Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #562: A Useful Key to Using Social Media Posts on the Air

It’s hard to understand why an air talent thinks that reading social media posts on the air can somehow be inherently interesting in itself.

Sure, some postings are good, cool, funny, sweet. And we can certainly use those. But we all know that most “normal” people – who aren’t trained in how to communicate or entertain – are pretty boring. Bless their hearts, they use too many words and include insignificant details. The first sentence we hear can make you not want to hear the second one.

However, I never point out an issue without giving you a solution. Here’s a simple cure that will make this work for you:

Just use the good part – the one “quote” worth repeating. It’ll just be a sentence or two. We don’t need to know their dogs’ names.

Then you continue – if you want to – with your words, not more of theirs.

Start today in disciplining yourself to quit reading too much of it. Just using the one relevant part as a springboard, with your supplying the rest, lets us know how YOU feel. (We bond when that happens.) And the bonus is that this process actually makes the person who posted it look smarter.

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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (mobile)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2024 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #561: I’m a Ramblin’ Guy

At the start of his career, *Steve Martin’s standup routine included a “Ramblin’ Guy” parody folk song that started well, and then just kind of drifted off into the ozone layer for a while.

Sadly, we’ve all heard this (or done it ourselves), but it wasn’t funny. It was just someone starting something, then losing the center of it, then trying to steer it back onto the road, but adding too many words, using too many examples – all things I’ve written about in recent tips.

Here’s how to stop the “ramblin’ guy’ syndrome: Figure out how you’re going to END first. THEN figure out how you’re going to start; how you’ll get into the Subject.

Like a lot of things I coach, this seems too simple. It might seem backwards. But it instantly leads to developing a true awareness, in the moment, of how straight a line you’re going in – how many words you’re throwing at something.

Cut it down to the bone, then just relax into it and “let it breathe” a bit when you do it on the air. There’s room for a little leeway, but you have to stop yourself from the “adding one more thing” impulse.

(*We love you, Steve. Thanks for all the brilliant work. And for those who’ve heard that song, “.…blinnnnnnn.”)

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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (mobile)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2024 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #560: Overcoming Low Expectations

My dear friend Beau Weaver, Voice Actor extraordinaire, recently expressed some interesting thoughts about today’s radio.
One of the things he said was that most young people he talks to think of a deejay as that person who mixes music at a club. Younger demos don’t care much about radio; they care more about podcasts and You Tube influencers. Radio, as usual, gets little respect.

So okay, how do you change this impression? How do you avoid being thought of as less than we were a decade or two ago?

It’s simple: be about the Listener’s life. (And yours.)

Lots of air talents are quick to talk about their lives. But remember that you…come second. The listener’s life is the springboard; your story is the complimentary piece. Most stations seem to get this order wrong. “I – me – my” is the language of the self-obsessed “all about me” people that we would avoid in daily life.

The minute I found this principle in my own career, everything after that was easy. So I’m passing it on to you – free. Now the question is whether or not you’ll do it.

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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (mobile)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2024 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #559: Two Thoughts About Imaging

Your station’s Imaging is on 24/7/365. More, by FAR, than any individual air talent is on.

It sends out your message to the listener; how you want to be thought of. Or as everyone says today, “Your Brand.” (Ick. What a stupid label.)

So, let me help you with two related thoughts:

1. Tell the truth.
Enough with the empty bragging. “The best of today and yesterday” sounds like a butcher shop trying to get rid of some hamburger that looks kind of gray.

2. Tell me what makes you different.
We’ve heard all the “blah blah” about “your favorites” or “50-minute music hours” or “12 in a row”. What separates you from every other station? What’s the Benefit for my spending time with you? (“Traffic on the 8s” worked for KRLD in Dallas, and became a mainstay for many other stations after they saw how this worked.)

If I consider every time your Imaging plays to be an unnecessary commercial for you, that’s not going to form the basis of a long-term relationship. Why you, instead of someone else? THAT should be your message.

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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (mobile)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2024 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #558: Now and Then – A Lesson from the Beatles

Right at the end of 2023, an amazing thing happened. The great movie director Peter Jackson got with Giles Martin, son of the Beatles’ producer George Martin, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr, and using ‘computer learning’, salvaged a John Lennon demo of a song called “Now and Then”.

It became a massive hit (#1 in England, 54 years after their last #1, and the same type of reception all over the world). And the video Jackson created was remarkable. Using today’s technology, it “placed” John Lennon and George Harrison alongside Paul and Ringo, and truly felt like a new Beatles song, with a message that resonated everywhere — how we miss those that we love, and how much they affect our lives.

But it also fleshed out an interesting phenomenon. Thousands of people, from 76 years old, to people 7 years old, went online or made You Tube comments about how much the Beatles changed their lives.

The reason: When you move people emotionally, when they feel like someone else is feeling the same things they’re going through, that’s when they bond with you.

I talk all the time about finding the core Emotion of a Subject, and making sure that nothing you do on the air LACKS an emotion of some sort. The Beatles – almost 60 years after we first heard them – made that case.

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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (mobile)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2024 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #557: What’s Better on the Other Side of the Radio?

Radio personalities tend to think only of what works in the Control Room, not necessarily what works better on the OTHER side of the radio – you know, the Listener’s side.

My brilliant friend John Frost and I had a challenge once in Orlando. Together, we ran five stations, one of which was a rather dormant AM station that we wanted to resurrect as a Sports Talk station.

But we didn’t have a budget to make a splash, and get people to sample this new baby that was one of the very first Sports Talk stations in that day to really open up the so-called rules. We wanted big personalities, parody commercials, a station Imaging voice (Jeff Lawrence) who was crazy inventive. But that was all just on the air. How to get noticed was the challenge.

So…

Gary “Zippy” Wallace was a budding talent, but we didn’t know where to put him, so he landed on the Sports station’s morning show as a “stunt” guy.
We worked with Krispy Kreme to give us a mountain of donuts to give away, and placed Gary at the busiest intersection in the city, by the arena where the Orlando Magic basketball team played. (They were a BIG deal then, with Shaquille O’Neal at center.) Gary had a small basketball and rim that he could hang on his chest, and when people stopped at the longest-duration stoplight I’ve ever sen, he offered them the chance to sink a basket with a nerf basketball – and if they did, they got a free donut!

Several hundred donuts later, people had something to REMEMBER about our new Sports station – and Gary Wallace.

Sometimes, the best way to connect with people is on the street, where they live and work.

What have you done OUTSIDE the studio to attract people to the station?

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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (mobile)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2024 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #556: Your Show is a Movie

In the last tip, I said “Your show really is a movie without the camera.”

After you get past learning “the basics”, then develop a real Personality on the air, you’ll hopefully reach a stage in your career where the ego disappears and you actually just get in a zone where it’s almost impossible to have a bad show.

But I believe it requires getting outside of radio, mentally, and seeing each “Content” break you do as a little movie (without the camera).

What do I, as a listener, FEEL when you talk about something?
Great movies operate on an emotional plane. Example: ‘Star Wars’ wasn’t really about special effects. It was a space western, focused on good and evil. And two of the best decisions that George Lucas made were (1) picking Alec Guinness to play Obi-wan Kenobi, and (2) getting James Earl Jones to do the voice of Darth Vader. Because they’re great actors, and just their voices alone define what their characters are all about, and where the plot line is.

Think about this as you put something on the air. For instance, as you edit a phone call (or take one live), where’s that place that you’d get out, if this were a movie? I hear so many calls where the air talent just won’t take that first “exit”, and apparently can’t keep from summarizing or editorializing or playing psychologist. (Which poisons what we just heard.)

Really think about how you frame Content. First, select a camera angle and identify what emotion is at the core. Think about how to ENGAGE the listener. Shape the vocabulary. Decide if you want to use some music under it. (Hint: it should “cradle” what’s being said). Have a definite ending in mind.

When your show is like a little movie we watch every day, you won’t have to worry about your ratings.

If you haven’t gotten to this level yet, get a coach. (I actually know of one you could use. )

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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (mobile)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2024 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #555: Finding the Core of a Topic

Okay, let’s go to work on why a topic (if we must use that word) clicks on the air, or just falls kind of flat.

Case in point, a husband-and-wife afternoon show I’ve coached for several years. They have lots of chemistry and a good sense of who the listener is, but like everyone, they need a little reminder now and then.

Our last session focused on thinking about subject matter in an artistic way; how to really bring something to life. Remember, the whole idea is to actually ENGAGE the Listener.

Here’s what I sent them in a session recap:

The other day, you got into a thing with this: So many times, we have inanimate objects that we decide to give them a name…”
Okay, that’s true, but why do I care? The reason is simple – that wording lacks a core Emotion.

But “We give names to the things we LOVE, like our cars…” is stronger, because it plugs into the emotional side of the brain, rather than just the intellectual side.

You’ll find that the starting place for prepping something is to find its Emotional “center”. It’ll frame the story, and shape the wording for you.

Yes, I know, I dwell on this a lot. But it’s the difference between a “blah” movie and a great movie that you wouldn’t mind seeing again.

And your show is really a movie without the camera.

More on that in the next tip.

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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (mobile)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2024 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #554: The First Class Curtain

If you fly a lot, you get perks, upgrades, free beverages, hot towels, and great seats. If you don’t (like me), you’re crammed into the “cattle car” seats with Jabba the Hut sitting next to you with his elbow in your ribs the entire flight. There’s that curtain between coach and First Class that says, “You’re not welcome here.”

The point being that often, a business concentrates so hard on pleasing the core customer that it treats the others like they’re not particularly wanted, except to buy a ticket.

Radio stations went through a phase of trying to attract everybody, then realized that concentrating on the core listener was better.

But many of them, especially in formats like Smooth Jazz, NewsTalk, and Contemporary Christian, largely ONLY appealed to the target listener. This is why Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC’s audiences are smaller than the audience for “Two and a Half Men” or “Everybody Loves Raymond” reruns.

Look, I totally believe in aiming for the middle of the bulls-eye when it comes to the target listener. But I also believe that you don’t want to give the impression that that’s the only person you want.

I’ve heard Smooth Jazz air talents dive so deep into the music – “so and so played saxophone on this song”-type stuff that they RULE OUT anyone else listening. And definitely many Contemporary Christian Music stations can fall into this trap. Sometimes the Imaging alone is what can chase people away.

So here’s the lesson: yes, aim at the target listener, but make it easy for someone just tuning in for the first time to feel just as welcome. This doesn’t mean widening the playlist or opening up Content to try and speak to everyone. It simply means that you want to be accessible. No curtain.

You’re welcome. No charge.

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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (mobile)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2024 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #553: The More Intimate, the Better

One of the things that keeps coming up in my coaching sessions is this imaginary concept that you want to spread a wide blanket over your Content, keeping it accessible to the masses. “Broad” Subject headings, not too personal, is the way a lot of stations sound. I can’t name any right this moment, because they’re too generic to remember.

Here’s what’s actually true: the more intimate your Content is, the more people you attract.

You’ll find that the things that upset you or bug you the most, just like the things that lift your heart the most, are the most universal. It’s when we get “one size fits all” in our thinking that we lose the most one-on-one connections.

There’s a reason that Apple lets you label your purchases. I just got new AirPods, in their little charging unit WITH MY NAME ON IT.

Just another reason why Apple is so successful. You never feel like you’re just a name and a credit card to them.

Your show should be YOUR show. People don’t respond as well to just “a” show.

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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (mobile)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2024 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.