Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #386: To Tease or Not to Tease – and Why

Every once in a while, the subject of doing teases comes around again. Such was the case recently with one group of stations I work with. So here are the teasing do’s and don’ts…

DO tease:
A chance for me (the listener) to win something.
A feature of the show; a benchmark.
A guest coming on.
Information about a station event or a specific website/You Tube/social media feature.
A new song by a Major (core) artist.

Do NOT tease:
…just something you’re going to talk about. We don’t do this in real life. If my friend John Frost and I were having lunch, I wouldn’t say, “John, I saw something really wrong with your car…and I’ll tell you about it right after I eat this burger.” It’s unnatural.

I do believe in teasing, but not just teasing chit-chat or “fluff” stories. “How a lady in Tucson overcame her agoraphobia to find her dog…in ten minutes” is worthless. No one cares. On the listener’s list of things that matter most to her today, where would that rank? 117th?

Some observations:

If you tease everything (or tease too much, or tease the wrong things) it takes away any element of surprise. This is a liability. The listener doesn’t WANT to think that the whole show is planned out, and nothing spontaneous ever happens.

Having used — and not used — teases periodically over decades in all formats, there’s no real evidence that proves that teases work, except for teasing big contests or ticket giveaways. In some radio circles, it’s assumed that teases always work, but that’s like assuming that the brownish-gray meat in the back of the refrigerator shelf is still fresh.

I would leave it at this: If it’s WORTH teasing (to the Listener), absolutely do tease it. But not everything is worth teasing.

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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (iPhone)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2020 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #311 – Why Your Imaging is Boring People to Death

Normally, these tips are just to help air talent get better. But it’s getting difficult for people to improve quickly when they only get to talk every third song or so. So if you’re a PD, maybe this is something to consider: Your Imaging is boring people to death.

“The Greatest Hits from the 19th, 20th, and 21st Centuries…on KBRP 99…”

1. No one cares.

2. You just missed an opportunity to have an actual human being who works on the air CONNECT with the listener. It’s amazing what just a simple song intro can do, if the jock is “in the pocket” matching the pace and/or emotional vibe of the song. Plus, maybe he or she could say something meaningful in that time, instead of hearing more carvings from the blarney stone every other song (or even more often, in some dayparts).

“But we want to get the brand out there…”

It is. To the point of exhaustion. Plus, unless your brand is tied to a Reality – a person who sounds like somebody I’d like to know, visiting with me in the car – it’s just another commercial for you. (This is one of the factors in why people say radio plays too many commercials.)

First, try to make your Imaging brief, and fresh-sounding. But then the next step is to let the talent talk more frequently, and push them to do something worth listening to when they do. That’s how great staffs are built.

– – – – – – –
Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (iPhone)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2019 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #291 – Why it may be better to NOT intro Traffic

(Larry) “And now let’s check that drive into work again. Here’s Don Googleheimer….”

(Don, the Traffic guy) “Thanks, Teresa. Good morning, everybody…”

I actually heard this the other day. The male half of a morning team intros the Traffic, then the Traffic guy thanks his female partner.

This shows the listener that it’s prerecorded. Or that the Traffic guy isn’t listening.

(And he needs to stop saying “everyone” or “everybody,” too; stay Singular. Talk to ME. And it also told me that if the morning team people DID listen to how the recorded Traffic report started, they forgot that “Teresa” needed to intro it. So many things to coach; so little time.)

So I recommended what I’ve done since about 25 years ago, simply getting to the end of your Content, then hitting a “Vroooom!” sound effect over the start of the Traffic music bed, and cutting right into the update with no intro or phony-sounding chit-chat. That makes the information actually be of service to the listener, and gives you more Momentum.

Oh, and make sure the Traffic person gives his or her name at the end. That covers all the bases.

Some stations that make a big deal out of “Traffic on the 8’s” or whatever may not want to do it this way. That’s fine, if you’ve built up that image. But most music stations should do the “Vroom” thing instead. (You could use a “beep-beep” sound instead. Or screeching brakes, if you want to add a little abrupt humor.)

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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (iPhone)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2019 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Tip #249 – Board Work: The Lost Art

Being a truly great talent also means being (or at least, having) a truly great board op. Many (maybe I should say “most”) people on the air today don’t even realize it.

It’s somewhat of a lost art now, but my generation of air talents were groomed to run the board PERFECTLY. We prided ourselves on precise segues, excellent and consistent levels, and hitting the next song or sound bite within a Content break at exactly the right time, after a brief, concisely focused intro. At stations where I worked, it was mandatory. If you couldn’t run a tight, flawless board, you couldn’t work there.

The proliferation of voice trackers today hasn’t helped. Whether they can hear the music themselves, or someone at the station is inserting the voice tracks, there’s very little (if any) thought given to quality control. You hear a song end (or the jock start talking too soon), then, somewhere after that, another song begins as they lurch forward. No momentum. None. Stop, start, stop, start – the OPPOSITE of seamless forward flow. Total lack of any sense of timing.

The good news is that this current state of affairs gives you a huge opportunity to take a somewhat subconscious but extremely tangible advantage over your competitors. There’s a reason to use it. Great movie directors (James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, etc.) know that the editing and sound engineering is an enormous part of their success. So I have to wonder why radio has largely forgotten about this area. Sadly, the reason is usually that no one is even thinking about it.

Yes, the computer runs the show a lot of the time now, but you can program in perfect cue tones, etc. It doesn’t take long.

Most radio today is so sloppy, my generation laughs at it. Your generation of listeners doesn’t laugh. They simply hit another button, or turn it off entirely and check their Facebook pages or watch something on Netflix. That’s why ratings are largely in the dumpster now for so many stations. No standard of excellence. So it just comes down to who has the best Content. That’ll always be a huge factor, but at-work listening, in particular, can be increased dramatically with better flow. If you don’t get what I’m talking about, well, that’s kind of sad. But you can actually DO something about it – if you want to learn.

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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (iPhone)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2018 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Tip #245 – What You Can Do in Six Seconds

The other day, I was having to teach someone how to talk over a song intro. This is a modern phenomenon, apparently, because most people on the radio today never heard the Drake Format or the “Q” Format that revolutionized radio in the late sixties and early seventies.

Before those, jocks just talked whenever and wherever they wanted to, so you heard a song end, the jock blather for a few seconds (or longer), and then start another song, talking up to the vocal.

Bill Drake changed that. Jocks fit the song intro, instead of starting early. Momentum increased exponentially.
The Q stations (KCBQ in San Diego first, others later) took it another step further. But jocks tended to lose contact with the pace of the song, doing every break in a high-powered delivery.
Stations like KNUS in Dallas, Y95 in Miami and others took it beyond that, maintaining the momentum, but also introducing a sensitivity to the pace and “vibe” of the song and matching it with the delivery.

Enough with the history lesson. Jocks today grew up hearing a song end, the talent talking for much too long, then another song starting. Momentum ceased to exist under the guise of “respecting the music,” primarily an Album Rock approach. Stop – Start – Stop – Start. The definition of NO true momentum.

So back to the recent session. I told the man/woman team “start the next song, THEN talk” every other song or every third song, with Imaging pieces (fully produced, no “dry voice” at the end that stopped the momentum in its tracks) between the other songs within a music ‘sweep’.

The female partner said, “What if the song only has about a six-second intro? What can we do except just give the name of the station and introduce the song?”

Here’s what you can do:
You can sound ENGAGED with the music, like YOU’RE listening to it, too. You can give an opinion about the song or the artist.
You can promote something coming up. You can avoid sounding like a robot, trying to get this over with as soon as possible.
And you can learn the value of words, how to edit yourself, and that you can reveal an Emotion instead of just giving information.

Then you might not sound like just “a voice saying words”. And you’ll have flexibility, instead of just trying to jam something in. And most importantly, you’ll sound like you’re sharing the experience, in the moment, WITH me (the listener). You know, like friends.

– – – – – – –
Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (iPhone)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2018 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Tip #203 – Think Like a Baseball Pitcher

Last week, I did a “refresher” tip about the two most important basic ingredients – sounding real, and making sure you’re ALWAYS talking about something that’s relevant to the Listener’s life.

This time around, I want to deal with formatic basics, using a specific example: repeating things in the same ORDER over and over again.

I hear this all the time – the jock opens up with the name of the station, the artist, then the song title. Next break, name of the station, artist, then title – just like the last break. (This can happen with anything. Always giving a time check or your name last, repeatedly saying “Good morning” break after break, etc.)

So here’s the deal: You want to think like a baseball pitcher. Never throw exactly the same pitch twice in a row. Even if a pitcher has a 100-mile-an-hour fastball, about the second or third time he throws it at the same velocity in the same location, a major league batter is gonna send it toward the general area of Jupiter.

I DO believe that you should always say the name of the station first – it puts the “label” right out front, and you might as well get in the practice you’ll need to tell Echo or Siri to play it from now on, anyway – but even then, your inflection and pace should differ every time. (A great way to accomplish this is to simply match the tempo or emotional vibe of the song you’re talking over or coming out of. From there, you can change gears if you need to, but this will start you off right in the pocket.) Then you add to that PURPOSELY switching around the order of things, or just the NUMBER of things you do, and you’ve got it.

In the bigger picture, every time you fall into habits – which will automatically take away at least a small element of surprise – you’re just treading water. Brain mapping technology shows that even just a TINY difference makes it received as NEW information. That’s what makes the brain NOTICE it, instead of becoming numb to it.

– – – – – – –
Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (iPhone)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2017 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Tip #148 — The Basics: a Tutorial

Many air talents these days can be virtually crippled before they even get to the point of a break. New theories of what works best for PPM are bandied about every month – many of them “incomplete thoughts” (like the “you have to do a tease at the end of each break” virus that’s going around now) – and many of them are based on faulty (or no) research, or are simply opinion without experience to back it up. Let’s work on that a bit…

The SIMPLEST formatics are the BEST formatics. All you really want is an efficient package of very basic things, but they should VARY from break to break. Let me be clear in advance that there are a lot of different ways to skin a cat. Some formats may prefer to not talk over song intros, syndicated shows may not do everything on this checklist, morning shows may have different clocks and needs, etc. So this is not the ONLY way, but it’s a pretty GOOD way to deliver the basic elements with some sense of engagement and style.

Say the name of the station first, every time. (There’s a reason the Jif label is on the OUTSIDE of the jar, not mixed in with the peanut butter somewhere.) The longer you take to identify who you are, the harder it is for the listener to remember you. And no, you can’t just rely on PPM devices to reflect that, because first of all, not every market is a PPM market, and secondly, PPM is simply the report card on listening AFTER the listener has decided to tune you in, which he wouldn’t have done if he didn’t know who you are and where to FIND you – which is easiest when they hear the name first. To PD’s who complain that this sounds the same every time or it’s boring, I remind them that this is not a reason to hide your name. Every single time a network TV show comes out of commercials, they flash the logo on the screen, first thing. We have to do it vocally. So this means that you have to coach the jocks to say the calls like they MEAN something; like we take some PRIDE in working here. (I coach many subtle techniques for this—matching the tempo of the song, matching the emotional vibe of the song, and for advanced students, even starting on the same NOTE that the song is playing.) Burying something because you do it poorly is not the answer. Get BETTER at it, instead.

Music stations’ basics should include the Artist and/or Song Title—but not always both, and certainly not always in that order. (And sorry, but album titles don’t matter. Who buys albums anymore? We just download the 4 cuts we like from iTunes. Stop thinking like an early 1970’s audiophile.)

In “drive” times, time checks should be given at least every time you stop down. DIGITAL time ONLY. “8:16,” not “16 minutes after eight o’clock.” It’s a digital world. Live in it. (I had a talent once who said “it’s twelve minutes after the hour of ten o’clock.” I told him “I don’t have TIME to listen to your time checks.”) And no “double” time checks (“3:15, that’s 15 after 3.”) The listener isn’t an idiot; stop treating him/her like one.

Your name, somewhere…not always in the same place. And not every break. Once in a while, in a song intro. Always, when you stop down.

So the template is: Name of the station first, everything else varies.
I used to write little symbols for each element (calls, artist, title, temp, time, my name), and just switch them around each break, so I didn’t repeat the same things in the same order over and over again. It worked like a charm. And of course, except for the name of the station, not every element was in every break.

Now comes the real art. With the opening “basics” out of the way, get into your Content in ONE line, two at the most. Any longer than that sounds needlessly wordy. Think “newspaper headline” (assuming that anyone remembers what a newspaper looks like).

If you do this right, you’ll be consistent, but you’ll have slight variations every break, which makes the brain receive what you say as NEW information every time. (Brainwave mapping has proven this. It’s not just an opinion. It’s called the Fourier Transform, and was developed at Cal Tech.)

It won’t take long to master this stuff, and if everybody buys in, you’ll have another layer of “stationality”. Why not start now?

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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (iPhone)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2016 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Tip #147 — The Last Logical Place

One of the major themes in science fiction is that as the technology gets better, the skills atrophy. That’s why you see those old monster movies where alien beings had giant brains, but machines and computers did all the work for them, since their arms and legs had gradually degenerated to being useless twigs.
On our own planet, in Music radio, we’re hearing more of this “the machines are taking over” factor all the time. In a music sweep, for example, a song’s ending is a chord that hangs for 3 or 4 seconds, but one-tenth of a second into that hang time, the next song slams in (or the antsy jock starts talking), abruptly cutting off both the previous song and the mood. Cue tones on music, Imaging, and commercials are often set to fire the next element too soon, so the last word obliterates the beginning of the next thing, or gets drowned out by it. Or a song will end with a fade, but instead of hitting the next element at the end of a sentence, where it would seamlessly appear, we hear an extra couple of words (“And…if…”), then BLAM!…next song. Woof. Clumsy.

When it doesn’t even sound like you’re engaged with what you’re doing, why should I be, as a listener? I constantly hear stations with live jocks that sound voice tracked because of their lackluster board work.

As a Talent Coach, I want to help everything you do, not just what you say. Try this exercise: run the board manually for a few days, only putting it in “auto” mode when you go into stopsets, and your board op skills will get razor sharp. An element of FEEL will enter the picture, and then the cue tones can be changed to match it. Slamming songs (or elements) together is careless and random sounding. But waiting too long to hit the next thing makes the momentum stall out. The right timing is somewhere in between. The right place to hit the next element in a sweep isn’t “at the last place” in the song you’re playing. It’s “at the last LOGICAL place.” Let that little artistic touch into your brain, and you’ll sound alert and in control—and like you’re actually listening to the music with me.

Then, when you open the mike to say something, maybe I’ll pay more attention to it, because something as simple as your board work drew me in a little closer to you.

– – – – – – –
Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (iPhone)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2016 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Tip #122 – Say my name, say my name

Time for a little “basics” check. How good are you at saying the name of the station? There are a lot of different factors that play into this supposedly simple thing…

First of all, you should say them first—the first thing out of your mouth when you start a break. Not just “somewhere in there”. There’s a reason the Jif label is on the outside of the jar. They don’t put it inside with the peanut butter.
When you say “That’s ‘Thinking Out Loud’ by Ed Sheeran on 92.9 KSLL” that’s about Ed Sheeran, who’s on 1200 stations, one of which happens to be yours.
But when you say “92.9 KSLL and Ed Sheeran with ‘Thinking Out Loud,’” it’s YOUR song. You own it, and that’s the kind of music that YOU play.
Ownership MATTERS.

Yes, I’ve heard PD’s say “but it sounds more conversational to just drop them in at random.” But branding isn’t about being “conversational”. It’s about branding. (Which, by the way, is why you shouldn’t just segue two songs back-to-back without a short produced piece or a jingle between them that gives your name. You’re just throwing away a branding opportunity. PPM will never measure someone who doesn’t tune you in a second time because they don’t remember who you are.)

But let’s move on to the performance itself—the art of saying the station’s name. Here are just a few of the techniques I coach:

1. As a voice actor, you have to be able to deliver it in multiple ways, with several different inflections and variations in timing. It’s easy to just toss the name out like a robot, which always sounds like you’re just trying to get it done with so you can get on to the more “important” stuff. (I’ve actually edited together every time a talent says the station’s name in an hour so he or she could hear the bad habits that have set in — same tone of voice every time, same inflection, always going down in pitch at the end—there are tons of them.)

2. Matching the pace of the song. (Fast song, uptempo delivery. Slow song, slower delivery.)

3. Matching the emotional “vibe” of the song. (Sad song, more somber tone. Happy song, more upbeat delivery.)

4. Starting on the same NOTE the song is on. (The great Marice Tobias also teaches this.)

…and there’s more, but in John Lennon’s words, “I have to have money first.”

Suffice it to say that unless you’re good at saying the name of the station—the first thing you should master—chances are that people won’t remember you, and ratings won’t be as high as they could be. I’ve seen Arbitron entries for stations that don’t exist anymore, and air talents that have been DEAD for two years. That’s the power of good branding.

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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 #81 — The Only Two Elements

Normally, these coaching tips are for air talents, and this one does apply to your air work. But it’s primarily for MusicRadio Program Directors, simply because I don’t want Air Talents to get in trouble with their bosses over something that I said. The old “it’s easier to get forgiveness than it is permission” thing isn’t really true in this day of Corporate Programming templates and marching orders from above. Now, all too often, “This is the way we do it,” good or bad, is the way of the world. So if you’re a PD, please just take a few minutes and read this through, then take a day and let it wash over you.

No matter what you think, to the listener there are only two elements:
1. Music.
2. Things that aren’t music.

“What about our Imaging?”
Well, it’s not music, is it? Your “Imaging,” to the listener, is just a commercial for you. So when you play a song, then a recorded Imaging piece, then another song, you do not necessarily have the image of playing more music, even though the deejay didn’t say anything. In the mind of the listener, it was song, commercial for you, song.

Go retro. Before this modern template of Imaging playing every other song, the jock usually talked over the song intro, or sometimes a jingle played between songs. (People will sometimes sing your jingle. They’ll never sing your voiceover guy’s Imaging liner.) At the end of a music sweep, we stopped down, did some Content—briefly—then went into a stopset. It was perfect, IF the jocks were concise, and had something to say that informed or entertained.

“But we have things we want to promote.”
When you allow the jocks to talk more often, things can be talked about. There are more opportunities for meaningful teases to be given, for the personality of each jock to emerge, and for true forward momentum to be the first impression a person gets of your station.

“We have limited resources. Some of our jocks aren’t all that great.”
Add the word “yet.” With budget restraints, or a young or inexperienced staff, it’s tempting to not let them talk much. But that’s counterproductive, because no one can learn to ride a horse if they never get in the saddle.

There are only two elements. Play great music. And when you talk—which should be fairly often, but not lengthy—say something worth hearing.

– – – – – – –
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.