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                              Radio Station Jingles 

By Ross Goodall, WD4NJV

Jingles are short catchy musical bridges, commonly used at least as early as 1947, which include a radio station's slogan and/or theme, callsign and frequency.  Jingles help programming flow smoothly during transitions. They are also important for station branding and listener recall especially during audience ratings sweeps.  The higher the ratings, the more a broadcaster can charge for advertising.

Many advertisers included jingles in their program advertising especially during the 1950s and 60s.     

There were initially two large producers of jingles: PAMS Creative Productions, Inc. and JAM Productions, Inc.  Both PAMS and JAM jingles have been used worldwide including some in foreign languages.   PAMS was eventually sold to JAM. 

Some radio stations produced their own jingles. Generally, those did not have the quality, professionalism and uniqueness that a specialty production company could produce.

The best jingles incorporate a catchy tune that sticks in your mind.  Even children can sing good jingles. 

If you have sung in a choir or have had music training,  you can appreciate all that goes into jingle creation, harmony and instrumentation.  It all has to come together for the finished work with a run time of just seconds.  1,3   

Some jingles were very long lasting up to 30 seconds. My choice for good station jingle length is about eight to ten seconds.  Many people collect and exchange jingles from different stations.

STATION CALLSIGN HISTORY

In the early days, wireless telegraph stations needed to be able to identify themselves with short callsigns without spelling out a complete vessel or company name.  There were few standards and confusion resulted.

In 1906, the Berlin Wireless telegraph came up with unique three-letter callsigns.  In 1912, the London International Radio Telegraphic Convention assigned each country its own range of call letters.

In the United States, the Bureau of Navigation (a division of the Department of Commerce) decided that stations east of the Mississippi would have calls beginning with W and west of the Mississippi would begin with K.  There were several exceptions.

In 1920, the first commercial radio station, KDKA in Pittsburgh, signed on.  By 1923, there were over 500 licensed stations.  some callsigns were assigned sequentially and others were requested.

Radio stations sold commercial time was to advertisers. Some used jingles in their commercial "spot" announcements to promote products.  Jingles aided listener recall of advertisers.

MORE JINGLE HISTORY

In 1947, Bill Meeks started singing station ID’s for KLIF in Dallas. Four years later, Meeks founded Production Advertising Merchandising Service (PAMS) as an advertising agency. 

PAMS sent demo tapes out to radio stations and the stations could order jingles to their own specifications.  Then vocalists would be assembled to sing over already existing background audio.  1,3

Jacksonville’s radio broadcast stations used jingles a lot until they fell out of favor during the mid-seventies. In Jacksonville, top 40 station WIVY used a wide selection until a program director cut back to just two short jingles in 1975. 2

The earlier selection at WIVY included around two dozen jingles used to make transitions between various song tempos. (fast to slow, medium to fast, fast to fast, slow to fast, etc.) Some stations even had jingles to match the key of songs during a segue. 2

While not a jingle, WAPE's Ape Call dominated that station's signal in the late 1950s and 1960s. WAPE increased usage of jingles after the station's sale in 1970. 2

WPDQ, WBIX and WQIK also used jingles.  City-owned WJAX radio added a few short jingles in the early 1970s. 2

To add incentive for radio stations to play their records, some artists included customized versions of their hits in which they sang a station's call or slogan over the instrumental intro in their songs. This fad was labor intensive and short-lived during the early 1970s. 2

These "poptops" usually were customized by artists for radio stations in large cities.  Some medium and small market stations created their own poptops using imitators to sing over record intros. 2

AFRTS distributed a special album of poptops introducing hits that were programmed on its military affiliates in Vietnam and worldwide. 2 

Jingles were usually recorded on tape cartridges played on "cart machines." Today,  jingles are on a computer for quick recall and insertion into the station's program flow.

If you are interested, there are many jingles and jingle demo packages to listen to and purchase on the internet.

Check out:

PAMS.com/history2.html   

Jingles.com/jam/jaminfo/about.html

https://www.wlshistory.com/     (WLS Chicago)            

560.com  (WQAM  Miami jingles)

A big thanks goes to Jonathan Wolfert, President of JAM creative Productions, Inc and PAMS Productions, Inc for contributions to this article.

References:

1 Jam Creative Productions  Jingles.com

2  Billy Williams, N4UF

3  PAMS.com

Editors Notes: Another popular jingle producer is TM, founded by Tom Merriman in 1967.   Dallas TX has long been the center of  the jingle production universe.  TM's HQ is there too.

Radio broadcast station jingles surged in popularity during the early years of the rock music era.  Radio serials migrated to television and radio reinvented itself by programming repetitive rotations of 30 or 40 current hot records with occasional past hits (gold or oldies) tossed in.  Many early jingles were interminably loooooong, sometimes including silly slogans that bordered on jibberish. 

Jingles trended shorter during the late 60s and early 70s. "Shotgun" jingles became en vogue.  These consisted of a percussion burst followed by singers reciting a station call, all within a couple of seconds.

In the mid 1970s, many stations eliminated jingles altogether to reduce audio clutter.  With the rise of all-oldies formats a decade later, the popularity of jingles increased.

Jingles didn't come cheap.  Larger stations bought them from PAMS, TM, etc. for tens of thousands of dollars. A package became shopworn after a year or two and a new package went on the air.

Many small and medium market stations used Pepper Tanner jingles.  PT sold radio commercials to national sponsors and stations using their jingles traded out spots instead of paying cash.  Their jingles were generally not regarded as highly as PAMS or TM, but the price was right.                                  DE N4UF

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