Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #260 – Why Your So-Called Positioning Phrase Doesn’t Work

“The Best Variety at Work…”
“(City)’s Best Music…”
“We Play More Music…”
“The Home of the Fifty-Minute Music Hour…”

We’ve all heard these.

None of them – not one – is true.

So why are you using them?

In a world surrounded by B. S., why are you adding to the junk pile of words thrown together like they fell out of a bowl of Alpha Bits and made what sounds like a sentence?

What do any of these say about the Values of your radio station?  Or your city?  Or anything, really, that’s meaningful to your audience?

Let’s take a close look…

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Frost Advisory #415 – It’s What You Learn After You Know It All

We can cling so tightly to the things we know that we don’t go beyond and learn how to apply it.

“The less people know, the more stubbornly they know it.”

Consider this…

  • Knowledge is knowing the facts.
  • Understanding is the ability to glean meaning from those facts.  Often that involves seeing things in context, perhaps relating to circumstances, best practices, or strategy.
  • Wisdom is knowing what to do with that knowledge.

A 16-year-old may have enough knowledge to drive the car but you wouldn’t just toss them the keys and say, “Have a good weekend!”
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Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #259 – The Death of the Big Voice, and Why

“He’s got such a great voice.”

We used to hear that a lot, but today, it’s virtually meaningless.  In L.A. and New York, the big voices are doing tractor pull spots and horror movie spots, and you still hear the network TV guys doing that big, mighty “announcement” thing some, but be honest – doesn’t it just sound kind of cheesy?

The voice that gets the most work today is the midrange voice with great inflection.  But even then, it’s not the old-school radio “emphatic” read; it’s more, as the great voice acting coach Marice Tobias says, “noticing” a word.

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Frost Advisory #414 – Stop The Madness!

What do we say?

More people have been killed at schools so far in 2018 than have been killed while serving in the U.S. Military, so says the Washington Post.

Remember back when baseball and football games on TV were interrupted by some nut case running onto the field?

Then something changed.  The folks in charge of the telecasts decided to quit pointing the cameras at them.  The incidents stopped.

I don’t speak as a psychologist or counselor, as one from law enforcement, or even as a journalist.  I speak as a broadcaster that understands that our stations have impact and a responsibility.

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Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #258 – The Power of ONE Word

One word can change everything. If you’re going to be a truly good Talent, you have to actually think about the words that are coming out of your mouth. I work with people all the time on this.

For example, I heard this the other day:
“I want to hear from you RIGHT NOW. Can you think of a song that’s got something about automobiles in it?”

No. And even if I could, why should I call you? What’s in it for me?

You can’t treat listeners like employees. They’re not here to do your bidding. You’re here to do theirs, actually.

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Frost Advisory #413 – A Mother’s Day Programming Lesson: Love What Your Listeners Love 

I heard someone play the violin this morning in church.  I love the violin, but for a different reason than most.  I love the violin because my mother played the violin.

“Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself.  It is if they are showing you the way.”

“Each person has a different set of biases and values and assumptions, and those world views are influenced by their parents, their schools, the places they live and the experiences they’ve had to date.  Their world view is the lens they use to determine whether or not they’re going to believe a story.”

Seth Godin

How does your station connect with the things your listeners love most? 

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Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #257 – Avoid the Obvious

I’ve written about this before, but recent listening to stations in three different formats, it begs being revisited.

Here’s the magic key to becoming someone out of the ordinary on the air:  Avoid the Obvious.

Example:  Years ago, doing a morning team show in Dallas with my wonderful partner Rick “The Beamer” Robertson, there was a massive wreck on I-35, one of the city’s main arteries.  It turned out that a huge truck full of books was involved, and we knew we needed to talk about it.  Immediately upon seeing the story, Rick said “set it up, then throw it to me.”

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Tommy Kramer Coaching Tip #256 – Content is CONTACT

Talking to a PD the other day about “the clock” on his station, I heard this vague explanation of how he didn’t want his jocks to talk over song intros because that’s not Content.  Instead, he wanted Imaging pieces – some of them “dry” voice – to always play between songs because “you can’t do Content over these short intros today” and he wanted his air talent to stop down for Content.

But here’s the problem with that: to a large degree, Content is CONTACT.

In the heyday of Top 40 and Hot A/C, we knew that most of the time we could do SOMETHING besides just intro a song (like promote a contest opportunity coming up, or a station feature, promote another person on the air, give some sort of information, or do a quick quip), or that even if we WERE “just” introing a song, we could at least give the listener some sort of vibe about being engaged with the music.

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