’s a lot like using the iPhone as - well, a phone - in New York: AT&T decides when my call is over almost as often as I do (more on that here).

I’m reminded of an amusing moment from the same Future of Television event: during a panel later that day, someone from AT&T Digital Distribution was speaking of a bright and shiny future in mobile digital media distribution, unaware that as he spoke the live audience response twitter page projected on a screen behind him was showing a tweet noting that it was ‘interesting’ that there was no AT&T coverage (voice or data) in the hall at that very moment.

Given a more robust network, though, we see streaming (i.e. the iPhone app) as having certain advantages over downloading (i.e. podcasts) - this is also, by the way, the trend in the still-nascent internet television space.  To the extent a similarly (and fearlessly) complete implementation will someday be made available for premium video content on your television, the NPR app provides an enticing glimpse of a customer-centric, on-demand (and thoroughly monetizable) media future.

Time will tell how internet video plays out - in the meantime, if you listen to NPR and own an iPhone, you need the NPR iPhone app.