Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #663: Sounding Smart

Posted on February 18, 2026 by tommykramer

If you make grammatical errors, like mangling the object of a preposition (“Between her and I,” instead of “between her and me,” for instance), that shows a level of education that isn’t high enough.

We’re supposed to set the standard. We’re supposed to be the one person in the group who’s the best conversationalist, that uses the fewest words to make a point, that uses the right words to express your emotions, and can generate enough friendship and excitement just to hear what you have to say – the person who’s welcome in any conversation. THAT’S the goal.

To be a good conversationalist is to be an intelligent conversationalist. Not a “brainiac” or an “I’m smarter than you are” stiff; just a person whose thoughts are welcome, maybe even occasionally quoted by other people.

I believe that if you don’t sound smart, no one’s going to come to you for your thoughts when something dramatic happens.

Think about this: We OWE IT to the listener to sound smart. If you speak like an undereducated clod, why would I want to listen to you?

– – – – – – –
Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (mobile)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2026 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #662: Group Airchecks

Posted on February 11, 2026 by tommykramer

Here’s something that was sort of revolutionary at the time, I guess, but sadly just disappeared as voice-tracking came in.

Group airchecks.

Back in the day in Dallas, the entire air staff were actually friends, and hung out together a lot.
Once in a while, we’d sit and listen to airchecks of each other, and exchange our thoughts about what we heard.

Over the course of the comments, we created “rules” – formatics – that we wanted to run through the station. We wanted to do things the same WAY, but be totally unpredictable in WHAT we did, given each of our personalities. And “Personality” grew, as we all giggled or pointed out what worked or what bombed.

Common language – a sort of station “vocabulary” grew out of these group sessions.

But here’s the main thing – the result was that we all got better at the same rate of speed. The entire staff sounded like we knew each other and liked each other, and all of us liked what we were doing for a living.

Radio isn’t “dead”, as some people believe, but in terms of real Personality, it’s pretty much on life support.

Change that, and you change your career.

– – – – – – –
Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (mobile)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2026 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #661: Once an Hour

Posted on February 4, 2026 by tommykramer

This tip is about creating a “phone culture”, because it’s sad to me that many shows have to struggle mightily to get feedback from their audience.

It’s simple: ONCE an HOUR, say something like, “You’re always welcome to join the show…” and then add the phone number.

The goal is to create a group of 10 or 20 people that will ALWAYS respond to what you’re doing on the air.

Do this for as long as it takes to “stock” the show with listeners’ feelings.
Because – and I’ve said this many times – I don’t really care about what you think, but I’ll always care about what you FEEL.

People connect through expressing their emotions, not just analytical “takes” on a given subject.

– – – – – – –
Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (mobile)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2026 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #660: “Heavy Dan”

Posted on January 28, 2026 by tommykramer

One more trip down memory lane that I hope will help you…

In my radio infancy at giant CHR station KEEL in Shreveport, Lousiana, I was blessed with influences that would not only flesh out my own career, but lead to many things I’ve coached over the last 30 years.
Such is the case with a guy named Dan Voigtlander. (Pronounced Voit – lander.)

Dan was in the air force, serving at Barksdale Air Base. But he also did the all-night show on KEEL (midnight to 6am). Great attitude, loved being on the radio, worked all night, went home and slept a few hours, then worked all day. But he wasn’t a really great talent. He was average, but he was also a nice sweet guy. Just very “straight” (as we said in those days). Not “hip” at all.

So, one day, because it was just the opposite of what he was, the afternoon guy and I started calling him “Heavy Dan”. (“Heavy” being a word we tossed around back then.) We were just joking around, and I guess some people might have thought this was a little bit cruel, actually. But it made us laugh, and since the name “Voigtlander” was cumbersome, we kept the nickname.

And he LOVED it. The gently teasing nickname THRILLED him. So, “Heavy Dan” he was. The guys at the air base starting calling him that, too, and in his own way, he became a star! (And, stiff as he was, he did get better and better over time. He was “one of the gang” now.)

The reason this worked out was because we all really liked and cared for Dan, and each other. And as I moved up (and around) in my career, I found that this was a key ingredient in every truly great station I ever heard. Every member of the air staff cheered the rest of the staff on. We were each other’s biggest fans.

If this isn’t how your station is, why not?

– – – – – – –
Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (mobile)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2026 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #659: Steve Kelly

Posted on January 21, 2026 by tommykramer

In the last tip, I talked about one of my main mentors, the great Larry Ryan, in my hometown of Shreveport.

Another person on that same staff at Top 40 “blowtorch” KEEL back in the day was a guy named Steve Kelly.

Steve was doing middays at KEEL, had a fantastic voice, and was a wonderful Production man. (You’ve no doubt heard Steve’s voice many, many times on national spots and hundreds of concert promos. He eventually became President and Creative Officer of Bill Young Productions – for over 30 years now.)

I had started on the all-night show, midnight to 6am, and for a long time, I was only allowed to dub commercials into the system – which Steve showed me how to do. He then began to use me on two-voice spots, usually as a character voice. Little by little, he fed me more tips on how to do polished Production.

Decades later, I still remember Steve’s incredible guidance and patience. And I ended up doing literally hundreds of commercial spots and promos, nationally-aired PSA’s, writing and producing jingles, and winning dozens of awards I could have never envisioned when I was just a duckling, paying rapt attention to whatever Steve showed me.

Here’s the point: you should want to work with people who are more skilled than you are, and LEARN from them.

If that’s not the environment that you’re currently in, you might want to take a look at how you can change it.

– – – – – – –
Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (mobile)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2026 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #658: Who You Want to be Like

Posted on January 14, 2026 by tommykramer

In coaching somewhere around 1700 people over the last 30 years, I’ve found that a handy tool – particularly with young Talent – is to ask who they want to be like.

Think of how many kids growing up wanted to “Be Like Mike” (Michael Jordan). Kobe Bryant, for one. While he couldn’t be exactly like M. J., he definitely was the closest thing to him.

For me, personally, it was a guy named Larry Ryan. When I was growing up in Shreveport, Louisiana, Larry was THE guy on the radio. Funny, engaging, always interesting.

While I couldn’t possibly be as good as Larry, watching him navigate his popularity, and just seeing what he brought to the show each day, was inspiring.
I never got as good as Larry. But I did have the highest ratings in Shreveport history, was #1 in both Dallas and Houston, and made it into the Texas Radio Hall of Fame.

Just TRYING to be like your influences can lead to things you never dreamed of before.

– – – – – – –
Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (mobile)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2026 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #657: One New Feature

Posted on January 7, 2026 by tommykramer

One of the things I always challenge morning shows to do as a new year begins is to come up with one new “feature” for the show.

This means dropping one old one.

One of the definitions of a feature is “Something offered as a special attraction.”
SPECIAL attraction. Not just something you start doing, but something you draw attention to.

Here are a few keys:

• It has to be focused. (Know your target listener. Aim for the bulls-eye.)
• You should have several examples in mind of how it’ll unfold before you ever air it.
• Think about a produced intro to make it stand out. (But make it short. A big buildup can backfire on you.)
• Think of how each “episode” ends first. THEN think of how to start it.

If you get into the habit of letting older bits go, and replacing them with new ones, you’ll probably put a little more distance between you and your competitors.

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #656: Kids

Posted on December 31, 2025 by tommykramer

If you accept the old saying that “the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach,” then it’s my firm belief that the way to a woman’s heart (on the air) is through her kids.

So if you target women, trust that even if she doesn’t have kids, someone else in her family does, or at least one of her closest friends does. And, everyone has a story to tell; it’s “common ground subject” #1.

In my own on-air career, I found countless ways to involve kids – like having a different kid do each phrase of “The Night Before Christmas” and then editing it together, or a montage of kids doing one line each of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” (for opening day of our Triple-A team in my hometown). And now, all these years later, I’m still helping talent come up with more ideas in our coaching sessions. “Kids Only” contests, “What your kids want for Christmas,” etc. You talk to her about her kids, or even better, put them on the air, and you’ve broken through in a way that no contrived joke or aggressive approach can.

Kids. (In the words of the sixties group Jefferson Airplane, “Bless their pointed little heads.”)

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #655: Faith and Hope

Posted on December 25, 2025 by tommykramer

It seems appropriate as we head toward the end of 2025 to offer this tip:

The world runs on Faith and Hope.

Either one of those will do, but both of them together is what everybody wants.
So – in the coaching process, and in the learning process, you have to have faith that you’re going to get better. And you have to hope that this next step will get you up that talent staircase to where you’re really a top-level performer.

Another year of coaching passes, and I wish everyone reading this a great next year.

Tommy Kramer CoachingTip #654: Environmental Awareness

Posted on December 17, 2025 by tommykramer

Radio still seems to be somewhat nomadic. Rarely, if ever, does an air talent stay at one station all of his/her career.

But hopefully, moving to a new station is an upward move. I worked at many stations over my 30+-year on-air career, and nothing illustrates this point better than an early move I made from Dallas to San Diego.

I was leaving KNUS in Dallas (the first FM station to ever be #1), and felt fairly confident that I had learned quite a lot at that point working for radio pioneer Gordon McLendon and his VP, Ken Dowe.

But KCBQ in San Diego was the hottest CHR station in the country, and I would make 50% more salary there.
However, it wasn’t quite the same. While the whole airstaff in Dallas had contributed to our formatics, the way we handled, for instance, a “cold” ending song into a song that started cold “(:00 intro); never saying the call letters into commercials (because guess what doing that signals to the listener over time), and many other minute, but important ingredients.

KCBQ was different. The PD, the brilliant Jack McCoy, had just come off probably the most famous contest ever, “The Last Contest”, which offered fantastic prizes and created “buzz” like no one had seen before. The on-air approach was more “up” and the breaks over song intros and stop-down Content breaks were quite short. And it had that southern California “cool” vibe.

I had adjustments to make. I paid attention, listened to the other dayparts, and got into the rhythm pretty quickly, but it did take a bit of tweaking.

When and if you go to a new station, take time to sense the environment. The overall vibe of the station, the timing of things, the kind of Content that works in that market – so you can fit in easily. Soon, you’ll be “part of the gang”, and bank another learning experience. Environmental Awareness always pays off.