Here’s a question for you: When’s the last time you did something nonsensical on the air?
I love radio, but most stations I hear nowadays are SO BORING. A bunch of people reading crap off a computer screen. Where’s the creativity in that?
Monthly Archives: November 2022
Frost Advisory #641 – Givers And Takers, A Message For Thanksgiving
Givers and takers.
When you think about the people that have had the greatest influence on your life I reckon’ you’d say they were GIVERS. I think of my mom and dad, many of my bosses in radio, and my friends and mentors along the journey.
Continue reading“The human spirit senses and feeds on a giving spirit… Think about what Jesus taught – half the time people didn’t know what he was talking about, but they listened attentively. Jesus was giving – feeding them. Not taking. It is at a spirit (heart) level. He wasn’t just giving information.”
John Maxwell
Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #494: Listening to Yourself
It’s absolutely stunning to see how few people listen to their own air work.
Back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth, we had “skimmer” cassettes that started recording when the mic went on, and then stopped recording when the mic went off. It was a ‘given’ that I’d take the cassette of that day’s show and listen to it as I drove home from work.
It’s even easier now. You can do it on your phone by just logging into the system. Continue reading
What’s Christmas Got To Do With It?
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 their WHY.
Continue readingTommy Kramer Coaching Tip #493: A Simple Guide to Connecting with the Listener
Each coaching session I do gets a short written recap afterward. I keep it simple, and often include an example from that person’s air work.
Recently, a talent talked about the dreary weather forecast, and noted that it made some people crabby. Then she paused…and added, “Okay, it makes me crabby.”
I sent this in her recap:
Very nice, Sarah. 
Opening up and sharing your quirks and foibles will always work. Even if people don’t feel the same way you do, they’ll weigh your feelings against theirs, and that in itself is connection.
Feel free to keep that up.
Hopefully this tip will serve two purposes: (1) it shows how easy it is to pull someone a step closer to you when you’re on the air, and (2) it should take away any fear you have of coaching.
That small, but highly connective moment might have gone unnoticed. But to me, it’s the germ of the whole purpose of being on the air – to CONNECT with the Listener.
Frost Advisory #639 – What’s Your Station’s Greatest Feature?
“Your format sounds small,” an industry friend recently told me.
I reckon’ he knew how to get my attention.
“If your station can be transformative in someone’s life as you claim, then why do you spend 99% of your time focusing on the nuts and bolts, the songs, the artists, the deejays, the features – the stuff any radio station in any format can do.
Why don’t you focus on what matters most?,” he says from an outsider’s perspective.
Coming out of the pandemic and through a turbulent election season people are looking for answers. People are looking for hope.
Hyundai’s recent campaign “Hope is our greatest feature” offers us a perspective.
Continue readingTommy Kramer Coaching Tip #492: How to Bake a Story
The promise was that this tip would be about how to put a story together. But my wife watches a lot of cooking shows, so that’s why it has that title.
Here’s how you do it… three steps to lay out. Continue reading
Frost Advisory #638 – Stuff That Really Matters; A Lesson We Can Learn From The World Series
It’s baseball’s biggest stage. These games mean it all. It’s the dream of every kid who’s ever swung at a baseball in his back yard. And yet, at this pinnacle moment in a millionaire player’s career they are willing to stop the game in order to hold a cheap handwritten cardboard sign.
What in the name of Abner Doubleday is going on here?
Continue reading“Major League Baseball, Stand Up To Cancer and MasterCard conducted a special in-game moment, with players, umpires, coaches and fans all pausing to hold up placards with the names of loved ones affected by cancer.”
MLB.com
Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #491: Where Stories Are Born
In the last tip, I wrote about getting away from Information and concentrating on Storytelling. That tip and this one grew out of an email conversation my associate John Frost and I had with the PD of a station we both work with. Let me share it with you…
It’s kind of like John Lennon wrote in “With a Little Help From My Friends” – “What do you see when you turn out the light?” was his question. For our purposes, it’s simply, “What do you see?”
Continue reading