Category Archives: Radio coaching tip

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #662: Group Airchecks

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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

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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”

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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

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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

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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

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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
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 #656: Kids

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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
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 #655: Faith and Hope

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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
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 #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.

– – – – – – –
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 #651: The Importance of Timing

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There’s a good lesson to learn from the World Series. Or the Super Bowl. Or the NBA Playoffs.
They all have one thing in common: It’s about doing the right things.
But not just that. It’s doing the right things at the right TIME.

It’s the same, in any music format, for what you say on the air when you make a comment. First, did you cut off the very end of that last word in the song’s vocal? Is that because you’re too anxious to talk? (Would you do that if you were the emcee for that artist’s live show? Chances are, the crowd would boo you, and the artist would never want you to be the emcee again.)

Patience.
Timing.
A sense of rhythm.
These things are essential to a great air talent.

– – – – – – –
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.