Kneale Mann Article part One

Kneale Mann and I have had an interesting 18 year relationship. He was doing all nights when I started at CFNY in August of 89. He was not a big fan of the H+F show and one night sort of freaked out at our producer Dan Duran. Well I freaked out in return and kicked the crap out of the studio door. I'm sure my boot print is still there. Fast forward to many years of working together later and all is well. Kneale was MD for years at the Edge and then PD in Ottawa.

We've been keeping in touch since neither of us is working (Unemployment loves company.) and he sent me this article he wrote recently for an industry paper call the Friday Morning Quarterback.
I think you'll find it quite interesting.

ContentContextCommunity

Whenever I am on a flight over mountains, I like to search for those little pockets of life. I often wonder how a town of a few dozen people can sustain in the midst of such grand expansion. Someone had to put up the first hut, make the first fire, clear the first path and suddenly there was a settlement, a village, a town, and one day in some cases – a city of nine million on the banks of Lake Michigan.

There are hundreds of stories like this, stories of how your market grew from the first few settlers into a CMA that is now home to thousands if not millions.

At one time, it was viewed as great progress when you could dip the end of a feather into a well of ink and scratch a note on a piece of dried wood pulp. In order to get the message to the recipient, you would need to then hire a messenger who would deliver your note on horseback. Today, we send messages thumbed on handheld wireless devices to the other side of the planet in an instant.

In 1943, Abraham Maslow wrote an article entitled "The Hierarchy of Needs". In it, he described what humans require to enjoy an enriched life. Those needs run the gambit from the most basic such as food, water, and sleep and continue all the way to self-actualization.

Nestled right above the need to keep our bodies alive, is the need to belong, to be a part of something, to feel needed by others. That’s the reason for communities, clubs, associations, sports teams, email. Humans need human interaction.

The MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, iPod phenomenon is by no means a new concept; it's just a new delivery system.

As I have said numerous times, Microsoft Word does not make you Hemmingway. Whether it’s an ink dipped feather or a blackberry, if the message is of no interest to its recipient, the instrument is irrelevant. Think about that the next time you put something on your radio station. Is your message interesting? Does your content have context?

In Radio, we have an opportunity to create a community, a connection to content and context. We cannot simply dumb down this gorgeous medium by playing 10-in-a-row and giving away concert tickets. Listeners want more than sound coming out of speakers and the latest Carrie Underwood or Linkin Park. We can do better than that. And in a world of user-made content, it’s a matter of our survival!

How many times have you been at a dinner when someone talks about how radio could be better? Are we the enlightened ones who don’t feel that the great unwashed could handle more than time, temp, shut up and play the hits?

We spend a great amount of our waking hours wondering what’s next. PPMs are a reality, younger demos aren’t consuming radio as much as they did in the past, the industry has done a pretty underwhelming job embracing interactive possibilities but I’m referring to something much more human.