Last week, I did a “refresher” tip about the two most important basic ingredients – sounding real, and making sure you’re ALWAYS talking about something that’s relevant to the Listener’s life.

This time around, I want to deal with formatic basics, using a specific example: repeating things in the same ORDER over and over again.

I hear this all the time – the jock opens up with the name of the station, the artist, then the song title.  Next break, name of the station, artist, then title – just like the last break.  (This can happen with anything.  Always giving a time check or your name last, repeatedly saying “Good morning” break after break, etc.)

So here’s the deal:  You want to think like a baseball pitcher.  Never throw exactly the same pitch twice in a row.  Even if a pitcher has a 100-mile-an-hour fastball, about the second or third time he throws it at the same velocity in the same location, a major league batter is gonna send it toward the general area of Jupiter.

I DO believe that you should always say the name of the station first – it puts the “label” right out front, and you might as well get in the practice you’ll need to tell Echo or Siri to play it from now on, anyway – but even then, your inflection and pace should differ every time.  (A great way to accomplish this is to simply match the tempo or emotional vibe of the song you’re talking over or coming out of.  From there, you can change gears if you need to, but this will start you off right in the pocket.)  Then you add to that PURPOSELY switching around the order of things, or just the NUMBER of things you do, and you’ve got it.

In the bigger picture, every time you fall into habits – which will automatically take away at least a small element of surprise – you’re just treading water.  Brain mapping technology shows that even just a TINY difference makes it received as NEW information.  That’s what makes the brain NOTICE it, instead of becoming numb to it.

In Sports, there’s a thing called “paralysis by analysis.”  It refers to your mind getting too cluttered to allow you to perform well.

In radio, whether you’re a new talent trying to find your way, or a veteran talent trying to update your skills to stay viable, it’s really easy to get too many thoughts in your head.  (In my coaching, each session almost always boils down to just one main thing, then MAYBE one other little thought to just let percolate until the next time we talk.  But no more than that.)

So let’s give you a shot in the arm today by getting back to the two biggest “basics”…

1. The strength of your Content will determine how relevant you are.
   If what you’re talking about isn’t something that’s relevant to my life and interests, then as a listener, I’m not going to pay much attention to what you have to say.  As a matter of fact, I may just hit the button and move on to something else, not even remembering who you are or what station I just heard.
2. Your coming across as a real person instead of just “a disc jockey” will determine how engaging you are.
   “Personality” isn’t usually about inventing some false front or alter ego.  It’s about selecting the best VERSION of yourself to put on the air, so hopefully, I’ll want to come back and hear you again, or listen longer.  This involves some upper level voice acting skills and quite a few specific techniques.  It rarely ever just comes naturally.

If you really cultivate these two most important basic areas, your ceiling is unlimited.

You would think that TV and Radio are like brothers or cousins, each putting out their product with an all-encompassing view of what the experience is like from the viewer’s or listener’s perspective.

And you would be wrong.

In reality, TV doesn’t care enough (if at all) about SOUND.  In my experience of coaching many television air talents, it’s pretty much all about what it LOOKS like.  The end result is usually a bunch of talking heads reading words from teleprompters that real people would never say in an actual conversation.  (“The alleged suspect was apprehended” instead of “they caught the guy.”)  But the time they could use to rewrite it gets spent on their hair and makeup.

Radio, for the most part, doesn’t care enough about the PICTURES it’s creating.  Sure, the best talents are all about “word pictures,” but way too often nowadays, in the era of voice-trackers that don’t even live in the market the station is in, they just put a “smile” in their delivery and read things.  Ick.

If TV personalities thought more about the WORDS they’re saying, they’d be more three-dimensional.  And if radio personalities thought more about creating a PICTURE in the listener’s mind instead of just giving information, they’d draw that listener closer every single day.

Just because you’re ON doesn’t mean that people are actually paying attention to you.  You EARN that.  Or not.  Your choice.

In the last tip, I talked about a couple of challenges in being TOO “up” all the time on the air.  (Being told to “have more energy” is usually the cause of this.)

Just fyi, the “example” in the tip wasn’t really any specific morning team; it was drawn from several different teams I’ve coached.  (But it’s always interesting to see which of the people I work with will THINK that a tip was written about them.)

Here’s the follow-up. In just one or two sessions, this “shot from a cannon, everything at one constant energy level” thing almost always changes.

The biggest factor in trying to help anyone improve is the natural resistance to change.  But there’s nothing to fear if the motive behind it is simply to help you sound more three-dimensional and natural on the air.  The era of “presenting” and “announcing” is GONE.  The world is too full of shouting, noisy hype to believe anything done with that approach anymore.

In every way you can think of, make things more HUMAN.  Being a constant piston-engine, frantically energetic noise doesn’t REVEAL anything about you. And let’s be clear: the listener has to LIKE you, or he/she won’t listen.  There are too many other places to turn for information and entertainment to think that your station is going to succeed without being Personality-driven.

Radio will need to up our game to be valid as technology continues to change the landscape in terms of what the listener’s options are. But we’re still first in line for the listener’s time – IF we have Personality.

I’ve been working with a morning show recently that only has one “gear.”  The male partner is “Ron Radio,” talking to the listener like she’s 20 feet away (when, in reality, the listener is just a couple of feet away, in the car).  The female partner, who’s new to radio, has what I guess a lot of people would call a “bubbly” personality.  And, of course, she’s unnaturally loud, too – following his lead.

The problem here is that their too loud, “way too up” approach doesn’t quite sound real.  And if you’re ALWAYS “up,” then when something really bad happens that you need to comment on – another school or mall shooting, or God forbid, another plane flies into a building – chances are good that it’s going to sound either sort of bi-polar, or insincere.

I cringe when I hear a PD tell a talent to “have more energy” or to “smile” when they talk.  This inevitably results in an almost “terminally giddy” sound, and you’ve got nowhere to GO from there.

You need lots of vocal and emotional “gears” so you can make smooth, believable transitions between different types of subject matter.  The minute I hear someone who’s too loud or too “up,” we start working IMMEDIATELY on fleshing out vocal approaches that convey all sorts of different emotions.  We already have too many “announcers,” and at least one too many Kathy Lee Giffords.

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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (iPhone)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2017 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

This tip is team show-centric, but it actually applies to everyone on the air.

What Team Shows can Learn from “Curb Your Enthusiasm”:

In every great show, there’s a thin wire to walk between being spontaneous, but still being aware of how it “plays” to the ear.  Larry David’s HBO comedy “Curb Your Enthusiasm” is a great example of how ensemble shows should work.

Everyone in that cast knows what the circumstance (the scene) is, but it’s not scripted.  They may not even have a concrete idea of exactly how the scene will end, but what made that show so successful, to me, is that they’re sensitive to those “don’t try to do more” moments.  That’s how you get that perfect form of being Consistent, but NOT being Predictable.

“Curb” is something every team show could study, learn from, and get better as a result.  You might want to re-watch a few episodes.

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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (iPhone)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2017 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

The primary ingredients of any really good talent in a music format are Quips, Comments, and Stories.  A little more about each…

A quip:  My morning show partner years ago in Dallas, Rick “the Beamer” Robertson once came out of “Billie Jean” with “Well, what can you say about Michael Jackson… that hasn’t been operated on.”  (I don’t even know that this made sense, but it was just plain funny.)

A comment: a remark about something that may or may not be funny, but it is YOURS.  Comments can’t be in every single thing that you do, but there should be a healthy dose of them in each show.  Friendships are formed through the exchange of opinions.  If you don’t HAVE any, we can’t be friends.

A story:  I think of stories as “little plays” about “adventures” we have.  Note:  Please avoid the “Christmas newsletter” mentality.  Make sure that the listener CARES about the subject, or you’re just a car going as fast as it can toward an oak tree.

These three things, along with the more “plain vanilla” Content – promoting things, sponsor liners, whatever – are pretty much all you’re going to do, and they should be balanced.  And remember, there’s an art to making “plain vanilla” stuff stand out and be different from the last time you talked about it.

If you know what arrows you have in your quiver, you won’t waste your time trying to use something else.

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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (iPhone)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2017 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.