Here’s something that was sort of revolutionary at the time, I guess, but sadly just disappeared as voice-tracking came in.

Group airchecks.

Back in the day in Dallas, the entire air staff were actually friends, and hung out together a lot.
Once in a while, we’d sit and listen to airchecks of each other, and exchange our thoughts about what we heard.

Over the course of the comments, we created “rules” – formatics – that we wanted to run through the station. We wanted to do things the same WAY, but be totally unpredictable in WHAT we did, given each of our personalities. And “Personality” grew, as we all giggled or pointed out what worked or what bombed.

Common language – a sort of station “vocabulary” grew out of these group sessions.

But here’s the main thing – the result was that we all got better at the same rate of speed. The entire staff sounded like we knew each other and liked each other, and all of us liked what we were doing for a living.

Radio isn’t “dead”, as some people believe, but in terms of real Personality, it’s pretty much on life support.

Change that, and you change your career.

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Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (mobile)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2026 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.

In the last tip, I talked about one of my main mentors, the great Larry Ryan, in my hometown of Shreveport.

Another person on that same staff at Top 40 “blowtorch” KEEL back in the day was a guy named Steve Kelly.

Steve was doing middays at KEEL, had a fantastic voice, and was a wonderful Production man. (You’ve no doubt heard Steve’s voice many, many times on national spots and hundreds of concert promos. He eventually became President and Creative Officer of Bill Young Productions – for over 30 years now.)

I had started on the all-night show, midnight to 6am, and for a long time, I was only allowed to dub commercials into the system – which Steve showed me how to do. He then began to use me on two-voice spots, usually as a character voice. Little by little, he fed me more tips on how to do polished Production.

Decades later, I still remember Steve’s incredible guidance and patience. And I ended up doing literally hundreds of commercial spots and promos, nationally-aired PSA’s, writing and producing jingles, and winning dozens of awards I could have never envisioned when I was just a duckling, paying rapt attention to whatever Steve showed me.

Here’s the point: you should want to work with people who are more skilled than you are, and LEARN from them.

If that’s not the environment that you’re currently in, you might want to take a look at how you can change it.

– – – – – – –
Tommy Kramer
Talent Coach
214-632-3090 (mobile)
e-mail: coachtommykramer@gmail.com
Member, Texas Radio Hall of Fame
© 2026 by Tommy Kramer. All rights reserved.