Category Archives: Gaining self perspective

Tommy Kramer Tip #105 – One Thing Per SHOW

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In coaching Talent to become more than just deejays, I draw on why legendary personalities become legends. In the past, it was Robert W. Morgan in L. A. or Fred Winston in Chicago. In Dallas, where I lived most of my adult life, it was Ron Chapman, Terry Dorsey, Kidd Kraddick, and in the Contemporary Christian arena, Brother Jon Rivers. There are others, too, of course. (Fill in the name of your market’s Legend.) In my hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana, it’s a guy named Larry Ryan, who’s been in that market for over 40 years. And when I was just a duckling starting out in radio, Larry told me something that I still remember every day, and have developed specific techniques in how to coach.

He said, “If you do just ONE THING each day that people remember, you’ll be a star.”

ONE THING PER SHOW. That’s all you need. Do the math: Say you take two weeks of vacation per year. So if you work five days a week, fifty weeks a year, and do one thing each day that your Listener really connects with, that’s 250 things at the end of a year that your Listener remembers about you that he or she doesn’t remember about your competitor! 250 concrete reasons to keep listening to you, instead of to the other options across the radio landscape or satellite and digital formats.

Now this is not about only doing one thing during your entire show. It’s about doing one thing that’s memorable, one thing that no one else will do, every show. It’s also about never going through a show without that one thing. This is one of the prime areas where “critique” serves no real purpose. It’s all about coaching—brainstorming ideas to cultivate a sense of what will set you apart.

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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (iPhone)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2015 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Tip #99 – What to look for in a Coach

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It’s easy for air talents or Program Directors to shy away from coaching. I get that. For one thing, most people think “critique” when they hear the word “coaching”. They assume that the process will be a negative one, like being called into the principal’s office for throwing spitballs.

(I would actually just work with you on making the spitball nice and tight so it flies well, and then making sure you’re aiming at the right person.)

Here’s the process—or at least, my process: I’m not looking for what you do wrong so there’s always something to pick on and correct. A coaching experience based on that negative foundation isn’t going to do you (or me) any good. Yes, we’ll address whatever holes there might be in your education or techniques, and correct them, but that’s not the real purpose. The real idea is first, to find out what you do best. And second, gradually get to where that’s all you do.

There are several other fine coaches—Valerie Geller, Randy Lane, Tracy Johnson—that work the same way. But not all of them. When you get ready for a coach—or as a PD, come to the realization that, just like a baseball manager, you need a pitching or hitting coach—choose wisely.

There’s not ONE pro golfer, baseball player, or football player who doesn’t have a swing coach, batting coach, or position coach. You hear actors all the time talking about who taught them. Tom Brady has a coach. (A head coach, an offensive coordinator, and a quarterbacks coach, as a matter of fact.) Butch Harmon, Hank Haney and others have worked with dozens of the best golfers in the world. I don’t know Butch, but Haney is a friend, and Hank’s methods and mine are amazingly similar. Yes, he’ll point out what you do wrong, but he’ll help you build your game around your STRENGTHS.

And that’s what you should be looking for.

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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (iPhone)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2015 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Tip #87 – Be Great by being Good

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Sports great Dan Patrick told a story on the Golf Channel’s wonderful “Feherty” show about doing the Olympics a few years ago. Patrick had a wealth of experience, but it was his first shot at the Olympics, and to his surprise, he was very nervous about it. Much to his delight, he found that he’d be paired in the nightly updates with Al Michaels, the consummate pro who had effortlessly switched from play-by-play man to Newsman during the 1989 World Series when an earthquake hit San Francisco. Patrick shared his nervousness with Michaels, and Al told him, “Look, I know you want to be great at this. But just be good, and you’ll be great by being good.”

I hear jocks every week that sound like they’re trying so hard to be great that the pressure of it just melts them down. Just recently, I told someone struggling with this “Simply pull it back a little, and stop caring so much about how you’re being perceived. If it doesn’t sound like something you’d say to me over lunch together, it’s not going to connect anyway, so let go of trying to hit a home run every time the mike opens, and just hit a single.”

This is what’s wrong with baseball now, by the way. There are so many batters trying to hit a home run every time up, and while it might result in a few more homers and runs batted in, it also usually translates to a mediocre batting average and WAY too many strikeouts. If I could coach them, I’d say “Just hit 3,000 singles and you’ll make the Hall of Fame.”

The truth is that if you’re just trying to be really good every time the mike opens, ‘great’ will happen once in a while.

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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (iPhone)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2015 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Tip #83 – Your Internal Clock

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Every day, I hear air talent trying to do Content that’s good, but the delivery is too hurried. Or jocks will try to cram too much into a song intro, and while it does fit the time frame, it doesn’t sound real or engaging because the inflection is lost. It’s not just in music radio, though. It happens in all formats, including Talk and Sports.

Obviously, bad training (or lack of training) can cause this, but there’s more to it than that.
Here’s one of the most overlooked factors:

Everyone has an internal clock.
And often, your internal clock lies to you.
You can see this outside the radio world with a simple experiment: walk up to someone, put a microphone in front of him, and tell him that he has 30 seconds to speak. Some people will take their time, sounding very real and relaxed—but talk for 50 or 60 seconds; nowhere close to 30. Other people will rush as fast as they can, and even though they have 30 seconds, they’ll race to match their internal clock, then stop after 15 or 20, gasping for air.

Great voice actors learn what real time is, rather than perceived time. Tell my friend Beau Weaver, for instance, that you need a piece of copy to be read in 26 seconds, and he’ll nail it almost every time in the first take. But unless you’ve developed that uncanny timing that a great voice actor has, you’re going to have to work on it.

The cure is a simple one: rehearse. And rehearse OUT LOUD, because it always takes longer when you enunciate clearly and inflect words audibly instead of silently. Start with real-life Content first (books, articles, etc.) and try to stop after 10 seconds, then 30, then 60. Then take that to what you do on the air. In a short time, the difference will be dramatic, and you’ll have more “command presence” as a result. Plus, as with many things I coach, it’s like life after sex. Once you’ve done it, you can never go back to the perspective you had before it.

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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (iPhone)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2014 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Tip #59 – The Disembodied Voice

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It seems so easy to hear the mistakes your competitors make–the things they do that are dumb, not thought out well, phony-sounding, pukey, lame, irritating or obvious.

But for most air talents, it’s hard to hear ourselves the same way.
It’s because we know it’s us. Someone we like. Someone we root for and want to succeed.

So here’s the lesson: To really be able to listen to audio of yourself and make improvement, you want to try and hear yourself as a disembodied voice that belongs to someone else. You need to critique yourself just like you would your most hated competitor.
I’ve always tried to listen to myself like it was just an aircheck that someone sent in looking for a job, and assess it accordingly, asking things like…
Does this person get to the point?
Is he having fun?
Is he obvious, or does he go somewhere with things that most people don’t? If I were coaching him, what would I tell him to help him get better?

You don’t want to kid yourself about your strengths or weaknesses. Maybe they’re not what you think they are. If you’re not sure, I’ll be glad to help you.

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Tommy Kramer
Radio Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (iPhone)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2014 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Tip #44 – Is this show TODAY?

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Here are a couple of questions to ask yourself:
1. How is today’s show different from yesterday’s (or tomorrow’s)?
2. Is what you do so generic that it could be a show from any day of the week?

Now take it one step further: Is what you do so generic that it could be on any station, or only on your station?

“Plain vanilla” may still be #1 in ice cream, but it certainly isn’t in radio. Today’s relevant content has a different “flavor” than yesterday’s. It’s your job to find what today is about and put it on the air. Sameness is the enemy of performance. (This is why so many so-called “benchmarks” aren’t benchmarks at all.)

Remember, there’s a huge, tangible difference between consistency (which is a good thing) and predictability (which is the kiss of death).

So if you’ve got stuff that you’ve kept around for “when you don’t have anything else,” THROW IT AWAY. It’s as outdated as last month’s tomatoes.

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Tommy Kramer
Radio Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (iPhone)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2014 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Tip #43 – YOU, not the Computer

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Music stations seem to forget that they’re about music. We spend a lot of time on jock Content, what Promotions work and how to do the promos for them, how Contests need to be exciting but still organic, and Imaging.

But none of that matters if you have the computer on “auto” and your Traffic bed, for example, crashes right over the final word of a song that ends “cold.”

The solution is one that I’ve mentioned before: run any break where you’re going to talk MANUALLY. The listener has to feel that you’re listening to the music too (whether you are or not), and that you care about his or her being able to hear the end of one of their favorite songs. We don’t want dead air, obviously, but wait for those cold ends and develop FEEL, instead of just letting the machines do it.

Remember that computers are just idiots with great memories. They count time, but they don’t FEEL timing. We have to respect the music.

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Tommy Kramer
Radio Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (iPhone)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2014 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #29 – The Emotional fuels the Technical

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The great actor Dustin Hoffman talked on Inside the Actors Studio about a key moment in the movie Midnight Cowboy. In the scene, his character “Ratzo” Rizzo is talking with Jon Voigt’s character on a New York street when a traffic light changes. As they step off the curb, a taxi almost hits Ratzo.

This was a “stolen” scene, shot on a real street in New York with real people all around, using a hidden camera. Hoffman says they had to try it several different times to get the timing right, and obviously the cab almost hitting him was NOT in the screenplay. So in reacting to almost being pulverized, he pounded on the taxi’s hood, and what he WANTED to say was “Hey, we’re working here! We’re shooting here!” But being totally devoted to staying in character, he said “Hey! I’m walkin’ here! I’m walkin’ here!”—a defining moment for Ratzo’s aggressive attitude toward the world around him, and one of the most memorable scenes of Hoffman’s career.

The Emotion of the scene fueled the technical side of what he did—banging on the hood and shouting that line to the idiot driver.

If you really want to become something special on the air, instead of just a disc jockey or analytical Talk host, embrace the thought that while technical and organizational skills are a great foundation, sometimes what you FEEL should guide what you say.

If you have trouble with this, maybe you need a coach. I know one you could call.

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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 #25 – The Low Volume Test

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Hopefully, you listen to your show regularly, so you can hear yourself more like the Listener hears you. So take a tip from how a lot of great Production Talents work—listen at a fairly low level, often through a small cue speaker. (Same thing with many recording engineers and Producers.) They may mix at “blast,” but then they’ll play it back at “background” level.

There are good reasons for the Low Volume Test:
• You can really hear the levels, to tell if background music for a break you’re doing—or a spot or a promo—is too loud or too soft. (Or whether it fits the mood and cradles the subject, or it’s just thumpy-thumpy noise.)
• You get a much truer read on whether you sound natural and real, or you’re just another booming, “announcing” radio guy, over-inflecting and “selling” too much.
• You get feedback more at the visceral level about pace and momentum.
• You not only can, but DO instantly decide, subconsciously or even UNconsciously, whether the person you’re hearing is interested in what he’s saying, or is having any FUN.

You want to listen at about half the level most disc jockeys usually listen at. So YOU can feel the momentum, interest level, and fun factors, instead of putting every little thing under a magnifying glass all the time, but not really learning anything about the Voice Acting part of your craft.

Once you hear yourself this way, you’ll never hear the show the same way again.

It’s like being in a room, with a movie playing on the TV in the next room. A bad actor reads lines. A great actor IS that character he’s playing.

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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 #4 – The 4 Requirements of a great Air Talent

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TK Tip 4 – The 4 Requirements of a great Air Talent (click to hear mp3 version)

There are four fundamental requirements of a truly good air talent:

(1) Be a good ambassador of the format. Each format has its unique qualities. Country is different from Album Rock. Contemporary Christian is different from Smooth Jazz. HOW they’re different is part of what you’re here to show. Consider the difference between Classic Rock and Oldies. They’re NOT the same.

(2) Be a good “tour guide” for the station—its features, artist pool, website stuff, Promotions, Contests…all that it has to offer.

(3) Be a good deejay (in music formats). That means [A] being patient, not trying to cram too much in, or doing more than one main subject in each break; [B] “riding the wave” of the music by matching each song’s tempo and emotional vibe; and [C] fitting each song, which means not trying to do ultra-serious Content over a “happy” song, or sounding like the music doesn’t matter to you, or like you’ve just been waiting impatiently for the song to end, so you can talk.

(4) I have to learn something about you, and not just what you think. I also want to know how you FEEL; what’s in your heart.

Now ask yourself if you’re doing these things every day. If you’re not, maybe you need some help.

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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.