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Tommy Kramer has spent over 35 years in radio as an on-air talent, Programmer, and Talent Coach, and has worked with over 100 stations in all formats, specializing in coaching morning team shows. He was elected to the Texas Radio Hall of Fame in 2003. Contact
Tommy Kramer Coaching Tips The oddest thing seems to be happening both on TV and in radio these days. The phony, insincere, pukey deejay delivery is rearing its ugly head ... (read more - Tip #1) A lot of Program Directors, in trying to coach an Air Talent, jump too quickly to the second phase of coaching -- getting an aircheck, playing samples of "things done wrong," and making the process an uneasy one for the Talent right off the bat. No "foreplay." (read more - Tip #2) Think of how many times you’ve heard an Air Talent say--more often than not, with the sound of rustling paper or a page turning in the background--"I was reading an article in this magazine yesterday," or "I saw in the paper this morning that...." My problem with this sort of thing is ... (read more - Tip #3) I once put up a sign on the Control Room door that said: "I just got into town. I got into the car, turned the radio on, and hit the 'scan' button. It landed on your station. I don't know what station it is, what the format is, what the dial position is, or who you are. You have thirty seconds." I base everything I coach on "first time" listening (read more - Tip #4) You hear often that someone is "funny." "He's so funny." "I love to listen to his show because it's funny." But is it "funny," or is it "fun" that we're talking about? There is a difference, from a performance and planning point of view. "Funny" is certainly "fun," but "fun" doesn't necessarily have to be "funny." The Andy Griffith Show was a great example of being both (read more - Tip #5) Think about how many Morning Teams you’ve heard that have a decent energy level, but they just don’t seem to move very efficiently. Frankly, in many situations, the decision to have a Team Show in the morning overrides whether or not a qualified team is available, or whether the PD has the proper techniques for coaching them. If you find yourself thinking, “They just take too long” or “They’re good, but they just talk too much,” here’s a tip to help coordinate them fast: When the subject changes, the person speaking changes (read more - Tip #6) If you want to talk about something that isn’t local, unless it’s a giant national headline, it’s likely that you’ll get a “who cares?” reaction in the mind of the Listener. Whenever I hear a Talent struggle with this, I ask, “How do I get there from here?” (read more - Tip #7) Many air talents, even experienced ones, BROADcast. They speak too loudly, get overly exaggerated, and can’t seem to sound conversational without losing energy or enthusiasm. Usually, it’s just what they picture in their heads—the microphone as a megaphone, a device used to talk to the listener, somewhere in the distance. It’s the same sort of principle that makes many stage actors, who are used to broad, exaggerated movements, have to rein that impulse in to not appear to be chewing the scenery and over-acting when they do film work (read more - Tip #8)
Too often, an Air Talent wants to do
something on the air for one of the following reasons: If you're going to get really proficient at anything, you have to practice every day. Eric Clapton is nicknamed “Slowhand” because he makes those incendiary guitar licks look so easy. Tiger Woods and other pro golfers make the game look effortless (indeed, even boringly easy) and crush the ball into orbit repeatedly because they hit thousands of balls every month to get that way. Every basketball player in the NBA can do a “whirlybird” dunk; I try it, and I find out that (1) my vertical leap is about three inches, and (2) I may need a liver transplant. I’ve often coached Air Talents, particularly in Morning Shows, who just don't want to do the MAINTENANCE. Instead, they want to "wing it," and rely on their ability to just "come up with something" instead of PLANNING a show (read more - Tip #10) It makes me cringe to hear someone taking way too long to set up something on the air. If it doesn't affect you the same way, it should. Weak "setup" skills are like those people that prattle on telling overly long "shaggy dog" jokes at a party--sooner or later, you just want to find an excuse to join a different conversation, to avoid the five minute setup to a lame punch line. We live in the Steven Spielberg/George Lucas, six-second-attention-span, "jump-cut" generation. Movie trailers, commercials, ESPN Sportscenter, "Best of" CD's, CNN Headline News--they're all geared to not waste a person's valuable time. You OWE it to your Listener to get to the POINT. Right NOW! (read more - Tip #11) As you know if you have an on-air job opening, finding talent with real skills who can also be adaptable and fit in is a huge challenge. With the best of intentions, I keep hearing the word “teachable” from Program Directors looking at candidates for job openings at their stations. While “Is he teachable?” may appear to be a prime component, it’s also coming from the wrong end of the binoculars, a template of the PD’s hopes that he or she lays over the process of considering someone. So here’s a suggestion. Let's replace the word "teachable" in our vocabulary with the phrase "wants to learn more." (read more - Tip #12)
People usually
try to do too much with promos, especially morning show promos. They
get too complicated and full of "marketing your aspirations." The
promos should be very simple, the "free sample" type. So use this
template: There's a great moment in the movie "What's Up, Doc?" with Ryan O'Neal and Barbra Streisand. After a series of misadventures, he says to her, "It's not that I don't like you. It’s just that you're just so.......different." To which she replies, "From now on, I'll try to be the same." Cute line, but it got me to thinking about the little ways to keep things fresh on the air. Are you the same, or different, in what you do on the air each day? (read more - Tip #14) Besides the bad habit of not staying singular, and talking to one person (by saying silly, unfocused things like “the audience,” “our listeners,” “if any of you…” or “some of you”), every day, I hear deejays, news people, weather people, and traffic people using “words that push the listener away.” (read more - Tip #15) When you go to McDonald's for lunch, you don't want a seven course meal. You want to get your burger and fries and go! It's not that you don't enjoy a big meal once in a while. It's just that, in a hectic work day, fast food is all you have time to consume. And yet I still hear morning deejays in music formats doing long Artist interviews while people are getting ready for work, getting the kids' lunches made, driving in traffic, and talking on cell phones. Why? (read more - Tip #16) First of all, let me make it clear that there are show prep services nowadays that are miles above what the standard used to be. With the right service now, you get all the clips from American Idol, for instance, or political speeches, and other media highlights delivered to you on a platter, making your job very easy to stay topical, and saving you a lot of dubbing from the shows you used to have to tape and excerpt clips from yourself. These services can be like having a Producer. But even then, that’s just a starting point. Even with the best prep sheets, you have to come up with your own “camera angle,” and have the “destination” of the break be something that only you would say (read more - Tip #17) Some things are said--and a few of them with the best of intentions--that do nothing for you. The truth is that intentions don’t matter. If I step on your foot, then apologize for it, that’s nice of me, and it was well-intentioned, but it doesn’t stop your foot from hurting. So even though you mean well, as if it’s going to “catch me up” somehow to say “Off mic, we were talking about x….” or “Before we got on the air, we were talking about x….” it doesn’t put any points on the board. It just refers to a time when I WASN’T LISTENING. So I don’t care. Remember, time flows in ONE direction for the Listener—from this moment, right now, FORWARD. Referring back, or referring to something I couldn’t even hear, is pointless (read more - Tip #18) It seems like
multi-station ownership has brought a "bottom line" mentality to
everything. "All they care about is the bottom line" is said about
every major radio company nowadays. And stations in every market
jostle for what they perceive to be the strongest "bottom line"
positions to their Listeners. But do they have any real interest
for--or meaning to—the Listener? Here are some examples. Don't you just hate it when someone on a music station has an interview with a guest or an artist, and all of a sudden, the radio station and the host just turn into shills for the record industry? What could possibly be more boring than those "So, when does the new album come out?" and "Where's the next stop on your tour?" questions, and their lame, predictable answers. Don't settle for that pap (read more - Tip #20) It seems
sometimes like we have an entire generation of air Talents that
insist on asking the Listener questions on the air in the way they
phrase things. This ancient and weird habit also invades commercial
copy ("Do you want a great deal on a new car?"), and promo copy. I’m
convinced that questions are the death of radio. Especially those
little rhetorical questions, like ending a line with “Right?” or
“Okay?” or “sound good to you?” If you need my response, you’re out
of luck. I’m busy. In my seminars, I illustrate how silly this is
with these two rhetorical questions: I couldn’t believe it. Here we are in 2007, and I’m hearing a morning team do the ancient “What women say, versus what women really mean” thing. (You know, when the husband says, “Can’t you pick up the kids?” and her answer is a clipped, “Fine.” Which, of course, doesn’t mean “fine.” Then he says, “What’s wrong?” and gets an even more clipped, “Nothing!” as a response. Etc.) (read more - Tip #22) Arthur Penn, the director of movies such as "Little Big Man" and "Bonnie and Clyde," is known for getting what he calls "happy accidents" on film. Little things that happen unplanned during the filming of scenes that have become golden moments in his pictures. Part of the reason for this is that he doesn't over-rehearse scenes with the actors. He prefers to hear the dialogue fresh with the camera rolling, and uses a lot of first or second "takes," even if a line is left out or a different physical movement occurs than what was called for in the screenplay. The key here is not that he doesn't have a lot of rehearsal (read more - Tip #23) It's easy to confuse the words "pace" and "momentum." They are used almost interchangeably, but do not mean the same thing. Pace is how fast you go. But momentum is about how straight a line there is from Point "A" to Point "B." Clutter, no matter what the pace is, defeats momentum. Too many things done real fast are still just too many things. As a matter of fact, it's almost worse to do them real fast, because then you just sound like another quacking, fast-talking "cartoon deejay." (read more - Tip #24) Here's a tip that has nothing to do with any specific formatics, but applies to all formats. My wife has a wonderfully simplistic way of listening to the radio. For her, no one is worth listening to if they don't sound like they're having fun on the air--like they're genuinely interested in what they're doing, and like having their job. The old saying is that people who are interested are interesting (read more - Tip #25) As we say in the South, this here's what you call your basic Zen thing. A lot of people, including a lot of Program Directors, talk about "concentration." You see football and basketball coaches pleading with their players to "bear down and concentrate." Baloney. "Bearing down" to will yourself through mental clutter and "concentrate" is stressful, exhausting, and doesn't work. Zen masters, experts at karate and great musicians and athletes say that they do their best when they simply isolate a thought, and allow all other thoughts to just melt away (read more - Tip #26) Gary Larson, the creator of The Far Side comics, had a great two-panel cartoon. The first panel was titled, "What we say to dogs." A guy scolding his dog was saying, "Okay, Ginger! I've had it! You stay out of the garbage! Understand, Ginger? Stay out of the garbage, or else!" The second panel was titled, "What they hear." Same drawing--the guy pointing his finger at the dog, but the dog is hearing him say, "Blah blah GINGER blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah GINGER blah blah blah blah blah." Yes, this does apply to the Listener--you do have to be talking about things that your Listener CARES about (read more - Tip #27) Even though I coach radio Talent, I often reference TV shows as examples. So think about this: From Andy Griffith, Bob Newhart and Mary Tyler Moore to Seinfield, Frazier, and “Everybody Loves Raymond,” all these shows featured a lead character who quite often (in some instances, almost always) gave the punch lines to one of the other cast members. And it just made them and their shows that much more likeable, because of the lack of ego that the viewer felt from the "star." (read more - Tip #28) Radio legend Gordon McLendon once said that the only purpose of doing contests and giveaways at all was to make great promos. NBA Hall of Famer Bill Russell said that his great Boston Celtics teams wanted to win every game--every pre-season game, every regular-season game, and every playoff game. Obviously, that's not really possible, but thinking like that enabled them to win ELEVEN championships in thirteen years! So, with those two thoughts in mind, let me give you a simple thing to go for (read more - Tip #29)
Once in a while, you'll have a charity auction, a grateful contest winner, traffic information, or a serious story to handle on the air. Instead of the all-too-typical "flippant disc jockey insincerity thing," play it for all it's worth. Straight ahead, positive, human, sincere. Not overplayed, no “winking at the audience” to let them know that you’re “hipper” than the material. Just real and down to earth (read more - Tip #30) It seems so easy to hear the mistakes your competitor makes--the things he or she does that are dumb, not thought out well, phony-sounding, pukey, lame, irritating or obvious. So why can't we hear ourselves the same way? It's because we know it's us. Someone we like. Someone we root for and want to succeed (read more - Tip #31) ... That's why too many Talents resort to "kicker" stories and "News of the Weird." If this kind of stuff is a “crutch” for you, then you need to change the way you’re thinking. This pap isn’t what the listener really wants to hear. It’s mental tofu, passing through with no impact at all; just filling time.) Your job as a Talent isn’t to try and be the sun; it’s to “be the moon” and ... (read more - Tip #32) It seems like the thing most air talents struggle with is show prep. I’m not talking about station events and promotions, contests, etc. What I’m referring to is what should make your show unique. The personal reflections and “camera angles” that shape your Content. The default settings seem to be three main headings (read more - Tip #33) You've got a great bit going. The phone lines are lit up. You and the Listeners have each had funny or poignant lines about the subject. When do you stop? A lot of Air Talents won't stop. They'll continue to take--and air--phone calls as long as they keep coming in. This is almost always a mistake. In radiation terminology, things have a "half-life," meaning that even though it continues to exist, it loses energy or becomes dangerous past a certain point (read more - Tip #34) |
Be Specific Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #35 (listen to the MP3 audio version of #35 by clicking here) Here’s a tip for PD’s trying to become better at coaching Talent. Here's what your Talent doesn't need to hear: "You had a good show today"...or "You guys were really funny this morning" or "Need to pick the pace up a little bit." These types of non-specific comments, even well-intentioned, are too vague to result in any real progress. Remember that Air Talents, if they're really good (or if they're ever going to BECOME really good), are like musicians. They work on their performances measure by measure, a little more precise here, a little more subtle there, until they put together the end result. Part of your job in coaching is to talk about specific breaks. "I really liked it when you asked that caller about X" or "That bit about X was really great" homes the Talent in on exact ingredients of the performance that please you, and that hit the target in terms of the way you want the station to connect with the Listener. If you can, PLAY the example for the Talent, then make your comments and get response from him/her. Think of yourself as both the Conductor of the orchestra and a collaborator with each musician. Air Talents: Are you getting specifics from your PD? If not, take some tape in there, play it for him, and get some feedback. Remember, if you're not getting better all the time........you're not getting better…all the time! © 2007 Tommy Kramer
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