Tommy Kramer Tip #167 – What you SHOULD want out of phone calls

One of the things I get asked about a lot is phone calls. Some PD’s think that putting a lot of phone calls on the air is the whole point; that putting people who’ve never had any sort of training in mass communication, speech, acting, or writing will somehow be better than an air talent who’s had years of experience and doesn’t ramble on about insignificant details when he or she is telling a story.

It’s not that I don’t like callers being on the air; I’ve done shows that were extremely phone-intensive. But you have to have a sense of what the real point is. So think of it this way:

You don’t want to take phone calls. You want to take verbal photographs from people. If what’s being said doesn’t make you see something, or imagine in your mind what it would be like to be in that person’s shoes, it’s not worth airing.

And let me clarify that you want snapshots, not movies. Every second that you let a caller continue to talk, you face being driven off a cliff. If possible, record and EDIT every call. In a Talk format, be prepared to simply cut off a caller, then go on to make your point, or hit the button to go to the next thing.

Whenever I tell a group of people this stuff, someone says “But won’t that sound rude?”
No. What’s rude is subjecting the Listener to a boring, information-driven call that seems ten times longer than it actually is. Frankly, the listener deserves better than that.