Over my more than two decades of “officially” being a talent coach, I’ve had a hand in putting dozens of team shows together. (I’ve coached over 300 of them.)
Here’s the most important thing in putting a team show together: Does each of them make the other person sound better? Continue reading
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 a completely different format, and implementing formatics that make the station sound more generic and less distinctive. 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.
Continue readingThis tip is primarily for Program Directors, but it also applies to air talent. Never have the air talent say your “positioning” phrase.
First of all, they’re not good at it, because it’s a “selling” thing that no one would ever say in a real-life conversation. (And most “positioning phrases” or slogans backfire anyway. Think about how many times you’ve heard something like, “Favorites of the 80s, 90s, and Today” – and then they play a song you hate.)
Let the Imaging voice do the liners. That’s what that person is for, to take the unnatural language OUT of the equation for the air talent.
Let the air talent concentrate on things that actually matter to the listener, and that he/she can relate to. Your sales pitch isn’t one of them.
On last week’s show I shared how important it is to fall in love with the format. This week I’m sharing a bit of a different perspective.
I’ve worked with many amazingly talented people over my five decades in the biz. Regardless of the format, regardless the size of the market, regardless of job title, and even regardless of the level of experience talent shines through.
(Make a list of the ten most talented people you’ve worked with. The names will pop into your head with little effort).
Continue readingIt’s only natural that I get a lot of inquiries about how to break into the Voice Acting world. Several years ago, after a seminar, a guy asked if I would listen to some of his work. He was a very good talent, but listening to his demo, I noticed something. I told him, “If I were playing the notes on a keyboard that you hit with your voice, you always seem to end sentences on the exact same note, and it almost always goes down in pitch.”
He was surprised by this, and said he had never noticed that before.
Going down in pitch repeatedly can make you sound predictable, or even bored. You should (of course) VARY your deliveries. And I also believe that thinking about it in a musical context can add a dimension.
Tip: I always picture the person – the ONE person – that I’m talking to. That seems to ‘shape’ the delivery, and helps avoid the “same note” thing.
It’s called Voice ACTING for a reason.
We programmers tend to be pretty nifty at analysis. It’s too long. It’s too short. There’s too much of “A” and not enough of “B.”
Successful radio stations are analyzed regularly. But analysis, if it goes no further than analysis, can have blind spots.
Continue readingJohn Lennon once said, “When I was five years old, my mother told me happiness was the key to life. When I went to school they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment. And I told them they didn’t understand life.”
So, with that in mind, do you sound happy on the air? You know, like you actually enjoy your job? Or are you just going through the motions, plodding along doing “fluff” Content or reading stuff off a computer screen?
If you’re not happy doing radio, please get out of it. Life’s too short to listen to someone who’s just “filling breaks”, and there are many people who’d love to have your job. This may sound corny, but we’re here to RELIEVE people of sad feelings or boredom, not add to them. Radio isn’t dying, but some people make it sound like it is.
If this is too “pie in the sky” to you, I quote John Lennon again: “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one.”
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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (mobile)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2023 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.
You read that right.
In case you’ve missed it, there is quite a controversy over a recent campaign from Bud Light.
It seems that the marketing department at Bud Light decided to make Dylan Mulvaney, a “trans woman,” one of its paid spokespersons. For the purposes of this blog I’ll not focus on the obvious moral and societal aspects of that decision but instead focus on the branding implications. After all, Christian radio stations regularly face scrutiny about who they are FOR or AGAINST.
So, what’s going on here?
Continue readingEach break you do is an “egg”. But ALL the breaks during an hour (or your show as a whole) are an omelet.
The point is, this break should stand as a break, but it should also be part of some sense of what today is like. A mood, if nothing else.
If you’re just doing isolated breaks, there’s no “story” that day. To be great, your show should be an ongoing saga of your experiences with things that are also part of the listener’s life. Who wouldn’t rather have an omelet than just one tired little egg?
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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (mobile)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2023 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.
There’s a financial talk show on a small AM radio station where I live. Yep, I listen from time to time but please don’t tell anybody. It’s terrible radio, but the guys are really smart, they cough a lot, have lots of room noise and give insightful advice.
Besides, they’ve helped me make a gazillion imaginary dollars in the stock market!
The trouble is they don’t understand radio. Much of the show includes inside references (the office necktie policy), dropped phone calls (“is the caller there? Hello? Please turn down your radio!”), reading articles out loud from the Wall Street Journal (BORING! I can do that myself!), or making references to things they said thirty minutes ago (“Do I have to repeat this again? Weren’t you listening thirty minutes ago?”)
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