For my first semester at Clarkson College in fall 1970 I was a fill-in DJ at the college station, WNTC. The program director for that year was Jon Wolfert who had his own radio show. He was also the guy that made most of the commercials for the station. He had had an interest in radio station jingles before he even got to WNTC. Those jingles are the musical station IDs, introductions to weather, introductions to sports, etc. They were used by all the top-40 radio stations of that day.

In 1971 Jon moved to Dallas, Texas to work for PAMS who at that time was the most popular maker of jingles. Three years later Jon left PAMS and started his own jingle company; JAM Creative Productions. It was originally run out of a spare bedroom and used a rented studio.

JAM grew and PAMS fell on hard times. Jon ended up buying out the remains of PAMS.

JAM (at: jingles.com) today is one of the largest maker of jingles for radio, TV and the internet. Stations usually buy a package of many kinds of jingles at a time so that they don’t end up repeating the same one. JAM has been making jingles for radio station WABC in New York since 1976. The video shows what it takes to make just one jingle. Look at all the artists it takes just to make this station ID.