Tommy Kramer Tip #153 – What John Oliver Gets about Social Media that Most People Don’t

May 4, 2016 Tommy Kramer Leave a comment

If I hear “Join the conversation” one more time, I’m going to scream. This is trite and uninspired. First of all, to me (the listener), it’s NOT a “conversation” UNTIL I join it. It’s just a bunch of people I don’t know jabbering away on Twitter. It ranks right up there with someone’s picture of kale zucchini on Instagram. (And any “conversation” about that should include the words “makes me want to hurl.”)

John Oliver, the wonderful host of HBO’s “Last Week Tonight” really gets how social media should be used. Instead of the nebulous, pandering, “What do you think?” or the even more beaten-to-death “join the conversation,” Oliver gives people something to DO.

Example: In April of 2016, Oliver did a piece on the expensive seats in Yankee Stadium in a prime location, known as the “Legends Club” – the first five rows of seats. Priority seating access, people (servants, actually) bringing your food to you so you don’t have to stand in line with the plebeians who have to wait for their lukewarm 15-dollar beer – you get the picture. Oliver quoted the Yankees’ COO actually saying — out loud — in a radio interview that “If you buy a ticket in a very premium location, we don’t want you to sell it for a buck and a half” to a fan who “may be someone who has never sat in a premium location… so that’s a frustration to our existing fan base.”

Indignant about this “rich people don’t like sitting next to people who aren’t rich” perspective, Oliver BOUGHT two “Legends” seats to each of the Yankees’ first three games – right behind home plate. And he offered to sell them to you for 25 CENTS, with the provision that you COULDN’T dress nicely!

To get them, you tweeted a photo of what you and a guest would wear to the game, with the hash-tag #IHAVENEVERSATINAPREMIUMLOCATION.

Totally intrigued by this, I saw the two winning fans at the first game, sitting with all the high rollers and multi-gazillionaires, dressed in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles costumes! Well done, John Oliver, you strange but brilliant British fellow. If you get to Hawaii, come to my place, and we’ll sit in shorts, tee-shirts, and flip-flops (my attire EVERY day) and I’ll throw a steak on the grill for you.

The lesson: Let’s DO something, and get in on the ACTION, not just “join the conversation.”

– – – – – – –
Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (iPhone)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2016 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Frost Advisory

Frost Advisory #307 – Programming Lessons From The Mall

May 1, 2016 John Frost Leave a comment

Dozens of decisions come your way every day. Some are small and some are big, impacting the health and growth of your station.

Maybe there is wisdom to be found at the mall. (There’s a sentence I thought I’d never say!)

The mall directory has some sections large enough to read the name of the stores: Macy’s, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Bloomingdales. These are the anchor stores.

Other areas are much smaller with names readable only if you’re standing on your head. (And I wasn’t!)

The anchor stores serve as the primary reason people go to the mall. The smaller stores tend to be boutique in nature and add options to the mall experience. If Mom is shopping for a new outfit at Nordstrom, Dad can catch up on some computer work as he’s gulping down a Venti Iced Skinny Hazelnut Macchiato, Sugar-Free Syrup, Extra Shot, Light Ice, No Whip at Starbucks.

Your station is like that.

Your station’s “anchors” are its overarching brand values, the unique mix of music, compelling air personalities, and key listener benefits. (see Frost Advisories #122 and 146). Your smaller “stores” are everything else.

Here’s the problem! Under-performing stations tend to focus not on the anchors, but on the everything else. And that focus changes perspective.

“Where focus goes, energy flows. And where energy flows, whatever you’re focusing on grows.”
~Tony Robbins

If your radio station is struggling you may want to check your own “mall directory”. What’s most important? Why do people come there in the first place? Perhaps the small stuff has become the big stuff because that’s where your focus has been.

Now, off to the mall for a Venti Iced Skinny Hazelnut Macchiato, Sugar-Free Syrup, Extra Shot, Light Ice, No Whip at Starbucks!

Tommy Kramer Tip

Tommy Kramer Tip #152 – Fake Disagreements

April 27, 2016 Tommy Kramer Leave a comment

Here’s something that needs to be clubbed to death, never to appear again:

I’m hearing a lot of “fake disagreements” these days on team shows. Person #1 says something, then Person #2 disagrees with it. Which does happen in real life. But you can’t just take a position because some Consultant or some PD told you that “conflict is interesting, and you’ll get more phone calls.”

First of all, the object of being on the air isn’t to get phone calls. It’s to be a good neighbor, and to be informative and entertaining. Sometimes that’ll be funny; sometimes you’ll disagree. But it has to born of a genuine emotion, not just put on like a coat, because it ALWAYS SHOWS.

Manufactured disagreements are like fake IDs – they don’t really show who you are.

Here’s a tip in developing a more real, true to life sound. You can AGREE, but for different REASONS. (Actual people do this all the time. Let’s be like them.)

– – – – – – –
Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (iPhone)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2016 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Frost Advisory

Frost Advisory #306 – Maybe We’re Asking the Wrong Question

April 24, 2016 John Frost Leave a comment

“How many different items are on the menu?” It’s a question no one at a restaurant has ever asked.

And yet… “how many songs are on your playlist?” is routinely asked as though the answer might actually be significant.

The familiar and the unfamiliar; the all-time-favorites and the never-heard-of; each viewed simply as a quota, no one more important than another. But, alas…

Everyone’s favorite music station is the one that plays their favorite music.

And that, my friends, is the fundamental challenge in growing Christian music stations to be market leaders.

A well-known researcher recently told me that he had never seen a format where so much of the music was unfamiliar – even to its fans.

So, what’s the better idea?

In a world of unfamiliar, successful program directors design familiarity into the brand.

whats-hot

That’s how six unknowns can get the loudest ovation of the night at the ballpark – the common ground of love of country connects six thousand fans in the stands to the six returning airmen on the field. It’s how strangers become friends because they are both parents of kids on the same team. It’s how neighbor meets neighbor as everyone pulls together to clean up after a storm.

“To move an audience, especially a diverse audience, from where they are to where you want them to be requires common ground… Where you consistently begin and what you consistently assume determine who consistently shows up. Why? Because your assumptions create the common ground for the journey.”
~Andy Stanley, “Deep and Wide”

Familiarity is the fruit of common ground. Common ground is the fruit of knowing your listener.

Knowing your listener is the fruit of putting your listeners’ perspective ahead of your own agenda.

The question isn’t “How many different items are on the menu?”

…the question is, “What do people love here?”

Tommy Kramer Tip

Tommy Kramer Tip #151 – All Morning People

April 20, 2016 Tommy Kramer Leave a comment

Here’s how you build a great air staff, and keep them great over a long period of time, even with the natural ebb and flow of turnover:

Only hire people who could potentially do mornings. For EVERY daypart.

So many stations today are the morning show, then… everything else.

A lot of jocks doing nights or overnights (which, of course, might be a voice tracker nowadays) simply aren’t very dynamic or entertaining. Blah.

But PERSONALITIES should be in EVERY daypart.

Naturally, many of them won’t be fully hatched yet. But if you look for that spark, that “everybody at the party’s listening to this guy tell stories” ingredient, or someone who writes great copy, for instance, that’s a great starting place.

Because here’s the deal: people who DON’T have that Entertainment factor have a low ceiling on how good they can become.

Three centuries ago, I started in radio in my hometown doing all-nights. I wasn’t very good. But with a lot of mentoring, and the permission to try stuff AND permission to fail, three and a half years later, I moved from Shreveport to Dallas to begin the greatest adventure of my life. I wasn’t the best jock on that staff either, but that staff was all young bucks who would end up doing morning drive at some point in their careers. And we’re all in the Texas Radio Hall of Fame.

That can be YOUR staff, if you don’t just settle for a seat filler.

– – – – – – –
Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (iPhone)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2016 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

Frost Advisory

Frost Advisory #305 – Programming Lessons Learned from… Our Faith?

April 19, 2016 John Frost Leave a comment

They say there are more “religious” radio stations than any other format category. They also say those religious stations have fewer listeners than any other. The reason for that is quite simple.

A radio station cannot grow unless it is designed to grow. And that requires a different kind of thinking. Strategic thinking.

A growth strategy is one that incorporates big picture concepts such as…

Why does the radio station exist?
Who are our listeners?
What do they desire and expect from our station?
Who and where are other people like them?

It’s ironic to me that most Christian radio stations aren’t strategic. Ironic because our Christian faith may be the most strategic thing there is.

Our faith flows from the ultimate big picture. There is a God. He made everything. He created us for a purpose. He desires a relationship with us. Jesus Christ is the focal point of that God-man relationship.

Most Christian radio stations ignore strategy and focus only on the day to day tactics – the songs, the contests, the liners, the deejays. Oh, and reacting to complaints.

springfield-church-2

Your radio station can be transformed if you’ll answer two simple questions:

What do people want and expect from your station?

How consistently to do you that?

Congratulations! In answering those two questions you’ve begun the journey of thinking strategically.

Tommy Kramer Tip

Tommy Kramer Tip #150 – One Word

April 13, 2016 Tommy Kramer Leave a comment

Just one word can change the listener’s perception of you. Indeed, in the moment, one word can change anything.

“The woman screamed when she saw a moose” is very different from “The woman screamed when she saw a mouse.”

“I took my daughter Angela…” tells me who this person is. “I took Angela…” doesn’t.

“We have Taylor Swift tickets to give away” is about you. “You can win Taylor Swift tickets!” is about me, the listener.

Choose your words carefully. Craft what you do on the air. Stop thinking of what you do as a shift, and think of it as a show. You’re here to be good company, to catch me up on things, and to entertain. Don’t just be “radio” good; be “down to earth, but definitely the life of the party” good.

It’s all about the performance.

And every word matters… both said and unsaid.

Mason Morning Minute

Let’s Talk About Leadership

April 11, 2016 Alan Mason Leave a comment

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.
~John Quincy Adams

I hate it when an ancestor has more clarity on a subject of today than I do. That’s because I have a lot of people ask me what leadership is. While they don’t like it, my response is always to ask, “Why do you want to be a leader?” Few are ready to answer that.

It’s a real killer for many people when I ask. They start to tell me about what they can do with the organization, or how equipped they are, or how bad existing management is.

What they don’t often say is they have a vision for what the future can hold, or what they can do for the organization in their position. Their perspective is inward looking, not outward looking. They care about what they will be doing more than how the organization will be doing. It’s not about what they’ll add, but what they can get. Wikipedia, the proven expert on everything, says, “Leadership is both a research area and a practical skill, regarding the ability of an individual or organization to ‘lead’ or guide other individuals, teams, or entire organizations.”

If you’re only thinking about what’s wrong now, or how much better you can do than existing management, you’re not thinking about leading. You’re probably thinking about a competition, and how you’ll “win”. How you can do better than the person in charge now?

There might be some truth to the part where you can do a “better” job than whoever is in charge now. But it also could be a combination of ego, hubris, or lack of information. If you spend more time thinking about how much better you can do than the existing leadership rather than what you can do to move the organization ahead, you might be in the leadership business for the wrong reason.

Frost Advisory

Frost Advisory #304 – If Only

April 10, 2016 John Frost Leave a comment

It’s the shortest title of any of the 304 Frost Advisories.

If only.

If only we didn’t have those limitations. The budget. The staffing. The signal.

Limitations! There are just 12 notes on a musical scale, only 100 yards on the field, just 90 feet between bases, and barely 24 seconds on a shot clock.

All art has boundaries.

“Embracing the limitation can actually drive creativity.”
~Phil Hansen

Embracing it can result in a mural made from nothing but postage stamps, 60 foot sculptures of four presidents chiseled into granite at Mt. Rushmore, or a TV sitcom with no music other than a bass guitar.

madeleinestamps

In the world of radio, the limitation is… time.

We sell time, we schedule time, and we even measure time spent listening.

But often the creative aren’t disciplined, and the disciplined aren’t creative. The result is either three minutes of babbling… or nice, concise dullness.

What if we embraced creativity and discipline as two sides of the same coin? “Necessity is the mother of invention”, Plato said. Or was it Frank Zappa?

All musicians want to jam. All hits are three minutes.

Tommy Kramer Tip

Tommy Kramer Tip #149 – The Power of Certainty

April 6, 2016 Tommy Kramer Leave a comment

Obviously there are exceptions, but for some reason, a lot of things I hear from jocks on music radio stations these days sound somewhat tenuous in their delivery. So let’s focus on that for a moment.

Here’s the goal:

Be SURE of what you want to say when the mic opens. Stumbling over words because you haven’t really digested them yet, or hemming and hawing around because you haven’t fully fleshed out the “story board” for this break, just makes you sound unprepared or weak.

CERTAINTY carries more weight than anything else. People who sound hesitant, or like the information owns THEM, don’t pull the listener in closer. They’re just audio wallpaper.