We’re not taking a car trip together. We’re taking an elevator trip together. I’m gonna go up three floors and then get off. You need to be done by then.
BREVITY. We owe it to the Listener to be concise.
Frost Advisory #556 – What Is Your Radio Station FOR?
Perhaps you’ve heard it said that the church is known more for what it is against than what it is for.
“A business is no longer what it tells customers it is. A business is what customers tell other customers it is.”
In his book “Know What You’re For,” Jeff Henderson recommends that you consider the gap between these two questions:
- What do you want to be known for?
- What are you known for?
The gap between the two answers will illuminate how your station moves from a transactional relationship with your listeners to one that is more relational.
Continue readingTommy Kramer Coaching Tip #409: A Lesson in Greatness – Robert W. Walker
Radio used to be populated by “big” voices, guys with a cannonlike delivery who ANNOUNCED or PRESENTED things.
But then it changed, and one of the best examples of how is my friend Robert W. Walker. Rob didn’t have a huge voice, but it was an ultra-easy-to-listen-to voice. He wasn’t “jokey” funny, but his insights (especially when he made himself the butt of the joke) were often hilarious. He pulled you in toward him. It seemed intimate, one-on-one.
He also was a brilliant writer and Production talent. Some of his station promos raised chill bumps when you heard them.
But I would classify his main talent as something that sounds very simple: People just LIKED him. He was what everyone in radio thinks they could sound like, but not that many actually can.
I think there are two main things to learn from Rob:
- Never underestimate being likable.
- Never think about your voice. Just be you.
Frost Advisory #555 – A Programming Lesson From Easter
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. Having worked in the format for more than twenty years now I’ve believe the reason is fairly obvious.
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?
Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #408: The Opposite
Sometimes, something 180 degrees away is what works best. You can’t do it all the time, but it’s one of the first things that I consider. Here are three examples.
- The opposite of what anyone would think: Homer Simpson, “If Jesus had a gun, he’d be alive today.” (I thought I’d fall off the couch when I heard that.)
- Wally, on Contemporary Christian Music network WAY-FM: instead of automatically playing an artist’s songs when he’d have that artist on as a guest, he’d do “Win it to Spin it,” meaning that the artist had to do some challenge in less time than Wally did it in order to get his/her song played. One I remember was when he had a singer form a pyramid of Spam “cakes” – without using his HANDS! (The guy had to stack them up into a pyramid with his MOUTH. Ewww! Hilarious on the air, and as a YouTube video.)
- Once when I was on the air, my boss wanted me to do an all-request hour every Friday night. After doing it the “plain vanilla” way a couple of times, I went in exactly the opposite direction, saying “This is an all-request hour, but I’M doing all the requesting.” Totally unexpected, I had more people call in when they COULDN’T make a request than when they could. (A couple of weeks later, when I got a novelty album with 20 different versions of the song “Louie Louie,” I started the hour with “You can request any song you want… as long as it’s ‘Louie Louie.'” Believe me, there’s nothing funnier than hearing an “anthem” song done in Mariachi band style, or as a waltz… or hearing the same song requested for an entire hour.)
Try the Opposite once in a while. It opens up brand new roads.
Frost Advisory #554 – Your Listeners Are Tuning Out! Why Don’t You Care?
We radio folk tend to think of tune out as a benign little concept akin to teenagers button pushing looking for the latest Taylor Swift song. While that does happen and we should do our darnedest to minimize programming that results in tune out, there is a far more ominous idea lurking in the bushes.
Some people leave a brand and never come back.
A friend of a friend told me that when people leave a car brand they seldom come back. Eek! Specifically, when folks have an accident they are far less likely to purchase that brand of car again. Maybe it’s partly psychological (“It’s the car’s fault”), or maybe it’s the potential embarrassment of the folks at your dealership pegging you as the one that side-swiped the delivery truck of kumquats headed toward the orphanage. (There’s a sentence you don’t see real often!)
What if we radio folk considered the seriousness of “tune out” as if the listeners were NEVER going to tune back in? That is, they were likely to leave the brand once and for all.
Continue readingTommy Kramer Coaching Tip #407: The Rule Of Three Is Now The Rule Of Two
The old comedy axiom is that the 3rd time gets the biggest laugh: watch any old sitcom or comedy movie and you see it over and over. Something gets a laugh. A few minutes later, it gets repeated, and gets another laugh. Finally, much later, there’s a “call-back” and it gets said again, and that’s the “big” laugh. That’s the Rule of Three.
But now, that’s outdated. Everyone’s attention span is shorter now. The Rule of Three doesn’t apply anymore. Now it’s just 1, 2 instead of 1, 2, 3. To sound like TODAY, you need to shorten that rhythm of yesterday. If you do it a third time now, it usually just sounds like you’re trying too hard. (Or maybe it doesn’t even make sense, because Time Spent Listening is so much shorter now.)
Frost Advisory #553 – What We Can Learn From Texas
You’ve probably seen them. The clever little social media posts that say something like “Tell me you’re from Texas without mentioning Texas.”
There’s also…
“Tell me you love pizza without saying pizza.”
“Tell me you love baseball without mentioning baseball.”
You get the idea.
In our case, tell me that you reflect my values without saying you reflect my values.
Continue readingTommy Kramer Coaching Tip #406: A Lesson from Alex Trebek
Watching ‘Jeopardy’ these days is strange for the millions of people of all ages who grew up watching Alex Trebek emcee the show. First, Ken Jennings, the greatest contestant of all time, hosted. Then the Producer of the show, Mike Richards, came in with his “Don Draper” looks and professionalism. Then Katie Couric, enthusiastic, but…
While we know a little about Jennings and a lot about Couric (but in another setting), we knew a lot more about Alex. He loved travel, his pride in Canada was cute, and just the WAY he conducted the show spoke volumes about his respect for what could have been just another Game Show.
Frost Advisory #552 – A Programming Lesson From Daylight Saving Time
It was an hour that never existed.
We changed our clocks from 2 AM to 3 AM. Rod Serling might say, “Imagine if you will that one hour never existed. No babies were born. No one died. Next stop, the Twilight Zone!”
That hour doesn’t matter.
Waiting through the first part of a boring movie. You hope it will get better.
Sitting down at a restaurant. The waiter is slow to come over. Minutes tick by without giving your drink order. You hope it will get better.
Continue reading