Monthly Archives: December 2018

Frost Advisory

Frost Advisory #438 – A New Year, A More Meaningful Station

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The Christmas season brings out the best in our format. More people tune in than at any other time of the year, some stations topping a million listeners per week, once unthinkable in our format.

I know stations that do their best work in connecting on big tent values (those that resonate with new listeners as much as with regular fans) with stories of hope, forgiveness, and fresh starts. Over the last several weeks we’ve heard some amazing stories and songs.

I heard how Pamela and her daughter were helped to move out of the homeless shelter and start a new life!

I heard Craig’s story of being able to hear for the first time because of a caring surgeon.

I heard the story of the man who decorated his house with Christmas lights knowing that his son wouldn’t live to see Christmas. When his neighbors found out they joined in and decorated their houses months early.  

Stories and songs.

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Tommy Kramer Tip

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #290 — The Twelve-Ounce Glass

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The other day, I heard a guy who’s quite good RUSHING through every break.  Talking to him later, I found that he’d gone through a series of really stressful things, leading to his getting back home at 4 AM, then having to go in and substitute for someone on the air just a very few hours later.

In trying to overcome sleep deprivation, he went the “energy” route.  But it didn’t really work, because the listener can almost always tell when we’re overcompensating, or just not quite “in the pocket.”

This is what I told him:

A 12-ounce glass won’t hold 14 ounces of Dr. Pepper.  Pouring it faster won’t help.

Keep that in mind the next time you’re not physically at your best.  Stay ear-friendly.  Fit the glass.

Frost Advisory

Frost Advisory #437 – What’s Christmas Got To Do With It?

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Is there a connection between Christmas and your station’s strategy?  No, I didn’t say Christmas MUSIC.  I said Christmas.

They say there are more “religious” radio stations in the United States than any other format category.  They also say that those religious stations have fewer listeners than any other.  Ouch!

Many Christian radio stations could best be described as “A bunch of stuff all on one station,” consisting of a little of this and a little of that with little connection to the WHY.

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Tommy Kramer Tip

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #289 – Talent versus Music

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A station I’ve worked with for years now faces a huge challenge.  Their longtime morning man and PD is leaving the station after many years of exemplary service and success.  At the same time, they’re being pressured by a relatively new GM to get ratings and revenue up, and part of that is to reduce expenses by going to fewer air talents being employed (doubling up on a jock by putting him or her on two different stations in the cluster) and going to more voice-tracked shows on the weekends.

So I want to speak into that as a bonus for any PD or GM reading this, while at the same time focusing on what will help any talent under the gun from his boss to do better.

First, if you live by math (ratings statistics and projections) as your starting place to the extent that you think more voice-tracked shifts are an answer, that’s not gonna fly.  In radio today, both in the short and the long run, Talent doesn’t DELIVER the product, talent IS the product.

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Tommy Kramer Tip

Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #288 – What a fan fight at a football game has to do with you

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On Sunday, December 2nd, 2018, two fans got into a fight in the stands of a Pittsburgh Steelers game.  One guy said something.  The guy he said it to tellingly removed his cap, then head-butted the first guy.  Guy #1’s girlfriend and several other fans got involved.

Not exactly untypical, but as I read about it (and watched the video), something the writer of the article, Jay Busbee said, really caught my attention:

“This is why nobody brings kids to football games anymore, and why nobody under the age of 40 spends any time on Facebook.  They know enough not to get caught up in whatever messes the ‘olds’ are creating.”

The “olds?”  Wow.

Now whether you agree with the Facebook statement or not, it’s still something to consider.  I’ve been coaching people on how TO use – and now NOT to use – Facebook postings for years.  The gist of it is that if a comment is relevant to something top of mind TODAY, you might want to use it, but random postings are virtually useless, because Relevance is King when it comes to Content.

I’m not saying your listeners don’t still use Facebook, but we should always be looking at the next big thing.  Because habitually when radio does that, they find out that it’s already here.

Frost Advisory

Frost Advisory #435 – My GPS Is Broken!

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“My GPS is broken,” my friend Mike said to me.  “It only tells me where I’ve been, not where I’m going.”

The ratings arrive.  Our emotions react.  There is running up and down the hallways and gnashing of teeth!  DO SOMETHING!

I’ve heard some pretty wacky ways that people have reacted to ratings.  Moving the deejays’ shifts around, playing music from another format, and implementing no talk segues to sound more generic.  I’M NOT MAKING THIS UP, as Dave Barry would say.

Making programming decisions based solely upon ratings is like driving with a GPS that shows only where you’ve been.

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Frost Advisory

Frost Advisory #434 – We Become What We Focus On

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“It is what you make it,” was my dad’s advice at various milestones in my life.

There was a time in my career when I considered a radio station no more than the sum total of the things that it did; the deejays, the music, the jingles, the contests.  Like a sport being nothing more than the players, the uniforms, the goal posts or bases.

If that were true, then places like Cooperstown, New York, or Canton, Ohio, wouldn’t be shrines since they are not even home to the big league players and teams they eulogize.

It’s hard to remember how we thought about coffee before Starbucks, or personal computers and digital devices before Apple.  What they focused on changed the way we think of them.

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