Monthly Archives: May 2014

Tommy Kramer Tip #52 – EMOTIONAL Content

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Here’s the real key to everything you do on the air: EMOTIONAL content. No matter how factual something may be, you have to remember that the Listener doesn’t really bond with the radio through the left side of the brain (the logical, mathematical side). The Listener bonds with you through the right side—the emotional, artistic side of the brain. I touched on this in an earlier tip, but people tend to think that only “big” things require emotion; Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day, Christmas, Memorial Day, etc.

Even in something as simple as a contest or some station information about a concert or website feature, plugging into my EMOTIONS is key. That’s why your trivia contest or overly wordy weather forecast doesn’t really click. We’ve covered trivia before, but that “clear to partly cloudy with southerly winds 5 to 10 miles per hour and a 30 percent chance of rain” stuff is really boring, too. The Weather Channel app on my iPhone can give me that—AND show me the satellite picture right over my house. But if you said, “no wind to speak of, but we could sure use that rain,” I might actually put some value in your doing the weather.

Other examples:
Instead of just giving away a trip to Disney World, sell the great time I’ll have with my kids, how my wife won’t have to cook, and how great the weather in Orlando will be.

Or say you have a “listening club” or “Music Advisory Board” on your website where I can vote for my favorite new songs. As you promote it, make sure to let me know that the songs I LIKE BEST will be the ones you add, and that the reason you’re doing it isn’t just to suck me into your website, but to make sure that I’M part of your radio station.

I know…this sounds really easy. So I have to wonder why so few people do it. Focus on the Emotion, and everything changes.

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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 #51 – You ARE Twitter

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Dear friend and fellow Texas Radio Hall of Famer Randy Brown said something to me the other day that really struck home: In the early 70’s when our little rebel alliance was ushering in FM becoming dominant at Gordon McLendon’s KNUS in Dallas, we WERE Twitter. We were tightly edited, concise with our wording, and only made one point per break.

If you want to look at radio back then as social media today, AM Top 40 was Facebook. They had a huge following, with millions of listeners, and were the 800-pound gorilla—until we made those pukey, rambling deejays sound like they just couldn’t shut up.

Over and over, in market after market, PPM verifies what we knew then. If you’ll be concise (so you don’t waste people’s time) and offer something of real value to the listener every time you open the mic, you’ll be wildly successful.

And remember this: Just like Twitter is limited to 140 characters, the listener is sitting there, listening to you, with his foot tapping anxiously, waiting for you to get to the point. 140 really fast foot taps, then YOU’RE DONE—whether you’ve actually finished or not. The LISTENER decides.

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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 #50 – Trivia is, well…trivial

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It’s hard for me to believe that people are still doing trivia questions on the air as a contest mechanic. Trivia is LAME, man.

Here’s what happens:
5 people call, so jocks think it works “because the phone lines lit up.” Meanwhile, 90 people tuned out because they’ve heard enough “brain teasers” and “impossible questions” to last several lifetimes. (In my seminars, I always say “No one cares what the gestation period of the female aardvark is.” Oh, and it’s seven months. My, that’s exciting.)

Think about it from the other end of the radio. It’s usually just a bunch of “No, that’s not it, but thanks for calling” stuff leading to the one nerd who guesses right or looks it up. Boring.
If you Google “trivia questions and answers” (which I just did), you’ll see over 67 MILLION websites full of this cra….uh, stuff. It’s kind of hard to be unique when you’re doing something that I can find in 67 million other places. And you’re forgetting that it’s not 1990 anymore. Today, I can just ask Siri, and have the answer in five seconds.

You can be better! You just need some coaching. Start with just scratching Trivia off the list – permanently. Let everyone else do that stuff, while you do something more relevant instead. Then call me, and I’ll show you ways to give stuff away that generate great phone calls and will actually engage the listener, not just feed more radio tofu to the same thirty people that win 90% of your contests.

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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 #49 – Resets: The One-Sentence Rule

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Okay, you’ve done something that got some phone reaction, and there’s a good call you want to play.

We’ve all heard a Talent circle around the block endlessly, eventually gurgling and drowning as he tries to re-introduce the Subject. Sometimes we hear innocuous details that take us nowhere. I’ve even heard people tell the whole story again! As a RESET!!! (This, of course, is Death.)

If it takes more than one sentence to “reset the stage” of what you’re talking about, you need to work on this. “Redundant” is not the vibe you want to give off.

So think of it like a newspaper article. You want to start with a headline, not with a paragraph. ONE line, then BANG!…go right into the “meat” of the call.

The same rule applies when you’re not going into a call; you’re simply resetting a Subject in order to add another point about it. Don’t waste the listener’s time. Editing is the name of the game. Editing yourself is a GREAT quality.

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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.