Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #264 – Don’t “Present it”; just Do It

Dan Ingram died a few days ago. If you’re not familiar with him, suffice it to say that to a ton of people, he was the Michael Jordan of radio. Primarily known for his work in New York on WABC and WCBS, maybe this Wikipedia quote says it best:

Ingram was one of the most highly regarded DJs from his era. He was noted for his quick wit and ability to convey a humorous or satiric idea with quick pacing and an economy of words, a skill which rendered him uniquely suited to, and successful within, modern personality-driven music radio.

Yes, the style was a little different then, but he was FUN, and you never knew what he’d say next. So with Dan Ingram in mind…
Here’s the difference between being just a “disc jockey” and being a truly viable Talent on the air. When you have a story to tell or something to share, don’t “present it” to me; just DO it. Like a friend talking to another friend.

When you get “larger than life” in your delivery, you lose reality. And especially in today’s social media dominated world, with standup comics that are all about real life, reality shows all over TV, etc., that’s the one thing you don’t want to lose.

Yes, there are exceptions. And some music staging or sound effects can add the show biz aspects – but even then, they should be subtle, and not just some percussion track beating along under your break. But by and large, when people from the “That’s what SHE said” school of humor – playing it too broadly – or Talk show hosts that get exaggeratedly loud and abrasive as just part of their acts, with no real reason to be that way – assault our intelligence with that baloney, we ain’t buyin’.

And the good news is, you don’t have to be Dan Ingram. But you do have to be YOU – the best, most believable version of you. So relax and drop the B. S. Entertain me. Be my companion. Sure worked for Ingram.

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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 Coaching Tip #263 – Be A Good Disc Jockey, Too

A lot of air talents are not even aware of talent coaching. They have aircheck sessions with the PD – maybe – and that’s about it. I don’t know every talent coach working these days, but most of the ones I do know concentrate on Content – the search for it, the storytelling skill set, how to dig inside yourself and reveal things that (hopefully) the listener can identify with.
And that’s fine. That’s the “big picture stuff”, and it matters. If you’re fortunate enough to work with a Valerie Geller or Randy Lane, for instance, there’s no doubt that you will get better, and understand a lot of things you probably never “got” before.

But there’s something else that plays a huge factor in being the Full Package, and that’s simply being a good disc jockey. Sad to say, with the advent of voice tracking, the computer running everything, long stopsets that lull you into not staying as sharp as when we had to run everything manually, sloppy cue tones…well, let’s just say that compared to the heyday of the Top 40 Wars, things are sometimes just not very sharp right now.

It matters that your delivery matches the pace of the song you’re talking over or coming out of. Or the emotional vibe of the song. Or both.
It matters that you learn to trust saying things once, really well, then moving forward – without spelling everything out to the listener and repeating everything you say, treating the listener like a 3-year old.
It matters that you put things in real, conversational wording, rather than just reading “print language” off a computer screen. And there are literally dozens of other things that I coach – but the point is that it REALLY matters that you develop your voice acting skills to sound sincere and like you’re here in my car with me, right this second, listening to the song with me.

Of COURSE you want to come across as a good companion in the car; a good neighbor; hopefully a person the listener considers to be a good friend. But you have to START with being a good, skilled disc jockey.

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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 Coaching Tip #262 — The Main Difference between Facebook and Radio

With all the conversations going on in radio circles about the uses of social media, there’s a giant, Grand Canyon-sized difference being overlooked. Let’s just use Facebook as the best example, simply because it’s the most-utilized social media platform.

As of this writing, there are about 225 million people in the United States using Facebook.

But there are over 323 million people in this country, and well over 90% of them listen to radio for a significant amount of time every single day. So radio has somewhere between sixty-five to ninety million more people using it every single day than Facebook does.

I’ve talked a lot about how random postings on Facebook don’t make for compelling radio Content; quite the opposite, usually. And this is why: because they’re used in totally different ways.

Facebook is where people go to kill time.
But radio is where people go for companionship.
A Facebook “conversation” can’t possibly compete on a regular basis with an air talent, right here, right now, in this moment, saying something relevant to me. It can’t give me the weather (like the other day, when I heard a midday jock say “It just started raining a couple of minutes ago…”), it can’t update me on where the traffic is bottled up, it can’t comment on a song I’m listening to, or share something about the artist as the song starts. And Facebook, by its very design, can’t possibly have the same one-on-one feeling in the car that good radio has.

Don’t be fooled by all the naysayers that insist radio is dead, and social media is everything. Neither one of those is true. They may SOUND true, but they’re simply not. They’re incomplete thoughts, based on a dismissive attitude toward the best tried-and-true social medium in the world – RADIO.

It’s fine to use social media as additional ways to make contact with the listener, but that’s all they are. For the foreseeable future, nothing’s going to replace radio. That said, your challenge is to do something worth listening to when you open the mic.

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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 Coaching Tip #261 – The Little Things Matter More than the Big Things

No matter how many songs in a row you play or “commercial-free zones” your station may promote, radio is still at its core about the CONNECTION between you and the Listener.

A great Consultant can help you map out a Strategy, but the essence of Coaching is about how many ways there are to carry out that strategy. And when it comes to engaging the listener, and making that person want to listen longer or more often, sometimes the little things matter more than the big things.

Here’s an example, from morning team Tom & Ana on Contemporary Christian station Spirit 105.3 in Seattle:

Yesterday, Ana talked about the story of the woman named Nicole McGuinness, who was on a TV show, HGTV’s “Beachfront Bargain Hunt”. (You may have seen this story, too.) A doctor, Erich Voigt, noticed a lump on her neck, and commented about it on his Facebook page. Another person saw the posting and advised him to contact the show’s producers, which he did, and then told Ms. McGuinness by email that she should get it checked.

It turned out that she has thyroid cancer, and thanks to Dr. Voigt, she’s now getting treatment for it.

Great story. But then Tom weighed in, with “Thank God for high-definition TV, where a doctor could SPOT this!”

That little comment, a different ‘camera angle’ that told every listener something about Tom, is what CONNECTION is made of. And it said more than any liner, or having a contest winner, could ever say. It was personal, and it was powerful – one of those things that supposedly anyone COULD have observed, but HE DID.

Well done, Tom.

What did you do today, or this week at least, that showed your heart, your concern, and a less obvious take on something that touched your listener?

When it comes to “Stationality” (the great term that Lee Abrams came up with years ago), the big things matter – but often, the little things matter more.

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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.