The first word in jingles - PAMS

2001 marked the 50th anniversary of a company which in its own way, revolutionised radio worldwide.

Until 1951 any jingles that were heard on a radio station in the United States of America had been produced locally. An example of this was KLIF, a station that went live in 1947. The station had its own staff singers, which might seem strange now, but it was fairly common practice back then.

The station's music director, Bill Meeks collaborated with the singers to produce the station's first on-air jingle package. In 1951 Bill Meeks left KLIF and founded a company called PAMS, which promoted itself as a commercial music production house and advertising agency whose initials originally stood for Production, Advertising, Marketing and Sales, the four areas that Bill felt clients needed help in. In later years, the S was changed to mean Service.

The company was based in Dallas, Texas. But this was not by accident, rather, it was by the design of a gentleman called Bill Harris, who was the local director of the American Foundation of Musicians. He pushed for musicians to be paid transcription rates rather than the much higher national advertising rates. Had this not happened in 1951, its quite possible that PAMS might have been based in New York or Los Angeles and as such it might have meant that radio stations today would be traveling to those locations rather than Dallas for their jingles.

Soon after, PAMS sold the very first syndicated package of jingles to KDNT in Denton, Texas. This was to become known as the Series 1 package. The package was basically a collection of pre-recorded backing tracks, an economical and flexible way of producing station ID's. However the package had no consistent logo melody. The package was produced specifically for the station, therefore it was not a custom package, but a syndicated package.

In 1955, PAMS started to face some serious competition in the sector with the formation of Commercial Recording Corp., and three former PAMS employees got together in 1958 to form Futuresonic, but despite the competition from these and many other companies including Music Makers, Jingle Mill and Pepper Sound, PAMS became known as the world's most creative and dominant supplier of radio jingles.
In all, PAMS created 49 numbered packages with numerous variants, many named packages for clients across the world. Among the stations that used PAMS jingles were

• BBC Radio 1 and Radio 2
• WABC in New York
• WMGM
• WYNR
• WFUN
• WXYZ
• KFWB
• KGW
• WGAR
• WWDC
• WLS
• KLIF
• KNX
• and many others including pirate station Radio London.

Some of the more well known backing tracks include Series 15, originally produced for WABC in New York, but never actually used by the station and Series 18, the package that introduce the electronic voice of “Sonovox” to the world of radio jingles. PAMS also produced a series of jingles based on the hits of The Beatles at a time when Beatlemania was sweeping across all 50 states of the US.

In the late 1970's, PAMS ceased trading because of financial problems, but the company never went into bankruptcy, nor was it dissolved. For over 10 years the future of the company and the jingles themselves were left hanging on legal threads.

Then in 1990 another former PAMS employee, Jonathan Wolfert, who had left PAMS in 1971 to form his own company, JAM Creative Productions, bought the shares of the company.

You might think that the story ends here, but you'd be wrong. Because in the years since the company became inactive, several other companies, including the Creative Productions Marketing Group (CPMG), had started offering re-sings of the PAMS packages. It meant extensive legal research had to be carried out to determine who held the valid copyright to the PAMS material. It was eventually determined that the original PAMS corporation, that had been bought by Jonathan Wolfert, still owned the jingles. PAMS had to resort to legal proceedings to resolve all the conflicting claims.

A settlement was reached in February 1997 and since then, JAM have sold re-sings of the classic jingles out of Dallas, Texas, whilst a company called KenR offer re-sings out of Toledo, Ohio.

Brand X

ITV has become ITV1, SkySports.comTV has reverted to being known as Sky Sports News - two recent examples of just how important the correct brand is to television stations and networks. But branding isn't just the station name, it's also everything that identifies the station as being what it is. So, just why is the brand so important?

One reason is to help viewers build a familiarity with the station. Westward's brand was a very strong one in the South West of England, and indeed still is, despite the fact that it disappeared from our TV screens at the end of 1981. Why is it so strong?

One reason is that although Westward changed their idents a few times, they never changed their symbol - it was always the Golden Hind - and the continual use of this symbol for 20 years meant that people built a familiarity with it. Every time that ship appeared on the screen, you knew you were watching Westward.

Another thing that helped build familiarity was the regular team of station hosts, otherwise known as Continuity Announcers. When Roger Shaw told you that now on Westward was The Avengers, again, you knew you were watching Westward, because his face and voice became associated with Westward, and many years later, TSW as well. Familiar faces, familiar voices and a familiar symbol, amongst other things, helped to create a very strong brand for Westward, one which survives almost 20 years of disuse.

By way of an aside, in the United States, consumers regularly rate General Electric second out of 10 manufacturers for Blenders. The company stopped manufacturing white goods of this type more than 20 years ago. A powerful and quality brand is self-perpetuating.

Another reason why brand is so important is that it helps identify the sort of programming you can expect. Cartoon Network shows nothing but cartoons, Discovery Channel is all about documentaries, Disney Channel is children's and family entertainment, brands like that are familiar and give a good idea what the station is about.

But what about a brand like Boomerang? Now what kind of channel is that? It sounds like something to do with Australia or thrown weapons. In fact, Boomerang shows classic cartoons, such as Tom and Jerry, Droopy and Barney Bear. But again, if you'd never heard of the channel before, would you know that it showed classic cartoons? Possibly not, which is why it was initially introduced to the viewing public as a strand of programming on Cartoon Network, before it was launched as a separate channel.

Getting brands associated with whatever the channel wants you to associate it with, has always been a problem. Before 1956, would anyone have associated the word Granada with the North or North West of England? Possibly not, but it is now, and has been for quite some time, associated with the north. On the other hand, could you associate Rediffusion with any particular part of the country? Possibly not, because in the station name, there is no geographical indication of where the channel broadcasts or in this case, broadcasted, to. That's why from about 1964, you saw the words Rediffusion London on screen, in order to build that kind of association.

EuroNews or EuroSport have a similar kind of association, but this time you know they broadcast right across Europe, because of the Euro in their name. Other station names, such as Thames, Southern, Grampian and Ulster, are geographic names, in order to gain the respect of the local audiences. Names like that have a distinct advantage over names without any such geographic reference, such as Rediffusion, ABC, ATV or Carlton.

Also names that are based on the programming that's on the channel, such as Sky Sports 1, UK Gold, Travel Channel and BBC Knowledge have an advantage over channels where the name of the channel has no immediate reference to the programming, such as Q, Hallmark, Trouble and Bravo.

So, if you want your brand to stand out from the crowd, especially in today's very crowded multi-channel market, you need every advantage you can get. Just having your logo permanently on screen all the time won't cut it any more. Not distinctive enough, everybody's doing it. You need to make your station symbol, ident or logo very distinctive, something that will grab your viewers attention.

You need to have your announcers present it distinctively, you have to promo your station and programmes consistently and judiciously, so that you're viewer doesn't think they've seen everything the programme or channel might have to offer.

But most importantly, the brand has to become familiar in people's minds fairly quickly, and the brand has to be respected, otherwise your potential audience might not turn to your channel and that will prove disastrous.