A radio career is like crayons.
You start with the little 8-pack, and boy, is that fun. All the primary colors at your service. Now to find a surface to draw on….

Your handling improves. You work on writing or drawing things. You need more crayons, so you move to the 16-pack. Lots more colors and variations. Can’t WAIT to put that strange turquoise/green/blue one. That’ll look great on the wall. (And you find out that on paper is better, then the paper goes on the wall – or the fridge.)

Your imagination bursts with ideas; things you want to try. Then, true crayon citizenship comes with the 32-box. Oh lord, such colors. Need a bigger backpack for that baby.

And don’t even talk about the 64-box with the sharpener built into the side. You can rule the world with that gigantic assortment. Are trees really fuchsia? They are if you want them to be!

Just like radio. You learn a little bit at a time, you “play” with each “color” that comes to you, and each thing you learn adds another crayon to your performance “box”.

Listen to great air talent. Ask questions. Understand what the backbone of the station is, then color it your way.

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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.

This is the starting place – especially when you’re new to a station:

People don’t need to know you. You need to know them.

Streets have names that are pronounced differently than you would have thought.
Food tastes are different. (I once went to a corporate meeting in York, Pennsylvania. EVERY store and every restaurant I went into had candy machines in the entrance. Dentists must love that place.)

The point is, the culture of the market is your guide to meaningful Content, so observe, listen, experience, and soak in the little things that make up the fabric of your market. Then, connect the dots TO the listener.

You learn about them. THEN they learn about you.

That’s how it works. You’re either going to be a new neighbor, or just another voice saying words.

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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.

If you’ve followed these tips, you know that I’ve frequently referred to a morning guy in my hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana. His name is Larry Ryan, my first mentor, and he’s as good at connecting with an audience as anyone I’ve ever heard in any size market.

“Lovable Larry” did his show with his sidekick “Mr. Weather” for well over 50 years, with consistently fine ratings.

Just recently, Larry Ryan retired.

And – of course – the cookie cutter, “play-the-same-300-songs-over-and-over-again” Oldies station he was on made the typical stupid move of putting in a mindless team show that has no substance, and doesn’t sound like they know anything about the Shreveport/Bossier market at all.

Radio isn’t dead, but it is strangling itself.

To station owners and managers:
We don’t need or want generic shows. We want to listen to people who understand what our lives are about, and share what they have in common with us.

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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.

So many beginning air talents think that they need a “big” voice to succeed. But they don’t.

Nobody cares about your voice.

They care about what you SAY.

Having a good voice is fine, but it doesn’t necessarily equate to more listeners. An idiot with a great voice is still just an idiot.

– – – – – – –
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.

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.

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?

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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.

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.