Radio still seems to be somewhat nomadic. Rarely, if ever, does an air talent stay at one station all of his/her career.

But hopefully, moving to a new station is an upward move. I worked at many stations over my 30+-year on-air career, and nothing illustrates this point better than an early move I made from Dallas to San Diego.

I was leaving KNUS in Dallas (the first FM station to ever be #1), and felt fairly confident that I had learned quite a lot at that point working for radio pioneer Gordon McLendon and his VP, Ken Dowe.

But KCBQ in San Diego was the hottest CHR station in the country, and I would make 50% more salary there.
However, it wasn’t quite the same. While the whole airstaff in Dallas had contributed to our formatics, the way we handled, for instance, a “cold” ending song into a song that started cold “(:00 intro); never saying the call letters into commercials (because guess what doing that signals to the listener over time), and many other minute, but important ingredients.

KCBQ was different. The PD, the brilliant Jack McCoy, had just come off probably the most famous contest ever, “The Last Contest”, which offered fantastic prizes and created “buzz” like no one had seen before. The on-air approach was more “up” and the breaks over song intros and stop-down Content breaks were quite short. And it had that southern California “cool” vibe.

I had adjustments to make. I paid attention, listened to the other dayparts, and got into the rhythm pretty quickly, but it did take a bit of tweaking.

When and if you go to a new station, take time to sense the environment. The overall vibe of the station, the timing of things, the kind of Content that works in that market – so you can fit in easily. Soon, you’ll be “part of the gang”, and bank another learning experience. Environmental Awareness always pays off.

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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (mobile)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2025 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

If you’re not familiar with baseball pitcher David Cone, here’s a cool fact:

On July 18, 1999, he threw a perfect game (that’s 27 batters in a row,no hits, no walks, no runs, no errors). Pretty cool.
But even more notable was that it was “Yogi Berra Day” at Yankee Stadium, with Yogi and the pitcher of the only perfect game in World Series history, Don Larson, in attendance. (Yogi was the catcher in that 1956 game.)

David Cone is now an excellent baseball analyst. And one of his terms really stuck with me; what he calls a “non-competitive pitch” – a “waste pitch” that a pitcher will sometimes throw that’s out of the strike zone. It doesn’t make the batter do anything. No adjustments need to be made. No fielders move to field it. No baserunners try to advance on it.

As it applies to radio…it’s kind of the same when you do a break that’s just some “click bait” thing that you’ve added a punch line to.
SO predictable.

Nobody goes, “Oh wow, I’ve never heard that before.”

You have to search for what matters to your listener today. Don’t settle for anything less than that. It cheapens the whole listening experience.

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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (mobile)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2025 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.