• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Where have all the great jingles gone?

L

leothelion1960

Where have all the great jingles gone? Long time passing. Where have all lyrics gone? Long time ago. Imagination on the air, killed by shotguns everywhere. Remember when radio was fun?
 
Oddly enough, my mother and I were just discussing this very topic yesterday. She was surprised at my assertion that news/talkers should retain their music-days jingles. She thought that of all the formats, news and talk should be the formats that dump their jingles, and I pointed out to her that, at least in my opinion, it's a great way of retaining the feel of those musicradio days for the listener. Given news/talk's older demographic lean, most listeners grew up with music on AM and were listening to these stations long before they flipped to a talk format. Keeping that familiarity there helps retain a sense of connection with those listeners. It may not do much, if anything, for the ratings, but it certainly doesn't hurt.EDIT: Let's be thankful for all the stations that do still use their jingles, such as WABC, WCCO, WHAS, WLS, WJR, etc.
 
The only talk stations I can think of off-hand that still use music signatures from their full service or music radio days are:WABCKFWB.KYW has a long-standing music signature but it does not pre-date the all-news format.Probably the best and most memorable jingles/signatures of all time (IMHO) are Johnny Mann's work for WCFL and KSFO (Sound of the City).
 
WIBC in Indianapolis still uses some. They had a great Heller heritage in the 70's and early 80's
 
leothelion1960 said:
Where have all the great jingles gone? Long time passing. Where have all lyrics gone? Long time ago. Imagination on the air, killed by shotguns everywhere. Remember when radio was fun?
Click to expand...
Yeah, agreed. Friend of mine gave me a copy of his jingle collection (he had tape masters) that he burned onto a couple of CDs for me. I really enjoy some of those classic series from PAMS, Pepper-Tanner and others. So far, my favorite series is from the late '60s for WLS/Chicago. Just freakin' awesome stuff. Damned fine stuff, damned fine: "(sfx of slide guitar lick) Eighty-nine...Double-Yoo-Ell-Essss!" Killer!!
 
Lest we forget, along with station jingles - we have also lost commercial jingles. Some of the best spots ever were jingles. What happened?
 
Here in Fairbanks, Alaska, KFAR 660 AM (still a full-service station that leans heavily toward local and syndicated news-talk programming) still uses their delightful old 1940s-era jingles.

These include jingles for their music programming (they play big band classics on the weekends), news coverage, and even their "sports desk." I especially love their jingle that proudly proclaims "Twenty-four hour radio!" That was once a distinction to crow about, when daytime-only AM stations were the rule.

One day a DJ from one of KFAR's parent company's FM stations filled in for one of their local talk hosts. When he heard the old jingles, he said, "Man, this is weird! I feel like I'm in, like, a time warp!" -- Jason
 
A good example of the above is KFWB in Los Angeles, a Top 40 rock station from the late 50s to the late 60s. Anybody who grew up in LA during that period can still sing the KFWB "Channel 98" jingle. They switched to All News in 68, and understandably dumped the jingles, and anything else that connected the station to the Top 40 era. These days, they probably would have changed call letters, too. In the 80s, somebody decided to bring the jingle back, (with a "newsier," less pop sound, of course) as "News 98." Everybody loved it. It remains to this day, though it was recently tweaked to "News 980."

Other examples include all the west coast Oldies stations that used the Johnny Mann (Drake-Chenault) jingle packages to tap into 60s Top 40 nostalgia. Unfortunately, those are dying out as the stations switch to late 70s-80s "classic hits."
 
Lkeller said:
A good example of the above is KFWB in Los Angeles, a Top 40 rock station from the late 50s to the late 60s. Anybody who grew up in LA during that period can still sing the KFWB "Channel 98" jingle. They switched to All News in 68, and understandably dumped the jingles, and anything else that connected the station to the Top 40 era. These days, they probably would have changed call letters, too. In the 80s, somebody decided to bring the jingle back, (with a "newsier," less pop sound, of course) as "News 98." Everybody loved it. It remains to this day, though it was recently tweaked to "News 980."

Other examples include all the west coast Oldies stations that used the Johnny Mann (Drake-Chenault) jingle packages to tap into 60s Top 40 nostalgia. Unfortunately, those are dying out as the stations switch to late 70s-80s "classic hits."
Click to expand...

How about "93KHJ" during the Boss Radio era of the 60's-70's?
 
leothelion1960 said:
Where have all the great jingles gone? Long time passing. Where have all lyrics gone? Long time ago. Imagination on the air, killed by shotguns everywhere. Remember when radio was fun?
Click to expand...


They're still out there...sorta Oldies 1160 WDJO Florence/Cincinnati uses JAM (I think)

TM Productions who did jingles for WOWO,WCFL and others are now TM Century which also currently holds the copyrights for Pepper/Tanner,William B.Tanner,Thunder and Media General products(if anyone should care unless if you were a small town podunk station that couldn't afford TM,JAM or PAMS) They're at www.tmcentury.com

Speaking of PAMS they're back thanks to Jon Wolfert and JAM (who once worked for PAMS.) JAM for the most part picked up where PAMS left off in the mid 70s and eventually shut their doors. They offer re-sings from their massive jingle archives but you have to get in line and wait your turn or if they're not pre-occupied with cutting new JAM stuff. www.jingles.com (for JAM) and www.pams.com (for the old school stuff.)

Johnny Mann and his singers still sing jingles...mostly accapella but done up in the Drake "rum-pum" style they made famous. You can find them at www.johnnymannsingers.com
 
For a couple of years in the 90s, San Francisco had 2 Oldies stations (KFRC FM/AM and KYA-FM) using identical Johnny Mann jingle packages from the Boss Radio era. KFRC had been the Bay Area's Drake station in the 60s, so I think they probably pulled most of the jingles out of their library. In the 60s, KYA (1260 AM) had been KFRC's top 40 competitor, but was broadcasting at 93.3 FM in the 90s. Their lead jingle was "93-KYA." - That had a lot of nostalgia value for me since I grew up listening to KHJ in Los Angeles - but probably not much for Bay Area listeners. Of course, as 60s Oldies stations die out, so do these jingle packages. KFRC dropped the Mann jingles when the transitioned to 70s-80s "Classic Hits."
 
The Sixties Vibrations Station on Sirious Satelite Radio plays the Drake Jingles that were similar to the ones used on 98.7 WOR FM.
 
I have a great recording of a jingle my dad wrote for Dairy Queen (scrumpdilicious!) in the 1970's. Its cool and funny and put to music. I'd be happy to share it. I'm brand new to this type of communique as I'm trying to find other info on my dad...a d.j. in the 1960's and 1970's...if this isn't an appropriate type of message please just let me know.

Loren Mehl
[email protected]
 
The "great jingles" were ALL done by PAMS. The Johnny Mann series, TM, Pepper Tanner and all the rest since then may have produced some "classics"--but none come close to those "imagineered" by the original PAMS team in the early to late 60's.

EVEN JON WOLFERT AND JAM couldn't beat or meet them. And since PAMS there has been NOBODY even close other than JAM.
 
PAMS was good, JAM was better. TM Century is great, too.

I have a large collection of the WLS jingles that were cut by PAMS and JAM.
 
I'm in the middle of making seperate MP3"s for WGH "In Old Virginia"/"Best Sound In Dixie" Pams Series Jingles 18,22,26,26D,27,28,29,30,32,33,34,35,37,38,40,41,41 and Acapellas,Solid Rock.So far I have re-recorded 288 seperate jingles.WGH Radio was the Number One Top-Forty Station from 1962-71 in the Tidewater,Virginia area...
 
around 1983 I used to call 1-800-JAM DEMO all the time. I was like 14 at the time & listemed to the Jam Jingles...another was 1-800-MCAMETL. Haven't tried the #s in years. That was back when I'd call in my Video Vote to Friday Night Videos, simulcast on WGCL in Cleveland. Great days of radio back then.
 
Jockeyboy35 said:
The Sixties Vibrations Station on Sirious Satelite Radio plays the Drake Jingles that were similar to the ones used on 98.7 WOR FM.
Click to expand...
That channel and the 60s on 6 on XM run circles around OTA radio.
Those channels, like the 50s channel and even the 70s channel, are much better to listen to than the dreck offered on corporate-cookie-cutter controlled "radio."
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom