Author Archives: tommykramer

About tommykramer

Tommy Kramer has spent over 35 years in radio as an on-air talent, Programmer, and Talent Coach, and has worked with over 300 stations in all formats, specializing in coaching morning team shows, but also working with entire staffs. In addition, he works with many premium voice actors that you hear every day on Imaging, Radio and TV commercials, and Hollywood Movie Trailers. Tommy was elected to the Texas Radio Hall of Fame in 2003. Call Tommy @ 214-632-3090 (iPhone), or email coachtommykramer@gmail.com

Tommy Kramer Tip #17 – Two more thoughts about “One Thought Per Break”

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We’ve all heard “one thought per break” as the goal of great radio. (And if you haven’t heard it before, you have now.)

The reason for that is simple: It’s extremely difficult, maybe even impossible, to do more than thought in a break and have it work. Listeners don’t respond well to more than one thought. Two thoughts in the same break compete with and dilute each other, so the break is, at best, 50% successful. But take those two thoughts and put each of them in a separate break, and you can be 100% successful. Twice. It’s kind of like the old Saturday Night Live parody spot: “It’s a floor wax. No, it’s a dessert topping. No, it’s both!”

No, it’s neither.

But there’s more here than meets the eye, so let me give you two more guidelines.

One EXAMPLE per break. I don’t need a laundry list of examples. Just give me one good one.

And even deeper than that is something the great Bobby Ocean once said: One EMOTION per break.

Embrace these additional rules, and you’ll be amazed at the clarity it gives you. And clarity – simplicity by design – is what works best. (Think iPad. A 2-year old can use it, even though its inner workings are very complicated.)

And notice that I’m stopping there, because you only need one example to “get it.”

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Tommy Kramer
Radio Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (iPhone)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2013 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Tip #16 – PERFORMANCE is King

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The articles are everywhere, every radio convention has a session on it, and the thought is drilled into every air talent’s head: Content is King.

But that’s not true. While Content is a huge factor in your success, it’s only half of the equation. PERFORMANCE is King. If you give the script of The Odd Couple to inferior actors, it won’t work. The best Content in the world won’t matter if you can’t get it across to the listener in a way that stands out against all the puking, quacking, promoting, and hiding behind empty liners across the dial.

Here’s something you might have noticed – almost all jocks with musical skills turn out to be pretty good on the air. The timing it takes to play an instrument well, to fit into an arrangement with punctuation at the right time, and the diligence it takes to refine raw skills are all strong qualities that make for strong air talents.

The other side of the coin is that “Club deejays” make horrible air talents, because they’re about screeching to a house full of drunks OVER the music. They’re not voice actors; they’re just people on the street corner trying to get attention.

While you may not be a musician, there’s a fast track to gaining those elements of timing and patience.

In music radio, simply fit the song. Match its mood and tempo with your delivery. “Up” song, “up” delivery. Soft song, soft delivery.

Sometimes the best influences in creating great radio can best be learned through a different medium. That’s why in Talk Radio, I recommend renting The Music Man and noticing how the dialogue unfolds with a certain rhythm. Each line spoken (or sung) by each character or group of characters in the movie defines the era it’s set in, the general spirit of the film, and the collective rhythm of the mythical town of River City. You remember lines from the movie, or lyrics from the songs in it, because of that rhythm. Paul Harvey had his rhythm, Rush Limbaugh has his, and you have yours. But if we’re not already hearing it on the air, you’ll have to look for it, find it, and sharpen it. COMPEL people to listen by having your performance draw people toward the sound of it. It’s equal parts your voice, the construction of each break or segment, and your pace.

A great performer can make average material sound really good. But if on top of those performance skills, you add great Content, you’ll have a fine career.

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Tommy Kramer
Radio Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (iPhone)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2013 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Tip #15 – How to give Time Lines

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I keep hearing these dysfunctional Time Lines…”coming up,” “in a few minutes,” “later” or “later in the show,” “soon,” in minutes, ” “straight ahead,” etc.

All meaningless. To the listener hardened by “teases” with no follow-through for years, all lies. You might as well just say “…but not now.” Or “sometime before we all die.”

Here are the ONLY three ways to give Time Lines that actually work:

1. A SPECIFIC time—“7:20″ (NOT “about” 7:20 or “around” 7:20). If you make an appointment with me, be on time. (If you’re a network, use “at 7:20 Eastern” or something similar.)

2. A DURATION—a clear time FRAME, like “in the next twenty minutes” or “this hour.” Use five or ten-minute increments, not “in six minutes” or “within nine minutes.” (That’s too exact. I’m not listening with a stopwatch, and it isn’t the way people really speak.) If it’s going to come up in 17 minutes, say “in the next twenty minutes.” Keep in mind the purpose of giving a Time Line in the first place—to tell me how long I need to listen in order to make SURE that I’ll hear what you’re promoting. So you want toovershoot to the next five or ten-minute increment, so I won’t miss it.
Oh, and instead of “just after 8 o’clock” or “in about an hour” (too vague), say “between 8 and 8:30.”

3. “Next,” meaning that it will follow what’s playing now—this song, or this stopset. Do NOT say “after this” into commercials (or the silly “on the other side”); that just points out the commercials. Don’t say “when we come back,” either. That just says you’re “going away” somewhere while I sit here, waiting—or more likely, tuning to another station. And don’t say “in sixty seconds” or “in two minutes.” (Again, too exact. I’m not sitting here with a stopwatch. I’m busy.)

The CBS promos don’t say “The Big Bang Theory…sometime Thursday.”

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Tommy Kramer
Radio Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (iPhone)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2013 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #14 – Don’t ask Questions, make Statements

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We’re constantly barraged with questions on the air—in radio and TV. You’ve heard them…

  • “Do you want a great deal on a new car?” (No, I want a crappy deal on an old car. That’s a really stupid question.)
  • “Got milk?” (No, got Gatorade. Oh, and those billboards you have up, the picture of some athlete with a milk mustache—tell him to wipe his mouth.)
  • “What do you think?” (I don’t care, and neither do you, really. You just want me to do your show for you.)

I’m convinced that questions are the death of radio, including those vapid little rhetorical questions, like ending a line with “Right?” or “Okay?” or “sound good to you?” If you need my response, you’re out of luck. I’m busy. I have a life. (George Carlin covered this best with “When will all the rhetorical questions end?”)

Questions don’t sound like you’re talking to me; they just sound like you’re pretending to talk to me.

So put everything in STATEMENT form. You’ll get a totally different kind of reaction – an emotional reaction – and the things you say will carry more weight, because making a Statement tells me what you think—which questions don’t do. Plus, using a Statement is a stronger “call to action,” so people respond to it differently. “Vote now” is much more emphatic than “won’t you vote now?”

Start today. It’s easy. Say “You can win Eric Clapton tickets” instead of “Do you want to win Eric Clapton tickets?” Say “I’d love to know what you think” or “feel free to weigh in with your thoughts” instead of “What do you think?”

Oh, and this “make Statements” philosophy should be applied to your recorded Imaging and Promos, too. The answer to ANY question in your Imaging is “No.”

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Tommy Kramer
Radio Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (iPhone)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2013 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #13 – Talk TO the microphone

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Many air talents, even experienced ones, BROADcast. They talk too LOUD, sound really exaaaaaaaaaggerated, and can’t seem to relax into a more conversational delivery without losing energy or enthusiasm.

So here are two things to help you:

1.  Remember that it’s not theater, where you need to make sure the back row can hear you. It’s more like a movie, where the camera might be just a few inches away. The mic is not a megaphone, it’s an I-Max screen where everything is magnified. Be subtle. Sounding “interested” or “animated” is a better thought than having “energy.”

2.  See the microphone as the listener’s face. Whenever I worked in a female-targeted format, I just talked to my wife. In a male-targeted format, I just talked to my cousin Ricky, who was more like a brother to me. When you put a FACE to the microphone, it stops being an instrument and becomes a human being. You wouldn’t shout into someone’s ear from a foot away.

You want to talk TO the microphone, not through the microphone.

With a little practice and true commitment to get away from “announcing” or “presenting,” you’ll still be able to sound excited, enthusiastic, serious, thoughtful, intimate—all of the “crayons” in the box. You’ll automatically sound different from 95% of the blathering, loud-talking, blowhards who apparently think the listener is 20 feet away. And setting yourself apart from the rest of the herd is what careers are built on.

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Tommy Kramer
Radio Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (iPhone)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2013 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #12 – Interesting versus Relevant

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Often in coaching sessions, I hear something that laid a giant egg on the air justified by an air talent saying “Well, I just thought it was interesting.”

“Interesting” is okay, but remember that “interesting” is not the same as Relevant.

Relevance is the starting place. If it’s not relevant to the listener’s life, just being “interesting” won’t save it.

When your show Content matters to the listener, he or she tunes in again. When it’s just “interesting”—or even worse, just little odd stories or innocuous “fluff” Content—that’s a roll of the dice. Save the dice for Las Vegas. You don’t always need to make the listener gasp, or laugh. As a listener, the most important thing to me right this second might be just knowing if it’s going to rain, so I can keep my kids from getting pneumonia while they walk to school. Your doing “The ‘Um’ Game” or “Brain Teaser Trivia” just isn’t relevant to my life while I’m waiting to see if my kid needs to wear 14 yards of bubble wrap, his Darth Vader helmet, and rain boots. (It’s a long story. Suffice it to say that if you lose your raincoat, you get to start early on being seen as the Class Clown.)

Look at everything through the “Is this relevant?” lens. Throw out anything that’s not relevant to the listener’s life.

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Tommy Kramer
Radio Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (iPhone)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2013 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #11 – Real People Can’t Talk

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As radio continually beats the concept of “telling stories” to death, it’s important to remember that real people can’t talk.

That’s why—in music radio—we edit phone calls, so we can tighten them up, take out redundancy and sentences that don’t add anything, and remove irrelevant names of people we don’t know (or care about). Real people—people who are not trained professionals—aren’t likely to have the skill set to hold the listener’s attention as they tell a story. The average person is likely to go off “chasing rabbits” at any moment, which you know if you’ve edited very many calls. They mean well; they just don’t have the “chops” to keep it from bogging down.

And normal people usually aren’t great writers, either. They tend to stiffen up and use “print language” when they write, instead of the natural, everyday “street talk” that we want to use on the air. Keeping in mind that only people with cataracts want to be read to, when you do want to put someone’s email or Facebook posting on the air, please don’t just read it verbatim. The way it works best is for you to tell as much of the story as you can in your own words, just quoting an occasional line from them. That way, you can keep the story moving, leaving out repetition and unnecessary details that can easily make a genuinely heartfelt story come across like an A. A. meeting.

Now please don’t misinterpret this to mean that you shouldn’t put phone calls on the air, or share someone’s Facebook comment or email. Those ingredients are great, IF you make them airworthy.

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Tommy Kramer
Radio Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (iPhone)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2013 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #10 – The Cone

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The great Neil Young once introduced a song by saying: “Here’s a song guaranteed to bring you right down. It’s called ‘Don’t Let it Bring You Down.’ It kind of starts off slow, then fizzles out altogether.”

Pretty funny, but now think about how many times you’ve heard something on the air start in a fairly interesting way, but it just doesn’t go anywhere.

That’s usually because the jock didn’t really give any thought to the Subject expanding or contracting. It just kind of sat there. So frustrating.

You’ve probably heard the old saying that Content is King, and that’s true to the degree that you can’t make something matter to the listener. But once you have a solid piece of Content, PERFORMANCE is King.

Try looking at each Subject like a cone—big and wide at one end, small and pointy at the other end. The big, wide end of the cone is the global perspective, the subject that’s on everybody’s mind. From there, you want to bring it down to a very personal place—the small pointy end of the cone.

Or you can do the opposite—start with something very intimate and personal, and then show how it applies to everyone.

George Carlin used to describe this as “big world” or “little world.” I think those definitions are good, but the whole idea is that one leads to the other.

The “cone” concept always works, and it’s really easy. If you’ll try it, I think you’ll be amazed at what it does to your air work.

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Tommy Kramer
Radio Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (iPhone)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2013 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #9 – TELL Me

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This was the way I used to start my seminars: I just got restless listening to the station that was on my radio, so I hit the ‘scan’ button. It landed on your station. I don’t know what the station’s call letters are, what the format is, what the dial position is, or who you are.

If you’re in a female-targeted format, you should know that SEVENTY percent of women say they find their new favorite station by hitting the scan button. Not by seeing a billboard. Not by seeing a TV spot with your morning team – whom I don’t know – standing in front of a “money machine” spewing out cash. Not by hearing about it from a friend. Just by hitting the scan button.

I don’t have the data yet on what the percentages are for men, but if you think of how most guys flip around on the TV remote when they search for a show, it should be obvious that every single time you open the mike, you’re probably talking to someone that hasn’t heard you before, or hasn’t heard you for a while.

Make it easy for them to come into the fold. To paraphrase the old Motel 6 TV ads, “Leave the light on for them.”

Never assume knowledge on the part of the listener.

“Here’s Toby…”

Toby who? Toby Mac, the great Christian artist? Toby Keith, the great Country artist? Toby Maguire, the guy who played Spiderman? (I didn’t know he could sing.)

TELL me.

“We’ll play the Family Name Game at 7:30.”

And what is that? Do I have to guess someone in your family’s name? (I don’t even know all MY relatives!) Is this about my kid? How do I get in?

TELL me.

“Later on, we’ll give you a chance to win free groceries for a month.” When is “later on?” Ten minutes? Next? At 7:40?

TELL me.

Anytime you assume that I know what you’re talking about, you’re just asking me to hit the scan button again. But if you’ll just make it easy for me to get my arms around it, I may come back again tomorrow.

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Tommy Kramer
Radio Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (iPhone)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2013 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #8 – The 2-Question Content Filter

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TK Tip 8 – The 2-Question Content Filter (click to hear the mp3 version)

Years ago, I wrote a tip called “The 3 Questions,” basically about thoughts to “sift” something through before you put it on the air. But one of them had to do with being local, which doesn’t really help someone on a network, or doing a syndicated show. So here’s an even more whittled down version that I hope will make things incredibly easy for you.

There are 2 questions to ask yourself about anything you want to put on the air:

1. WHY is it on?

Just because you think something is funny, for instance, doesn’t mean that it’s Relevant. (We’ve all heard enough “Stupid Criminal Stories.”) Just because your station’s listener profile says that your target is a 35-year old soccer mom with 2 kids doesn’t mean that every little thing your brat—uh, I mean your “little angel” does is worth talking about. And a huge thing to remember is that “interesting” is not the same as “compelling.” If all you do is talk about stuff the listener has a passing interest in, the station that talks about what’s most top of mind—what matters most to your listener TODAY—is going to take that person away from you.

2. Where are you going with it?

There has to be some sort of “destination” or “resolution” that you reach with everything you talk about, hopefully with a “reveal” or surprise element at the end that I couldn’t see coming. If you just end with some tired platitude, or you always try to come up with a funny punch line, you’re not going to raise the bar even one inch.

I always thought “What will I say that not everyone else will say?”

Eventually, that thought got even more refined, and became “What can I say that ONLY I WOULD SAY?”

Now, after having taught this technique to over 1700 people on over 330 radio stations. The ones who ‘got it’ have become extremely successful. The ones who didn’t are still trying to separate themselves from the rest of the pack.

George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Steve Martin, Chris Rock, Dan Aykroyd, Steven Wright, Jerry Seinfield, Larry David, Rush Limbaugh—each of these comedians has a unique “take” on things, and you should, too. (And see, even in that, there was something that not everybody else would say.)

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Tommy Kramer
Radio Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (iPhone)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2013 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.