Category Archives: Editing yourself

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #653: Just the Driveway

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Over the years, one technique has constantly come up – how to get into a subject quickly and concisely.

I can’t count the number of air talents I’ve worked with who are really good at almost everything, but can’t “grab” the listener well because it just takes them too long to get to the point.

Here’s a visual for you…

We don’t have time, on the other end of the radio to drive down your street, wave at the neighbors, notice the new speed limit sign, get to your house, then drive up the driveway to the door, then go in.

We DO have time to start at the entrance of your driveway, and go on from there.

So get used to that self-editing, and you can reach the goal that always makes the difference: getting the listener’s attention in 10 to 15 seconds.
Try it out loud, before you do it on the air, and you’ll be surprised at how little time it takes.

Example:
(Station’s name, your name, song back-sell), then: “Bet you’ve done this. We come up the driveway to the house the other day, go in through the kitchen door ‘cause we’re carrying grocery sacks, and blam; the bottom falls out of one of them!”

There we are, right in that kitchen together – in 13 seconds.

The longer the “intro”, the weaker the story, first of all. But more importantly, your “storyboard” is shorter. In movie terms, we see the credits, then we’re seeing ourselves in whatever scenario it is. When I was taking film classes in college, there was a professor, Ed Luck, who absolutely infused us with not wasting time getting to the plot. We watched Alfred Hitchcock movies and John Huston films as examples: we’d see (1) the city, then (2) a certain building, then (3) a window in that building, then (4) into the room inside, in a four-shot montage that only took a few seconds, and then we were hurled into a situation.

Another example: think of how quickly the first Star Wars movie jumped you into the plot. Ships, storm troopers, Darth Vader, off we go……

LEARN. I promise you, this will make you the one who doesn’t use 200 words to get into the “meat” of the Subject. And you’ll make everyone else seem like they can’t get to the point and can’t shut up.

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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (mobile)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2025 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #644: They Own the Cameras

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Years ago, the great comedian Norm MacDonald was fired from doing the “Weekend Update” on Saturday Night Live. It was because one of the higher-ups at NBC was friends with O. J. Simpson, and he demanded that Norm stop doing jokes about the ex-football player and accused murderer.

After that, Norm was on Late Night with David Letterman, wondering and griping a bit about getting fired. But Norm also quoted something that Letterman had told him about the bosses of network TV – “They own the cameras.”

I believe it would be a good idea to keep this in mind – NOT about your boss, but instead, about the Listeners.

Because THEY “own the cameras.” They decide whether to listen to you or not. So try not to drift too far into your own personal agendas if you know you’ll be going against their directives. You can still do plenty of Content that “works around the fringes” of whatever you think is relevant – but without forcing a decision that will affect your career in a negative way.

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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (mobile)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2025 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #625: Vocabulary – Point By Point

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The best air talents are almost always the ones who have a wide, expansive vocabulary – and the ability to select just the right words right NOW, in the moment.

Why do I stress this? Because….

When you know what you want to say, but not how you want to say it, you’ll always use too many words. (And that’s just boring.)

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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (mobile)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2025 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #617: What Sounding Great is All About

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Everyone should want to be really good at what they do. Really, really good.
But not everyone knows how to get there. Let me make it simple for you:

Sounding great is about being prepared, and then just relaxing into it when you get on the air — but not using more words than you need.

No one can get to the next level as a Talent until they master Editing and Brevity. These are essential skills.

The most remembered songs, speeches, Proverbs, etc. are all SHORT. Make your point, then move on. People will thank you for it – by listening to you more.

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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (mobile)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2025 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #615: Why Using Fewer Words Works Better

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After hearing a couple of overly long breaks the other day on a music station I work with, this came up in the next coaching session:

Use fewer words.

There’s a reason that most famous quotes are short. Usually, the more words a person uses, the less impact it makes. (A lot of people disagree when I say that, but they’re wrong. In today’s jump-cut, hummingbird-attention-span world, being longwinded makes you sound OLD.)

So, just try to cut down the NUMBER of words it takes you to talk about something.

EVEN IN TALK RADIO shows, fewer words about each point will make more impact than just beating one point to death. And by being briefer, you’ll be able to get more Subjects into the show. The overall “bump” is that you’ll be more thorough – without being boring.

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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (mobile)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2025 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #606: The Howard Clark Litmus Test

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Early in my career, I lucked into having a tremendous mentor in the great Howard Clark.

My early, feeble attempts to “entertain” were a litany of way-too-long setups for what usually proved to be pretty lame punch lines.

I’ve written about Howard before. He was a brilliant talent who could just drop in a comment over a song intro that could make you laugh out loud in less than ten seconds. He was the best, most concisely funny person I ever heard on the air.

Howard embodied what I consider to be the definition of greatness: He made you turn the radio UP when he spoke.

If you’ve got that, you don’t have to worry about your ratings.

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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (mobile)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2025 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #594: The Best Conversations Are Made of SHORT Sentences

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The best conversations – whether that’s between you and a listener, you and a guest, or you and a partner in a team show – are made of SHORT sentences.

The longer the sentences, the more the boredom factor is going to set in.
We live in a hummingbird-attention span generation right now. Everybody texts. (And we don’t even text full WORDS. We don’t have time to put “OK.” We can only type “K.” That extra letter just saps our energy.)

Think about this, because chances are, if I listen to your show today, I’m gonna hear you talking in sentences that are much too long and bore people to death.

Or maybe not. You could be really great. But you probably still need this tip as a reminder.

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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 #585: It’s About How Long it Sounds

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It’s not how long something IS. It’s about how long it SOUNDS.

Too many words, too many examples, or parenthetical “side road” journeys, will automatically make you sound longwinded.
And it’ll feel long, no matter how it times out on a stopwatch.

“2 minutes isn’t that long.” Really? How long does it FEEL? Try holding your breath for two minutes right now. You’ll understand.

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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

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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 #441: The Simplest Possible Way

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The more words are used, the less the Personality stands out. The more complicated a Promotion or Contest is, the less effective it is. Keeping things simple from a formatic perspective should be married to keeping things as simple as possible in coaching talent, so they can perform in a way that truly resonates with the listener.

My methods, and the formatics I recommend are all about keeping it simple so there’s more “meat” in the Content – and even in the STYLE of the Content. Our job in the coaching arena is to make it EASY to sound consistently top-notch every day.

Poisonous things can slip in – too many words in a forecast, the name of the station redundantly said again by rote at the end of a break (taking away any possibility of the First Exit that surprises the listener), goofy names for promotions that don’t tell us what the Promotion or Contest IS, reading crappy liners (that the station Imaging voice should read, if you simply must do them), etc. Guard against these.

It’s not just “Keep It Simple, Stupid.” It’s “Keep it simple or I listen to something else.”

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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (iPhone)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2021 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.