Thank you, Hansine. It’s all clear now.

2007 has been a tough media year; stressful for many, expensive for some. Media institutions -public and private, rich and not so rich – seem to have entered the no-confidence zone. Self-doubt is the tone of the year. 2008 won’t be any easier. Nor will 2009.

The evidence is overwhelming. Not so much for revolutionary insight as for amassed tonnage. If it were not for the bliss of 300 Gbyte storage and PDF files the reports, printed out, would be an uncontrollable mass, or mess. Smart people are studying, thinking and emailing it all to me.

Venture capital firm 3i, in a report titled Engage or Die, revealed a slice of brilliant thought aimed at the heart of medias’ current problem. Much of what they report rings true and certainly rings true for those who live hyper-connected, hyper-rich and hyper-ventilating.

Venture capital and private equity firms occupy a unique, rather exalted, often mystical space separated from mere mortals by bags and bags of money. Some days they like media. Some days they don’t. What they always like is growth. We earth-bound are grateful, and expected to be.

ftm background

No US Radio Person of the Year
Brought to our attention, quite late it seems, was that the turn of the new year did not produce an American radio person of the year. At least this was the judgment of a tip sheet for US radio broadcasters.

Jack’s a Joke
Yet another radio format sails across the Atlantic brimming with promise. It’s called Jack FM. The first stop will be Oxford in the UK in March. Liverpool and Manchester might be next if OFCOM is persuaded. Think of it as bird flu on a hard disc.

Observatoire de la Radio: Intensité et attachement
IP France offers an extraordinary look at French national radio channels content and the listeners.

The Format Radio Brand
The Format Radio Brand is a product with a name on it. Function and structure work together to define the benefit. The choice and placement of program elements is systematic and consistent. As competition for audience and ad revenue becomes fierce, producers adopt the Format Radio Brand to separate theirs from the vague General Radio Brands. Brand names and positioning become shorthand for consumers; saving time, effort and minimizing risk.

The reports main pitch is the investment value of social media and user-generated content. Somewhere, somehow, Web 2.0’s social networking and home video dumping monetizes because, as tradition warrants, advertising money arrives where consumers gather.

I read the 3i report at least three times, with Hansine’s radio show in the background.

Twenty-five years ago, a different world certainly, I was given the task by a fabled, though minor, media mogul to ‘find out what they want.’ What, he demanded, makes them – radio listeners, in this case - gather. Armed with pencil, paper and coffee money off I went to find an answer.

There were studies and focus groups and experts and lots of very long days making sense of it all. Most revealing in those years of asking questions was finding that media people weren’t asking the right questions. People know what they like and like what they know. Once beyond lists and options people want something very simple from media and, indeed, most everything on that great shelf-space of life. They want to be attached, engaged.

And twenty-five years before that an eight-year old would create stories by taking a stack of old magazines, a pair of scissors and a bottle of glue and pasting the words and illustrations on a page. This was not, then, referred to as ‘user-generated content.’ No ad buyer was in pain trying to get space on that page. Publishers were not intent on inventing a means of ripping the scissors from the kids’ little hand.

Equally inventive as the investment bankers and nearly as rich are the super-tech companies. And none is more respected than Nokia. They, too, released a study intended to glimpse into the future. In fact, it’s titled A Glimpse of the Next Episode.

I read this report at least three times having Hansine’s radio show on in the background.

After interviewing ‘trend-setters’ in 17 countries Nokia and the Future Laboratory described a new phenomenon – circular entertainment. More people, they found, like to cut and paste then show their creations to anybody willing to look. In the next five years a quarter of all entertainment will be consumed this way, they say.

Trends supporting the circular entertainment idea include blurring on and off line reality, blurring the commercial and the creative, localism and feminization. “Entertainment will be more collaborative, democratic, emotional and customized - all of which are 'female' traits,” said the release.

None of these new ideas are new to radio broadcasters. Every meeting between a program director and a show host on a successful station includes a discussion of ‘engaging the listener’. So oft repeated is the mantra of engagement that it’s the radio broadcasters third eye.

Radio has long created characters, blurring on and off air reality, some being the listeners themselves. Access by telephone has given listeners a means of attachment, engagement, and allowed them to be part of the radio show. Radio show hosts’ most important technical training is in the use of the telephone system. Stations now use every possible access point, including taking the station ‘outside’ to further engage listeners.

I’ve been reminded of all this, my radio broadcasting career a distant memory, while listening to Hansine on a local Geneva station. Engagement, the old studies show, must be ‘allowed.’ Some show hosts know how to do that and some do not. It can’t be faked. Hansine stands out because she truly engages.

Hansine’s radio show is one of the best examples of media being – borrowing the words of the Nokia study – ‘collaborative, democratic, emotional and customized.’ Characters move in and out of the show, there’s no pushing or shoving. Every minute is different.

Beyond all else, Hansine engages listeners, one at a time. An anecdote from the stations’ staff tells of the day a substitute phone screener shocked callers…because he was obviously not Hansine. The show is overwhelmingly oriented toward women, ex-pats living in the Geneva area. Note the ‘feminization of entertainment’ from Nokia’s study.

She does not hesitate relating stories ranging from ‘twisted knickers’ to her driving record to shopping, often in blunt character. Well, callers wanting to share their own stories were horrified, momentarily speechless, when the phone screener turned out to be male. Men do listen to the show (obviously, here I am). It’s a safe – and humorous – way to hear what women have to say.

But 2007 is a year of change. The local, commercial station has become a national, public channel, significantly changing the orientation. Hansine’s last show is tomorrow, away to ‘spend more time with the family.’ It’s all very clear.