Thanks to my friend Randy Brown for this thought:

Often, when you select a YouTube clip, it starts with a commercial. In many instances, a message pops up in the lower right portion of the screen that says “You can skip to video in…” and then it counts down 5 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1, then you click it to get to what you actually wanted to see in the first place.

That’s the way people think when they listen to you. You start talking, and in the listener’s head, the 5 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1 countdown begins.

Get on into it, or the listener “clicks” mentally – or sometimes even physically – and isn’t hearing you anymore. It’s just “blah-blah-blah” noise in the background. So you want to connect the Subject to the Listener as concisely as you can.

We have to EARN EVERY SINGLE SECOND OF LISTENING that we get. You do not deserve being listened to just because your transmitter is on.

After you’ve become a successful talent, one of the most significant challenges with your show’s Content is knowing when to stop doing something.

People listen for 10 minutes – 20 if you’re lucky. Huge fans of the show will listen longer, unless they feel that it’s just rehash. Then, even they will go find something else.

So try this on for size:

[A] Whatever you do, treat it as a “one-off” break, meaning that it could stand alone. Plan to move on to something else the next break.

[B] But IF you get a decent reaction—a phone caller, for instance, or if you have a teammate on the show that might have a different “take” on it, okay, air that.

[C] Everything else on that subject now has to EARN being on. This means it has to cover NEW ground, not just repeat a point that’s already been made or give a second example of something we already heard.

Think of it like movies with sequels. Almost every time, the sequels get worse. The 4th Indiana Jones movie, the 4th Lethal Weapon movie, the additional 3 Star Wars movies, or any Jennifer Aniston movie.

It seems so easy to hear the mistakes your competitors make – the things they do that are dumb, not thought out well, phony-sounding, pukey, lame, irritating or obvious.

But for most air talents, it’s hard to hear ourselves the same way.
It’s because we know it’s us. Someone we like. Someone we root for and want to succeed.

So here’s the lesson:

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Gary Larson, the creator of The Far Side comic strip, had this 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.”

This not only applies to the Listener – you have to be talking about things that he or she CARES about – it also applies to your Air Talent. Say you’ve had a coaching session, and decided that for the next two weeks, you want the Talent to work on being concise.

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Barney Fife, the classic Don Knotts character on the old Andy Griffith Show, probably never thought he’d become a role model – at least not for radio. But that’s exactly what happened.

Sure, many radio jocks share Barney’s ego, bravado, nervousness under pressure, taking rules too seriously (or ignoring them), trying to pretend you know more than you actually do, bad singing voice, and rather vague knowledge of the human anatomy (“the obondalla isn’t in the leg, Ange…it’s in the brain”), but the passing on of the “idiot torch” is not what made him a role model. It’s that in his shirt pocket, this fearless deputy, this symbol of law and order, this staunch upholder of the people’s rights carried… his one bullet.

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Not long ago, I heard this so-called “story” in a newscast:

“They did a study letting dogs just hear someone yawn. They responded with their own about half the time. But when the canine heard a familiar person like their owner yawn, it happened five times more often.”

Who cares? If you asked ten people what mattered most to them that day, I’d give you 1000 to 1 odds that dogs yawning wouldn’t be anywhere near the top of that list.

When I asked the air talent about this, the justification for it was that it was a “human interest” story.

I don’t see the Interest. (Plus, saying “the canine” is that stilted old newsy language, like saying “the five-foot-eight-inch male was spotted running away from the scene.” No one would EVER say this in real life.)

Yes, I keep harping on this, but I’ll stop griping about it if you stop boring people to death. What do you not get about the fact that you’re in competition for the listener’s time with every other station, hundreds of TV channels, social media, audio books and gaming?

Don’t let your SHOW be the thing that makes the dog yawn.

Here’s a really simple way to do show prep. Think “Today, tomorrow, next week, next month.”

Today and tomorrow are pretty obvious, but there’s a reason to always glance at what’s coming up next week, or next month. It’s all about how the brain works. Once the “left brain” (the logical, mathematical, “everything in its place”) side is made aware of the “next big thing” the RIGHT side of the brain (the creative, emotional, artistic side) will start noodling around on how to do it well.

This also gives you time to put things in motion – maybe a promotional or social media angle or follow-up, or finding some music that will stage it perfectly on the air.

If you wait until the last minute and think you can just wing it, pray that I don’t start coaching your competition. You can’t do left brain AND right brain stuff at the same time with any great degree of success. No one can. That’s why golfers work on the practice range until things become subconscious, then when they get into a tournament, it’s not about swing thoughts, it’s just about hitting the shot.

Let’s make this short and sweet. When I tune you in, is there something going onhere? Or is there nothing going on here?

If you think just playing the music and constantly promoting stuff will work, welcome to mediocrity.

Any idiot can intro a song. Any idiot can read a liner or plug the website, or read something from the internet that the listener can get on his or her smart phone in three seconds.

I used to think of my show as “The Adventures of Tommy Kramer” (or one of the five different morning shows I was part of). Like Seinfeld in the 90’s or Modern Family and The Big Bang Theory now, each show was an episode in itself, pertaining to THAT DAY.

Yes, the listener wants companionship, but not with someone who’s bland or boring. Whether it’s evident in your research or not, the listener wants a show.

DO SOMETHING, instead of doing nothing. Try stuff. You’ll be surprised at the results.

If you need help, call me. With a little coaching, you can jump start (or rejuvenate) your career. Every professional athlete or actor you admire has a coach.

Here’s the real key to everything you do on the air: EMOTIONAL content. No matter how factual something may be, you have to remember that the Listener doesn’t really bond with the radio through the left side of the brain (the logical, mathematical side). The Listener bonds with you through the right side – the emotional, artistic side of the brain. I touched on this in an earlier tip, but people tend to think that only “big” things require emotion; Thanksgiving, Valentine’s Day, Christmas, Memorial Day, etc.

Even in something as simple as a contest or some station information about a concert or website feature, plugging into my EMOTIONS is key. Manage your emotions to win at the casino. That’s why your trivia contest or overly wordy weather forecast doesn’t really click. We’ve covered trivia before, but that “clear to partly cloudy with southerly winds 5 to 10 miles per hour and a 30 percent chance of rain’ stuff is really boring, too. The Weather Channel app on my iPhone can give me that – AND show me the satellite picture right over my house. But if you said, “no wind to speak of, but we could sure use that rain,” I might actually put some value in your doing the weather.

Other examples:

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