Radio is all about telling stories. But I keep hearing people repeat things all the time on the air. What a drag.

IF you repeat something because you’re pounding a point home, that’s okay. (It was a huge part of George Carlin’s act. Chris Rock does this to good effect, too.) And repeating things is a good tool to use if you’re talking to a 3-year old.

But repeating something just because you’ve forgotten that you already said it, is NOT okay.

As anyone who took a first-year Speech class in college knows, unconscious repetition is a bad habit. Saying things ONCE is the best and most efficient way of telling a story.

Tighten it up. You might – dare I suggest this – actually rehearse it beforehand, instead of just fiddling around hoping it all just magically works out somehow.

– – – – – – –
Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (mobile)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2022 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Little things matter, because the listener is continuously forming an opinion of you as he or she listens.

One overlooked deejay thing is what I call “The Echo” – where you say the title of a song the last thing out of your mouth, then the song begins by singing that title.  “Why would that matter?” you may ask.

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As air talents, we get handed some pretty unwieldy things to put on the air sometimes.  Even with the best of intentions, sometimes a contest or promotion is written up as awkward sentences that no human would ever say to a friend in a real-life conversation.

So let me help you with two thoughts – one from the great voice acting coach Marice Tobias, and the other from the amazing British character actor Charles Laughton.  Here they are, in reverse order:

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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?

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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 →

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.

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 →

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?”

Information and Stories are totally different.  Yes, we use information in the telling of a story, but in coaching talent on storytelling,  I’ve often found that they often do one or more of these three things:

1. overshoot, trying to dress up so-called stories from Facebook or the internet that the listener may not care about at all,
2. choose “stories” that are too full of factoids and details, or
3. invent not-quite-plausible scenarios as a way to get in a line they thought of and were determined to use.

So here’s the deal:

Everything you and the listener have in common has a story behind it, and new stories get added to that memory pile every day – if you’re smart enough to capitalize on them.

“Just the facts, ma’am” is a police report.  What happened, and the emotion(s) generated by that = a story.

This tip was birthed by a comment from Randy Fox of KSBJ in Houston.  (If you’re not familiar with them, suffice it to say that it’s easily one of the Top 3 stations in the Contemporary Christian Music format, with a huge, devoted audience.)

During a recent session, Randy pinpointed a real strength of Morgan Smith, who does afternoons, saying “She makes the microphone invisible.”

What a nice compliment.  That intimacy, where it just feels like a friend is talking to you, is – to me – essential, if you want to be a great talent.

Share something, sure, and if you’re excited, show that.  But don’t try to be “bigger” or louder than a normal, animated conversation.  Make the mic disappear.