This episode was written & produced by Jeanna Isham and Casey Emmerling.

If you turn on the radio, there’s one thing you’re almost guaranteed to hear: a catchy, over the top jingle proclaiming the name and call letters of the radio station. But where did these little tunes come from? Who makes them? And why are they still so common? In this episode, we explore the history of radio ID jingles, and pack in so many earworms, you’re going to need an exterminator. Featuring Jeanna Isham of Dreamr Productions, Jon Wolfert of JAM Creative Productions, and Erik Huber of ReelWorld Productions.

MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

B1NKS! - Brand New Me
Patrick Hizon - Sweatshirt
DonVayei - West Side
Ava Low - Red Red Sea
Gerhard Feng - It All Goes Down
Epocha - Schoolin’
Roy Edwin Williams - West Side Story
Niklas Gabrielsson with Martin Landstrom - Spring Is You
Wesley Slover - Whispering Progress

Sign up for Twenty Thousand Hertz+ to get our entire catalog ad-free.

If you know what this week's mystery sound is, tell us at mystery.20k.org.

Follow Dallas on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and LinkedIn.

Join our community on Reddit and follow us on Facebook.

Follow Jeanna’s podcast, Sound in Marketing wherever you get your podcasts.

Find the right doctor, right now at zocdoc.com/20k.

Get a free Netsuite KPI Checklist at netsuite.com/20k.

Get a discount on your NordVPN plan at nordvpn.com/20k.

Claim your $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/hertz.

View Transcript ▶︎

You're listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz. I'm Dallas Taylor.

[Fuzion Theme 15 in]

I spent a lot of my formative years listening to the radio. And while today’s streaming apps are really convenient, I do find myself missing those over the top, super epic radio IDs.

[jingle montage: Fuzion Theme 15, KOOL Oldies, KFKF Love Our Country, KIIS Theme 9, The Loop Theme 4]

[music in: Wesley Slover - Whispering Progress]

Jeanna VO: Radio IDs are essentially sonic signatures for radio stations.

That's producer and sound strategist Jeanna Isham, who's also the host of the Sound In Marketing podcast.

Jeanna VO: Just like music itself, ID jingles have evolved over the decades. Each one is a cultural and historical snapshot of the time and place it was created. And the origin of these little melodies goes all the way back to the early nineteen hundreds.

[music creatively morphs/rewinds into period music]

[music in: Prince’s Orchestra - The Love Dance]

Jon: When radio was first invented, it was basically telegraph signals. And it was mostly used for ships at sea to be able to communicate with stations on land.

[sfx: crashing waves in + Morse Code spelling SOS]

Jeanna VO: That’s Jonathan Wolfert, who has over fifty years of experience making radio IDs.

Jon: And when you're using Morse code, you want your message to be as concise as possible. So rather than taking the time to spell out the name of a long ship, they started using abbreviations. So these ships would be assigned call letters.

[Morse Code spelling DD-9, crashing waves fade under]

Jon: In 1912, it was decided by all the nations that the various letters of the alphabet should be assigned to different countries. The United States ended up with the W's… (Morse Code W) K's… (Morse Code K) A's… (Morse Code A) and the N's… (Morse Code N)

Jon: Canada got some of the C's, Mexico got some of the X's, and so forth.

Then, as commercial radio started taking off, they applied this same system to radio stations.

Jon: The Department of Commerce decided that the radio stations to the east of the Mississippi River would be licensed with W call letters…

[1928 WAAM Edison Studios]

Jon: And the stations to the west of the Mississippi would have K call letters.

[1941 KGEI General Electric Station]

Jeanna VO: But soon enough, they ran into a problem.

[music in: Merritt Brunies Friars Inn Orchestra - Sugar Foot Stomp]

Jon: Radio grew very quickly starting in the 1920s, and before long there were hundreds of different stations, and it was hard for people to really know what station they were listening to.

These stations realized that simply stating their name just wasn't memorable enough.

Jon: It became advantageous to do some catchy, musical, jingly thing to get the attention of the audience, and have something that’s a little more identifiable.

Jeanna VO: One of the first stations to adopt a jingle ID was New York's WJZ, in the early 40s. Now back then, due to limits in technology, almost everything you heard on the radio was live.

Jon: That was the era where stations had live bands, and live performers, and live shows.

Jeanna VO: But at nighttime, WJZ started playing prerecorded music, which made them ahead of their time. And since the DJs were off the clock, they'd occasionally drop in jingles like this, to remind listeners what they were hearing.

[WJZ - Happy Frequency]

This was right around the time that the US entered World War II.

Jon: There were a lot of night shift workers, because all of the plants and factories were going around the clock. And you can hear that reflected in one of these jingles that WJZ ran in the middle of the night to salute those night shift workers.

[clip: WJZ - Night Shift]

Jon: It's kind of haunting and scary all at the same time…

[clip: WJZ - Night Shift]

Jon: Certainly very different from what you hear today on the radio in the way of jingles.

[clip: WJZ - Night Shift]

Jeanna VO: But it wasn’t until after the war that these jingles really took off.

[music in: Niklas Gabrielsson with Martin Landstrom - Spring Is You]

Jon: The real history of the radio jingle business began in Dallas in 1947, when a guy named Gordon McLendon put on a radio station with the name KLIF. At some point, they decided that they should use the talent that was there doing these live shows to sing a little commercial for the sponsors of the show.

[music fade under into Wildroots Cream Oil commercial]

Jon: It gave them the idea that, “Well, maybe they should record a little commercial for the station itself.” And so they started making jingles for KLIF.

[KLIF 1190 Dallas]

These jingles gave the station a fun and memorable sonic identity… and they were also useful for programming.

Jon: Even during the live shows, if they had to switch from one studio to another, or if one show ended a little early or something and they needed something to fill up the time, they could always go to one of these prerecorded jingles and buy themselves 30 seconds or a minute.

[KLIF Harp]

Jeanna VO: One of the jingle makers at KLIF was a man named Bill Meeks.

Jon: After a few years, Bill Meeks thought, "You know, maybe there's a business here. Maybe there are other radio stations around who do not have access to these live performers.” And so he left, and in August of 1951, he started his company, PAMS.

PAMS stands for Production, Advertising, Merchandising Service. Here's one of their early jingles.

[KTRN PAMs Series 1]

Jeanna VO: Bill Meeks wasn’t the only one who wanted to take advantage of the musical talent in Dallas. Rival companies formed, and soon, Dallas became the radio jingle capital of the world.

Jeanna VO: In the early years, one trend was to use a device called the Sonovox.

Jon: It's a way to make an instrument or a sound effect of some sort appear to be talking.

The Sonovox was invented in 1939. It involves two handheld speakers that you hold up to your throat. Then, you form words with your mouth, which shapes the sound into something like speech. In Disney's Dumbo, they used a Sonovox to make the voice of the train whistle.

[Dumbo Sonovox]

Jon: PAMS really pioneered doing that. And a couple of examples of what that sounds like are some of the first ones that they did for KFWB in Los Angeles.

[KFWB Sonovox]

Jeanna VO: When crafting these jingles, PAMS was also paying attention to what the kids were up to.

Jon: In the 50s, a lot of young couples going out on dates would try to go find some dark, secluded place so that they could turn off the car and snuggle, shall we say.

And that idea wound up in this hilarious jingle.

[WMPS - Let's Park]

Jon: That is so 50s that I love it.

Jeanna VO: As you can hear, Jon has a lot of nostalgia for these old radio jingles.

Jon: You get to hear how things changed and evolved, not just musically, but lyrically as well. And it's just kind of fun to relive those eras in these short little songs like that.

That passion is how Jon first found his calling.

Jon: I grew up in New York City area. During the 1960s, there were two radio stations that I heard most of the time. One of them was WNEW, which my parents liked to listen to, because it played all the standards…

[WNEW Radio Jingle sneaks in]

Jon: …all the Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett kind of big band music.

[WNEW up, then under]

Jon: I, being much younger, wanted to listen to WABC, because it was the top 40 rock and roll station.

[PAMS 18 WABC]

Jon: And I noticed these little songs where somebody was singing about the radio stations.

[PAMS 31 WABC]

Jon: Even as a 10 year old kid, I said, “Well, who are those people? And where did that come from?”

[channel surfing]

Jon: And then, one fateful day, I was listening on the AM radio band to out of town stations from Buffalo and Cleveland and Chicago and other places, and I started to hear the same jingles...

[PAMS 27 WABC Surf]

Jon: But with different words, different call letters, but it was clearly the same jingle.

[PAMS 27 Surf Montage]

Jon: This completely flipped my switch. And it was like, "Well, who's doing this, and can I possibly start collecting these things just to compare them and have them?"

Jeanna VO: It turns out, these variations all came back to the radio jingle juggernaut PAMS, who produced WABC's signature jingles.

Jon: At one time, WABC New York was the most listened-to radio station in North America. And you would find stations in every city you went to that wanted to sound like WABC.

These stations could go to PAMS and commission custom versions of these hit jingles, but with their unique call letters.

Jon: PAMS did that in such a way that stations all over America copied what WABC was doing.

[PAMS 'N Set Montage]

Jeanna VO: And it went beyond just America.

Jon: During the 60s, PAMS was unquestionably the top jingle producer in the world, and stations everywhere were using PAMS Jingles.

[PAMS jingles - Mexico City, London, Lima]

Jon wanted to be part of creating that shared experience.

[music in: Roy Edwin Williams - West Side Story]

Jon: Most young guys who are interested in recording or music, they want to work in a studio. They want to record bands. And I, on the other hand, wanted to work at this one specific place, ‘cause what I wanted to make was this one specific thing, these jingles.

Jeanna VO: Eventually, that dream led him to PAMS.

Jon: So by perseverance and good fortune, I was actually able to get a job at PAMS. And I did that for several years, and then one thing led to another, and my wife and I decided to start our own company, which is called JAM Creative Productions.

Jon: JAM stands for “Jon And Mary Lyn.” The two of us actually competed with PAMS for several years.

Jeanna VO: JAM immediately hit the ground running. And soon enough, they got a call from a familiar station.

[music in: Epocha - Schoolin’]

Jon: After we had been in business officially less than a year, we got this call from WABC, which is the station I grew up with that got me interested in all this in the first place. The guy at WABC called up and said, [phone filter] "Well, we’re having trouble finding the kind of jingles that we need. Would you like to do some stuff for WABC?"

Jon: And I'm thinking, "Yeah, I could probably work them in." You know, this is like the biggest deal ever, the full circle of being the guy who was 10 years old, hearing the jingles on that station, and becoming the guy making the jingles for that station.

[music fade under]

Jon: So, we started doing jingles for WABC in 1975…

[JAM - First WABC jingle]

Jon: And we're still doing jingles for WABC. You can still hear our stuff on the air there all these years later.

[modern WABC jingle]

Working at PAMS and then JAM, Jon was at the forefront of the changing trends in radio.

Jon: Radio got a lot more researched and scientific, and the result of that was that radio stations started using shorter and shorter jingles.

Jeanna VO: For example, this is how long it took one radio station to introduce the weather forecast in the late 50s.

[KFWB weather 50s]

Jon: Here's how they introduced weather 10 years later.

[KFRC weather 60s]

As the years went on, they cut them down even further.

Jon: They would just have what is known as a “Shotgun Jingle,” which is a very fast frantic drum intro, and then the call letters are sung, and that's it.

[PAMS WXLO Shotgun]

Jeanna VO: Early on, JAM even made a shotgun jingle that used a classic sonovox effect. Listen for the robotic effect on the W.

[JAM WABC ]

Then in 1977, JAM started getting a particular request.

Jon: At the time, everybody was in a Star Wars kind of a frame of mind, and everything needed to have little laser bursts in it.

[sfx: Star Wars laser]

Jon: And so we did a very, very short jingle with a little laser effect on the front, and some brass and the call letters, and they used it all the time.

[JAM WABC Laser Shotgun]

Jon: That jingle has been used by radio stations everywhere. There are hundreds of versions of that jingle. And it's just because it's so functional.

[JAM Laser Shotgun Montage]

[music in: Gerhard Feng - It All Goes Down]

Jeanna VO: But while JAM was adapting to these changes, by the mid 70s, PAMS founder Bill Meeks was struggling.

Jon: He decided that the company needed to diversify because he kind of lost faith in the jingle business. And It just became a bunch of bad business decisions that spelled the end of the original PAMS.

PAMS suspended operations in 1978. Then in 1990, JAM bought the PAMS corporation, and all of its copyrights.

Jon: So now we are PAMS as well. And we're still here all these years later.

Jeanna VO: Since then, JAM has produced thousands more radio IDs, for stations across the US, and around the world. In 2024, they celebrated their 50th anniversary with this playful meta-jingle.

[JAM 50th Anniversary jingle into ReelWorld Z100 2024 Ramp]

Over the years, JAM has inspired other jingle heads to get in the game themselves.

Erik: Jon Wolfert is probably the reason that I'm in this business.

Jeanna VO: And wherever popular music goes, radio ID jingles are always close behind.

That’s coming up, after the break.

MIDROLL

[radio static into PAMS Start Goin' Steady with WDGY]

Radio ID jingles started in the 1940s, and really took off when companies like PAMS and eventually JAM hit the scene. Just like pop songs, these jingles are little time capsules of the era they were made in.

Jeanna VO: For instance, you can practically feel the 80s dripping off these radical JAM jingles.

[80s JAM jingle montage]

[music sneaks in: Ava Low - Red Red Sea]

It's during that decade that we meet our next radio jingle maestro, Erik Huber.

Jeanna VO: At the time, Erik was interning at a Seattle radio station, working on some jingles for them.

Erik: And the programmer for that station walked in and handed me a CD with all of JAM's then-current radio ID jingle offerings.

[ JAM KHTR “Maximum Music"]

Erik: And it blew my doors off, man. I mean, as far as the craftsmanship, the musicality, and just the overall excitement of the presentation, man… It was a work of art.

Erik: And so my hat is off to Jon Wolfert, ‘cause I think he set the bar for what radio IDs could be, and he's obviously an incredibly talented guy.

Jeanna VO: Cut to a few years later, in the early 90s. Erik and his friend Steve Thomas want to produce pop songs, but they're having trouble.

Erik: Unfortunately, we weren't really able to get traction on the artist development and songwriting side of things.

Meanwhile, the musical landscape is rapidly changing.

Erik: This was a really interesting time for pop music, ‘cause grunge was crossing over to the mainstream…

[clip: Pearl Jam - Alive]

Erik: And hip hop music was crossing over to the mainstream. I can vividly remember where I was the very first time I heard “Nothing but a G Thang” by Dr. Dre.

[clip: Dr. Dre - Ain't Nothin' But a G Thang]

Jeanna VO: The rise of these new genres meant new radio stations. And since Erik already had some experience with radio jingles...

Erik: We thought there was an opportunity to do something in this genre in terms of an ID jingle package.

[music in: DonVayei - West Side]

So Erik and Steve formed a company called ReelWorld Productions. To show off what they could do, they created a package of jingles for WPGC, which was a huge hip hop and R&B station in Washington DC.

Erik: We actually reached out to some of the artists that we were working with on the R&B/hip hop side of things, brought them into the studio, and recorded this jingle package on spec.

Jeanna VO: “On spec” is when you produce something before any contracts have been signed. In other words, it's a proof of concept.

Erik: We just produced this thing for free and, literally, called up Jay Stevens, who was programming the station and said, [phone filter] "Hey, we want to do this. Are you willing to, to give it a listen?"

Here are a few of the jingles they sent. As you can hear, they perfectly capture the sound and vibe of 90s hip hop and R&B.

[3 ReelWorld WPGC jingles]

Jeanna VO: WPGC liked what they heard, and ReelWorld was off to the races. Soon after, they landed a gig with another station, called KUBE.

[KUBE 93 Theme 2 sneaks in]

Erik: And the sound of the station was just a little more poppy and upbeat. So the package shifted more in that direction.

[KUBE 93 Theme 2 up, then out]

Erik: More on sort of the techno/housey side of things.

[KUBE 93 Theme 1]

Sometimes, these jingles were directly inspired by a particular artist, or song.

[Ace of Base - The Sign into KUBE93 AOB style]

Erik: Yeah, that's the Ace of Bass cut.

Jeanna VO: For companies like Erik's, it's a fine line to walk.

Erik: We're also not necessarily wanting to be too derivative, or to be too specific to a particular song, or a particular era. ‘Cause I don't want to make a jingle that's going to burn in five minutes, and then it's like, "Oh, this is the Ace of Base cut. It sounds so dated!" You know?

Erik: So there's kind of a dance that we're doing there, trying to predict where the format is heading, and what the sound of the format will be in six months or a year.

When ReelWorld makes a package of radio jingles, say for a country station, they might start with one that's more rockin'.

[KYGO Theme 02 Basic ID Full]

Then, they might make a version that's a little more laid back and nostalgic.

[KYGO TOH Basic ID Full]

Jeanna VO: Maybe they know that the station's listeners are fans of the show Hell on Wheels, which has a stomping, down and dirty sounding theme song.

[Hell on Wheels Theme]

Jeanna VO: So they craft a jingle that evokes that same vibe.

[KYGO 2022 TOH Ramp]

For a weather alert, they might make something with a bit of a “breaking news” flair to it.

[KYGO 2022 Weather close stormwatch]

And for contests and giveaways, they might make something more poppy and celebratory.

[KYGO 2022 WinnerOpen]

Jeanna VO: For every single package they create, ReelWorld makes around fifty to eighty individual pieces of music.

[KYGO Theme 8 Shotgun]

Jeanna VO: And when you broaden it out to different languages and countries, the stylistic variations become even more pronounced.

[LaMega Theme 4, Handzup Basic, NRK P1 Theme 4]

Now, typically the people singing these jingles are professional studio vocalists. But there are some exceptions, like the package ReelWorld made for a sports station back in 1999.

Erik: They wanted a sort of sports chant, something that could be imagined as a crowd at an arena getting hyped up. So I came up with the idea of using my own voice, and stacking it up about 50 times.

Jeanna VO: And to match the energy of a wild sports fan at a game...

Erik: I literally had to drink Red Bull and take my shirt off, and get pretty jacked up. So it was a lot of work.

[KJR 99 Theme 1 in]

Jeanna: It's like, it's dripping with masculinity.

[transition to KJR 99 Theme 9]

On the more wholesome side of things, ReelWorld also does holiday jingles.

Erik: Adult contemporary stations in particular will typically transition to 100% Christmas music, holiday music in November and December.

Erik: That is often when these stations are doing their highest billing. And so for a station like KOST where the Christmas programming is such a big deal, they really want to sell the idea that KOST is your go-to for Christmas music.

Erik: The Christmas programming is sort of a special time when you're playing music for the sake of nostalgia that would not show up on the radio station the rest of the year.

And capturing that nostalgia can sometimes mean evoking a specific holiday staple.

[clip: Bobby Helms - Jingle Bell Rock]

Here's Bobby Helms' classic Jingle Bell Rock. As it plays, we'll gradually fade it over to a KOST ID called Jingle Swing.

[music in: Patrick Hizon - Sweatshirt]

Jeanna VO: In any good piece of sonic branding, nostalgia is one of the most powerful ingredients. And radio IDs are no different. People associate these little tunes with different times in their lives, and the different places that they’ve lived. They stick in our heads for years. And when we hear these melodies again, those memories come flooding back.

Jeanna VO: And that’s part of why these jingles are still used by so many stations around the world today.

Jon: I think radio station ID jingles are going to continue to be used as long as there's radio stations, really. Not by every station, but by some stations that really want to make an impact.

And fortunately for those stations, there are still people like Jon and Erik who live and breathe these jingles.

Jon: I chose to be in the jingle production business because it combines all of my interests: Radio, music, electronics, recording... I'm having a good time doing it. And that's why I'm still here.

Erik: I feel so blessed to be able to ply my craft as a musician, composer, producer, in a realm where creativity is valued, and where that creativity forges an emotional bond.

Erik: Through music, we have the ability to create joy, and to create emotional experiences for listeners. And I'd like to think that in some small way, the world is better off because we're out here in the studio, you know, cranking out ID jingles.

[music in: B1NKS! - Brand New Me]

Twenty Thousand Hertz is produced out of the sound design studios of Defacto Sound. Hear more at Defacto Sound dot com.

Jeanna VO: This episode was written and produced by Jeanna Isham.

Other Voices: And Casey Emmerling, with help from Grace East. It was sound designed and mixed by Justin Hollis.

Thanks to our guests, Jon Wolfert and Erik Huber. To learn more about their work, just follow the links in the show notes. Finally, Jeanna hosts her own podcast about all things sonic branding. It's called Sound in Marketing, and you can listen and follow right here in your podcast player.

I'm Dallas Taylor. Thanks for listening.