When it comes to making jingles one thing that could endanger the concept is that if your jingles do not adapt to the times. Well several companies came into existence during the 80's, 90's and at the dawn of the 21st Century. I will not go in order of who came first but I will try to highlight them the best I can.
For starters I will begin with a company that turned CHR jingles on their head in the mid 1990's. That company is Reelworld and unlike most jingle companies that make Dallas their home base this one enjoys the city of Seattle, WA.
Reelworld was founded by Steve Thomas and Erik Huber. Their paths to founding Reelworld were very different. Thomas played in a high school marching band in Seattle and later studied recording technique at a local community college. At the same time he worked at Filthy Soundz Productions were Thomas co-wrote and/or produced tracks for artists in Seattle. It is hard to believe that he did all of this before he turned 21 and would be legal to drink. Thomas would take a job at Music Source working as a producer, composer, and engineer. He produced music elements for many commercial clients that were in the Seattle area.
Huber after ten years of piano lessons entered the musicology program at the University of Washington. It was during this time that Huber got bitten by the jingle bug. During his internship with Ed Ray Productions he produced a jingle package for a station called KJTT in Whidbey Island. This was done when Huber was only 17 years of age. As with Thomas, Huber moved into producing music for commercial clients with included KFC and Blockbuster.
In 1992 Huber was hired by Turning Point Productions in northern California. His boss at Turning Point was Max Mace who is best known in Christian circles as the founder of the Heritage Singers music ministry, which is still in existence today. It was during this time that Huber wrote out the blueprint on radio jingles. In fact Huber along with Art Mapa composed jingle packages for several Christian radio stations and used the Heritage Singers to sing the jingles. However it seems that Mace was not interested in using his music group to sing the praises of radio stations, and Huber moved back to Seattle. Taking a job at Music Source he soon crossed paths with Thomas. Although they did not like each other at first they soon realized that they had very excellent productions and working as partners they could create great product.
Their first project together was a jingle package for WPGC-FM which they produced in 1994. An Urban leaning CHR/Rhythmic radio station that has been number one in Washington DC for years. The ideal was to create jingles that matched the sound of the current musical texture of the radio station. With the creation of the WPGC package Reelworld was born.
According to Reelworld many radio programmers in the CHR format were losing interest in using jingles to ID their radio stations because they felt the jingles offered by other companies were sticking to the styles of the 1950's and offered nothing that was cutting edge.
Radio consultant Jerry Clifton who did consulting work for WPGC introduced Huber & Thomas to KUBE-FM which has been the top rating CHR station in Seattle. They created a package for the station in 1995. The first package for KUBE had 12 short song based jingles about KUBE that had a dance pop sound. The KUBE package was a success and CHR stations across the country took interest in Reelworld's product.
With the signing of the Telecommunications Act in 1996 business at Reelworld would boom. In the same year of 96 Reelworld created packages for WXKS-FM Boston, WJMN-FM Boston, KDWB-FM Minneapolis, KHKS-FM Dallas-Fort Worth and WZPL-FM Indianapolis. With the sign on of the new WKTU in New York City Reelworld was called upon to create jingles for the station. This new WKTU would hit number one in its first book, which was close to a feat that a previous station that used the WKTU call letters in the New York market accomplished back in the late 1970's. They also began to branch out in other formats by creating a News/Talk imaging package for KOA-AM Denver.
In 1997 Reelworld would enter the Country format with a package created for Nashville powerhouse WSIX. The package matched the texture of what was being played on Country radio. Later on KMPS/Seattle and KYGO/Denver came to Reelworld for Country jingles
In 1998 Reelworld created the Windy 100 package for Adult Contemporary radio. In this package Reelworld kept the traditional horn sound that was used in many AC jingle package but use a hotter vocal sound. This would be the blueprint for most of Reelworld's AC jingles. One year later Z100 in New York signed on with Reelworld to produce jingles for heritage CHR station.
This year Reelworld produced a jingle package for Hot AC KHMX-FM in Houston and produced a jingle package for another heritage CHR. This time it was KIIS in Los Angeles.
While Reelworld did a great job of updating the sound of jingles, the jingle captiol of the world Dallas, Texas is far from being out of the game. Next time I shall talk about N2Effect.
