WIDB History Chapter 31

Jingle Obsession

It is hard from today's perspective to understand WIDB's obsession with jingles in the early years. Most of it came from the intense desire to present as professional a sound as possible. All staffers had listened to the "BIG" (major market) top-40 stations for years. The "big" stations (WLS, WCFL, WABC, KHJ) sounded big because they had fancy jingles, fancy production, and manly, professional and versatile production voices. But these things cost money, BIG money.

Howie and Tom were determined to bring all three to WIDB, for almost no cash. There was one major advantage. They could "pirate" (steal) just about any production (jingles, music, voices) they could get their hands on. Jingle and production companies made their money by selling the right to use their product in a particular market to a certain station. If a station used something without paying, it was easy for the company to find out for several reasons. One, the station was open air and it was easy to record evidence of unauthorized usage. Two, the jingle packages contained "slogans" (such as "the beat goes on" or "music radio") which were attributed to the station in national directories and with ratings services. Three, there was enough $ at stake for the production companies to take legal action against a medium or major market station for unauthorized usage. In short, regular commercial stations were too public with too much $ at stake to get away with it.

Not so with WIDB. It was not open air. Carbondale was definitely a small market. WIDB sold no advertising, was not listed in any directory, and there was no ratings service involved. Who would know? Even if the production companies found out about unauthorized usage, what would they do? Sue WIDB for the 500 or so dollars that would be due? The jingle business moved so fast that anything WIDB could obtain and use was pretty much obsolete anyway. In short, there was no financial benefit to WIDB for pirating jingles; the goal was just to improve the program sound. Thus, there was no motivation for the jingle companies to consider legal action.

So it was open season to steal, edit, or otherwise use just about anything. Production companies often would send free demos on high quality tape that contained useful items. Some demos contained tones to defeat dubbing. Some copies of jingle packages were available through personal contacts. But almost all of the useful items were isolated and disjointed, and no amount of fancy (for the day) editing or re-mixing could create the cohesive, consistent jingle package so desperately yearned for. The problem was that the main purpose of almost all jingles was to ID the station. So, all jingles had call letters. Some also had city of location. None, zero, said "WIDB," or "Carbondale," and that's exactly what was needed. The secondary purposes of jingles were to ID a station slogan and provide transitions during program breaks, before and after records. In a top-40 format, every station was playing almost the same records. It was the jingles that made stations different. That was their identity. It was a central pillar of programming.

Howie had favored jingles used by Drake-Chenault (a name for a certain style of Top-40 format, primarily acapella), created by legendary Top-40 programmer Bill Drake and jingles used in many markets nationwide, in New York by WOR, in L.A. by KHJ and other stations in the RKO Radio Group. (In fact, a variation on the D-C jingles is still in use today on Infinity's L.A. oldies station KRTH-FM). The Drake-Chenault jingles were also used on Howie's pirate WLTH. But the Drake style had never received exposure in Chicago, where most of WIDB's listeners grew up. The big Chicago stations favored TM (WCFL) and Pams (WLS). There were also jingles produced by Pepper Tanner. TM had the most melodic, best produced package and that was what Tom lusted after. Tom was a skilled editor, and he had a plan to provide WIDB with most of a modern TM jingle package!

But before Tom could proceed, an unbelievable stroke of luck provided them with a monumental production opportunity.

The better jingle packages were arranged around a particular word and music theme. One example was the "Solid Rock" package from Pams In perhaps 12 different jingles, the singers might sing "solid rock" or "The rock of... (location)" and then a station's call letters. Once the word and music themes were set, the music tracks were recorded. Separately, the singers would add the call letters and locations. This way the same music tracks could be used over and over for stations in different markets. WLS, Chicago, used the Solid Rock package in 1972. The singers sang "The rock of Chicago, WLS." In 1973, KGMO, Cape Girardeau, used the Solid Rock package. The singers sang, "The rock of Missouri, KGMO." In 1971, WCFL, Chicago, used TM's Phase II package which was the Dallas-based company’s most popular. So did KILT, Houston. The production value to a station that had no jingle package (like WIDB) was in the music tracks, not someone else's call letters. It was believed that if the music tracks only could be obtained, it would be easy to get singers to fill in the call letters. But the production companies jealously guarded their music tracks.

During the winter of 1970, Jeff Avon somehow secured a tape of the TM "Beat Goes On" package. This was one of the best packages ever made, and it had been used by WCFL only a year or two before. Almost all WIDB'ers were familiar with it. Even Howie had listened to the Beat Goes On package by DX'ing WCFL at night in New York. This jingle package shouted "major market radio" to them. But it was not a big deal to hear the jingles sing "WCFL" or "KILT." The big deal was that Jeff had the music tracks, in the clear, without call letters.

Howie and Tom were ecstatic! They had to get a copy of those tracks! Jeff flatly refused. He had promised that he would not allow any dubs to be made. Howie and Tom came up with a plan. First they got Jim Hoffman to persuade Jeff to drive down to C'dale from Chicago with the tape. Then, they set up their reel-to-reel playback unit on the dresser in Howie's bedroom. It had its own speakers. But it also had a line output, which Howie and Tom connected to another reel-to-reel machine hidden in the closet. That was the recording machine. It would record whatever was playing on the playback unit.

Jim had been Jeff's buddy at Kendall College, in Evanston. In the late 60's, they were involved in the radio station there. They developed relationships with Chicago radio personnel, most notably Lew Witz and Jim Lupus at WCFL. "That's where Jeff got the tape," said Jim. While Jim transferred to SIU for the 69-70 school year, Jeff remained at Kendall. Although Jim got Jeff to bring the tape down, Jim was not a dubbing co-conspirator. "I didn't know that Howie and Tom had rigged up a system to record," Jim claimed.

Jeff showed up and squeezed into Howie's trailer bedroom with Howie, Tom, Jim and Howie's girlfriend, Diana. The plan was when Howie coughed, Diana would start the closet machine on record. It worked perfectly. Jeff only allowed them to listen to the tape. They all listened, talked about it, listened to the tape again, and, all the while, the closet machine was recording. After Jeff left, (much to Jim's surprise), Howie opened the closet, and they listened to the tracks again! The dub came out great, and Jeff had kept his promise, since he had not allowed any dubs to be made.

Howie was fully charged. His dream of a major market jingle package for WIDB was within reach! All he needed were the singers to fill in the call letters and a few other things. Howie contacted the SIU Glee Club. "They were thrilled to be involved, very enthusiastic," Howie remembers. He played for them the music tracks and examples of the final product. "But when we got them into the studio, we found it was very difficult to achieve the sound like the production companies. The Glee Club singers had a style that was almost operatic, which was not appropriate for a hit music station," Howie lamented. That effort, to use singers, had to be set aside. But the dream was still on the horizon.

Tom Scheithe, Operations Director, was in line to take over as Program Director, and he shared Howie's vision of a major market jingle package for WIDB. In contrast to Howie, who relied on studio and mixing skills, Tom relied on his editing skills. He listened very carefully, over and over, to the WCFL version of the "Beat Goes On" package. He noticed that most of the jingles ran from 8 to 16 seconds long. They had instrumental openings. The closings were either instrumental or singers singing "The beat goes on." Those jingles that had call letters in them had them in the middle. Significantly, the bars of the jingle that had the call letters often began and ended on the same beat or note.

Tom tried to edit out the call letters. The jingle instrumental intro, singers singng "and the beat goes on" and then instrumental finish. It worked! And, it sounded better than any jingles in the market, or even in St Louis. Tom forged ahead and produced about eight of these. His "Hatchet Man" moniker took on a more complementary meaning. Hear some of Tom's work here!

The pirated TM tracks were also useful not with singers, but an announcer. Dan Sheldon made himself (and his voice) available to record phrases that were usable over 5-9 second snappy tracks. Phrases like "And the hits just keep on coming," or "Solid gold comes together on WIDB all weekend long," with the tracks, also served as jingles. Something like this. Tom successfully used voices in the "most music" jingle. To boost morale, Tom created a specially produced "name ID" for each jock.(just like at the big stations). These were called "jock shouts" and used out of news. Here's a quick little "Jock Shout")

Some of the music tracks became background for station promos. Certain tracks were patterned after old hit songs. The extremely popular song "Cherish," (by the Association), became a jingle track that WIDB used for a Pillowtalk promo, featuring the voices of Kay Kessler, Sam Glick and Jim Rohr. And here's that Pillowtalk promo again.