Tag Archives: radio

The Right Stuff

December 19, 2016 Alan Mason Leave a comment

“There was a demon that lived in the air. They said whoever challenged him would die. Their controls would freeze up, their planes would buffet wildly, and they would disintegrate. The demon lived at Mach 1 on the meter, seven hundred and fifty miles an hour, where the air could no longer move out of the way. He lived behind a barrier through which they said no man could ever pass. They called it the sound barrier.”
~(opening to the movie “The Right Stuff”)

When you approach the sound barrier there is a sudden increase in aerodynamic drag and the plane buffets around. For Chuck Yeager, and the others, it must have been some experience. It was a change they wanted, but I’ll bet there were some too frightened to push through. Change can feel dangerous. Some of the test pilots of the 50s thought you couldn’t send someone into space and back without being “spam in a can.”

We’re feeling the bumps, jinks, and aerodynamic drag of seismic changes in media, driven by an even bigger change in generations. It’s uncomfortable, disruptive and even frightening. The world, as we baby boomers knew it, is evolving but that’s no worse than what the Greatest Generation, who fought in World War II, had to adapt to with us. Funny, they thought Boomers would be the end of America, but here we are. Things will change, but at the same time the world will go on.

We all have our areas where change seems impossible, there’s nothing wrong or unusual with that, unless it freezes us into inaction. Change is happening all around us every day. The key is the response to change – how we humans handle the change. There are basically three responses: we fool ourselves and ignore or refuse change, we can adapt to change, or we can be one of those rare people who get ahead of and lead change.

The question we should be answering is not about change, it should be how we’ll adapt to change, or maybe even lead change.

Tommy Kramer Tip

Tommy Kramer Tip #184 – No Excuses

December 14, 2016 Tommy Kramer Leave a comment

It seems like one of the main themes of life in the 21st century is dodging accountability. I see this all the time, where a talent needs to hear something in order to improve, but if it’s not sugar-coated or paired with pleasant compliments first, they reject it simply because it wasn’t delivered gift-wrapped like they wanted.

So rather than working on getting better, they pout, and think that complaining about it or giving off a wounded vibe will buy them some time. Yeah, right. Time to stand still.

If you’re the talent, you should never settle for this. If you’re not learning more, you’re going backwards.

As a programmer, never let a talent point the finger at the boss or the coach. Give them a homework assignment instead, like listening to a station or specific air talent they can learn from. Don’t ever mollycoddle the notion of not trying to get better EVERY DAY.

– – – – – – –
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.

Mason Morning Minute

Ridiculously In Charge!

December 12, 2016 Alan Mason Leave a comment

“Keep your fears to yourself, but share your courage with others.”
~Robert Louis Stevenson

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I’ve been reading Boundaries For Leaders by Henry Cloud, great book about growing a culture of leadership. In it, he talks about a leader he was talking to who was complaining about the culture around him. Cloud kept asking questions about why these things were happening, which led the leader to realize the culture was up to him! Finally, the leader was in charge… ridiculously in charge.

Leaders and managers spend a lot of time complaining about how their workplace operates without ever realizing that they are the ones who can fix it. I won’t give you all the details of the book, but two of the principles that will allow you to be ridiculously in charge are what you create and what you allow.

What you create is based on what you aspire to see, the culture you create (intentional or not), the goals you set, the strategy you employ and the leadership you demonstrate. These are usually the things we want.

What you allow are the things you don’t want to happen, but seem to anyway. It’s the things that happen because you don’t work against them. If you never say anything to people about coming to work late, they will come to work late. If you allow people to snipe at each other, sniping will grow as a tactic.

Of the two, what gets the least attention is what you allow. All those irritating things that happen – that you actually allow to happen – that you can’t understand. The things you don’t really want to deal with, because it’ll be too tough or complicated. Also, the things that you do yourself that only become irritating when it happens back to you.

This is one of the easiest to understand books about leadership that I’ve ever seen. Don’t expect to breeze through it, some parts are more difficult than others. You’ll also want to go slow enough give yourself time to absorb it.

One reason I love it is because it challenged me, but then gave me simple, doable answers. We can all improve our leadership skills, even if we’re only leading ourselves. This could be one of the biggest answers to a challenge you’ll find this year.

Tommy Kramer Tip

Tommy Kramer Tip #183 – Recycling Material

December 7, 2016 Tommy Kramer Leave a comment

I get asked a lot about whether or not to recycle something within a show. Almost everybody seems to think it’s okay, but it’s really not. Here’s why:

Because you’ll never do something as well a second time. Or you’ll do it well the second time after having done it poorly the first time. Unless you’re one of the greatest voice actors in the world, you’ve only got one really good performance in you. Live with it. You may not want to hear this, but artistically, you want to burn material like jet fuel, and keep coming up with more things to do – every show. Recycling the same bit a couple of hours later actually clogs up the creative process.

Note: You CAN recycle a Subject. But come up with a new “camera angle” the second time, so it’s not just you on autopilot.

– – – – – – –
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.

Mason Morning Minute

Dreaming In SoHo

December 5, 2016 Alan Mason Leave a comment

“No one is less ready for tomorrow than the person who holds the most rigid beliefs about what tomorrow will contain.”
~Watts Wacker, Jim Taylor and Howard Means, The Visionary’s Handbook: Ten Paradoxes That Will Shape the Future of Your Business

vision

Recently I was at the Crosby Conference, put on by Pip Coburn, in the SoHo area of New York, where the conversations were unlike anything I’ve done before. We discussed whether Facebook has an ethical responsibility to fairness in the news since so many people are now using Facebook for news, or whether we’re in a post-fact world, where you believe what syncs with your beliefs. And those were the simple ideas. It was amazing.

The discussions are all future oriented and held at a very high level. A lot of what we talked about had to do with the uncertainty in today’s world and the future.

But I can’t help myself. So when one of the students mentioned that she got her news from iHeart Media, I had to know more. I asked what iHeart meant to her, she explained it was a music and social media platform. Then, when I asked if she was aware that iHeart had radio stations in New York, she paused, looked confused, and said, “I don’t really listen to radio.”

It was by no means the biggest implication from the conference, but it was a little reminder of the uncertainty in our future. It also helped me realize how little time we spend on thinking about the bigger implications in our lives. We’re locked into a “radio’s dead” versus “radio’s fine” battle that only keeps us focused on the wrong thing. I guess it’s simpler than addressing the issues and easier to kick the can down the road, but it’s not a solution.

Then again, maybe that student was another outlier, an anomaly in the future of the medium we all love, and when we wake up everything will be fine.

Tommy Kramer Tip

Tommy Kramer Tip #182 – When Repetition Becomes Irritation

November 30, 2016 Tommy Kramer Leave a comment

The whole concept of “reach and frequency” is one of the benchmarks of all advertising, not just radio. But since we don’t have artwork or a camera to tell part of the story, we have to be mindful of what our words are actually saying.

Yes, the listener needs to hear something a few times for it to penetrate the world he/she lives in, like a contest, a promotion, or a feature you run.

But when it comes to “regular” Content and your vocabulary, you really don’t want to sound repetitive at all. In real life conversations, using the same words, expressions, or “camera angles” over and over again is an indicator of laziness, lack of imagination, and lack of respect for the person you’re talking to.

Those things you “always say” are the ENEMY of communication.

I used to coach a morning show in Dallas with a host who made a little whistling noise every time he played “The Joker” by the Steve Miller Band. (You know, that place at the end where there’s a little “slide” guitar thing that sounds like a whistle.) Whenever that song came up, I really hoped that he WOULDN’T do the whistle – but he always did. Aaarrrggh.

So, if the question is “when does something become stale?” then the answer may as short as “the second time I hear it.” This is NOT something you should ever want the listener to think about.

– – – – – – –
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.

Mason Morning Minute

The Start of the Christmas Season

November 28, 2016 Alan Mason Leave a comment

“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.”
~Albert Einstein

We celebrated the start of the Christmas season in my house by watching Miracle on 34th Sreet. Well, also because we were recently in New York and visited Macy’s. Still, how can you not love a movie that ends up with Santa being set free? At a pivotal point in the movie the post office drops off bags and bags of letters to Santa. Most remember all those letters dropped on the judge’s bench, but just before that there’s a scene at the post office with people sorting the mail by hand. I love the way they’d flip the letters up to be whisked away by the technology of the day.

Of course, the mail isn’t sorted by hand now, as the post office heads toward something called “Network Rationalization.” The job shown in the movie doesn’t exist anymore. Technology changed the way the mail was handled. That happens, even to the point, we don’t even think about the “old jobs” that were eliminated.

Typically we look at, and complain about, change that happens to us, in our generation, but if we did look at the past we’d see all these instances where change happened, and life moved forward. The world didn’t explode or freeze in time. It marched on, continually changing, being embraced by some, and tolerated by most.

Tommy Kramer Tip

Tommy Kramer Tip #181 – Catch and Release

November 23, 2016 Tommy Kramer Leave a comment

The whole concept of subtlety seems to have died out in the back yard, because no one heard it scratching against the door.

Go to “Catch and Release”, like in fishing. You catch a Moment, then you let it go. Trying to reach a second Moment is too far a “reach” for most air talents. We’re not stand-up comedians, who work tirelessly on “constructs” where each step leads to another one.

Louis C. K. talks often about George Carlin’s process of writing for a special, then tossing that material out, which shocked Louis. He felt like “I’ve worked for 14 years to get this one hour of good stuff. How do you just throw that away?!”

Over time (and mustering up all his courage), he learned that you have to clear the slate to open up the mental space to create more.

Radio’s not really the medium for that “Construct” formula anyway. Quick hits, then movement, define great radio.

I hear so many shows that sound like the people in the studio are having a good time, but like kids at recess, they don’t want to come back into the classroom and settle down.

Catch, then Release. Stop hanging onto a falling satellite. Your listeners will really appreciate it.

Tommy Kramer Tip

Tommy Kramer Tip #180 – Technique versus Style

November 16, 2016 Tommy Kramer Leave a comment

In coaching, the typical fear is always that you, as a talent, might actually have to change some things in order to become more fully fleshed out. Technique is a part of it, and there are many Program Directors who are very good at teaching the various techniques that work best in any given format. I’ve got my own set (what a lot of people have called “The Kramer Rules”) that form that firmament, the solid rock foundation a talent builds on.

Caution: Techniques that don’t grow out of a specific Strategy are just flotsam floating by. Strategy dictates Techniques, not the other way around.

And then you have Style, which is what we work on the most. Many air talents think they already have a certain style, but it’s really just a mish-mash of techniques wrapped around an Attitude.

So I believe the way to look at it is yes, you want to learn the right techniques – and which ones are outdated, or just wrong from the word “go”. But how you DO those techniques are where your true Style comes from.

Example: The brilliant Mike Fisher, a truly great writer and fine air talent, was part of the staff at my last PD gig, a Talk station in Dallas. Early on, we went over certain techniques to handle callers – no “hi, how ya doin’ today?” stuff (no one cares), ONE point from each caller, no phony “and Jess has something to say…” antiquated “entry lines” into a call, etc.

And Mike did well, but he put his own twist on it with this phone call solicitation: “Get in, get on, and be good,” followed by giving the phone number.

That statement, that “set of rules” for his callers to follow, defined his Style. No b. s. was going to be tolerated, no filibusters, no boring analysis. Get in, get on, and be good. The pressure was on the CALLER, not Mike.

Brilliant.

Tommy Kramer Tip

Tommy Kramer Tip #179 – Lee Abrams, Being Positive, Board Work

November 9, 2016 Tommy Kramer Leave a comment

On the day I’m writing this tip, I just heard from my buddy Mancow Muller in Chicago. He’s not just an outstanding talent, but he also lives a very interesting life, seemingly knows everyone, and always has great stories to tell.

Tonight he’s having dinner with The Moody Blues (I love them), and radio genius Lee Abrams.

Lee and I go back to 1973 in Chicago, later worked in Cleveland together, and have stayed friends all this time. If you’re not familiar with Lee, just Google him. His accomplishments are amazing, but the things I remember most about being around Lee are (1) he was encouraging, but still mindful of what a talent needed to do to get to a higher level, and (2) he always, always, always, worded everything in positive language.

“Don’t miss this one” became “Make sure to see this one,” for instance. Our weather forecasts didn’t say “partly cloudy.” We said “partly sunny” or (even better) “some sunshine,” etc.

This carried forward into the hallways, too. There were no negative thoughts in a coaching session with Lee – ever.

For example, once, in Chicago, Lee wrote a post-aircheck session recap to the wonderful Gary Gears. Lee assured him that he was going to be the most popular afternoon drive jock in the country, praised all the gifts that Gary brought to the table, etc. Then at the bottom, Lee added:

P. S. Of course, learning to run the board is a prerequisite.

Hilarious.

I miss that time with Lee, and wonder how many stations now even THINK about things like whether something is worded as a positive or a negative, and whether board work even MATTERS.

The radio is full of sloppy, uncaring, slamming-things-on-top-of-one-another board work everywhere now. It’s tempting to fall back on the easiest excuse: “It’s because the computer runs everything.” But remember, your listeners hear this, too.

So let me channel Lee Abrams now and put it this way: We can CHANGE that.