Monthly Archives: February 2024

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #560: Overcoming Low Expectations

Posted on by

My dear friend Beau Weaver, Voice Actor extraordinaire, recently expressed some interesting thoughts about today’s radio.
One of the things he said was that most young people he talks to think of a deejay as that person who mixes music at a club. Younger demos don’t care much about radio; they care more about podcasts and You Tube influencers. Radio, as usual, gets little respect.

So okay, how do you change this impression? How do you avoid being thought of as less than we were a decade or two ago?

It’s simple: be about the Listener’s life. (And yours.)

Lots of air talents are quick to talk about their lives. But remember that you…come second. The listener’s life is the springboard; your story is the complimentary piece. Most stations seem to get this order wrong. “I – me – my” is the language of the self-obsessed “all about me” people that we would avoid in daily life.

The minute I found this principle in my own career, everything after that was easy. So I’m passing it on to you – free. Now the question is whether or not you’ll do it.

– – – – – – –
Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (mobile)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2024 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #559: Two Thoughts About Imaging

Posted on by

Your station’s Imaging is on 24/7/365. More, by FAR, than any individual air talent is on.

It sends out your message to the listener; how you want to be thought of. Or as everyone says today, “Your Brand.” (Ick. What a stupid label.)

So, let me help you with two related thoughts:

1. Tell the truth.
Enough with the empty bragging. “The best of today and yesterday” sounds like a butcher shop trying to get rid of some hamburger that looks kind of gray.

2. Tell me what makes you different.
We’ve heard all the “blah blah” about “your favorites” or “50-minute music hours” or “12 in a row”. What separates you from every other station? What’s the Benefit for my spending time with you? (“Traffic on the 8s” worked for KRLD in Dallas, and became a mainstay for many other stations after they saw how this worked.)

If I consider every time your Imaging plays to be an unnecessary commercial for you, that’s not going to form the basis of a long-term relationship. Why you, instead of someone else? THAT should be your message.

– – – – – – –
Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (mobile)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2024 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #558: Now and Then – A Lesson from the Beatles

Posted on by

Right at the end of 2023, an amazing thing happened. The great movie director Peter Jackson got with Giles Martin, son of the Beatles’ producer George Martin, Paul McCartney, and Ringo Starr, and using ‘computer learning’, salvaged a John Lennon demo of a song called “Now and Then”.

It became a massive hit (#1 in England, 54 years after their last #1, and the same type of reception all over the world). And the video Jackson created was remarkable. Using today’s technology, it “placed” John Lennon and George Harrison alongside Paul and Ringo, and truly felt like a new Beatles song, with a message that resonated everywhere — how we miss those that we love, and how much they affect our lives.

But it also fleshed out an interesting phenomenon. Thousands of people, from 76 years old, to people 7 years old, went online or made You Tube comments about how much the Beatles changed their lives.

The reason: When you move people emotionally, when they feel like someone else is feeling the same things they’re going through, that’s when they bond with you.

I talk all the time about finding the core Emotion of a Subject, and making sure that nothing you do on the air LACKS an emotion of some sort. The Beatles – almost 60 years after we first heard them – made that case.

– – – – – – –
Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (mobile)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2024 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #557: What’s Better on the Other Side of the Radio?

Posted on by

Radio personalities tend to think only of what works in the Control Room, not necessarily what works better on the OTHER side of the radio – you know, the Listener’s side.

My brilliant friend John Frost and I had a challenge once in Orlando. Together, we ran five stations, one of which was a rather dormant AM station that we wanted to resurrect as a Sports Talk station.

But we didn’t have a budget to make a splash, and get people to sample this new baby that was one of the very first Sports Talk stations in that day to really open up the so-called rules. We wanted big personalities, parody commercials, a station Imaging voice (Jeff Lawrence) who was crazy inventive. But that was all just on the air. How to get noticed was the challenge.

So…

Gary “Zippy” Wallace was a budding talent, but we didn’t know where to put him, so he landed on the Sports station’s morning show as a “stunt” guy.
We worked with Krispy Kreme to give us a mountain of donuts to give away, and placed Gary at the busiest intersection in the city, by the arena where the Orlando Magic basketball team played. (They were a BIG deal then, with Shaquille O’Neal at center.) Gary had a small basketball and rim that he could hang on his chest, and when people stopped at the longest-duration stoplight I’ve ever sen, he offered them the chance to sink a basket with a nerf basketball – and if they did, they got a free donut!

Several hundred donuts later, people had something to REMEMBER about our new Sports station – and Gary Wallace.

Sometimes, the best way to connect with people is on the street, where they live and work.

What have you done OUTSIDE the studio to attract people to the station?

– – – – – – –
Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (mobile)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2024 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.