NBC chimes


The NBC chimes are a sequence of three tones played on National Broadcasting Company broadcasts. Originally developed in 1927 as seven notes, they were standardized to the current three note version by the early 1930s, and possibly as early as 1929. The chimes were originally employed as an audible programming cue, used to alert network control engineers and the announcers at NBC's radio network affiliates. They soon became associated with NBC programming in general, and are an early example of an "interval signal" used to help establish a broadcaster's identity with its audience.
In 1950 the NBC chimes became the first "purely audio" service mark granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Nearly ninety years after their introduction, they continue to be used as an audio signature by the NBC TV network and its affiliates, and also on the NBC Sports Radio network and at the opening of the hourly NBC News Radio broadcasts.

Definition

The NBC chimes sound mark is currently assigned to NBCUniversal Media, LLC. Its official description, as recorded by its registration at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, is:

History

While general information about the origin of the NBC chimes is well documented, precise details about the earliest developments are not as clear, and in some cases researchers have come to differing conclusions. It is particularly difficult to establish exactly when the initial, longer, versions were pared down to the final three-tone sequence.

"General Electric Company" folklore

A commonly suggested explanation for the chimes' "G-E-C" sequence is that it comes from the initials of the General Electric Company. In 1987, Robert C. Wright, the president and C.E.O. of NBC, testified before the U.S. Congress that "Not everyone knows that GE was one of the original founders of RCA, NBC's former parent, and that the notes of the famous NBC chimes are G-E-C, standing for the General Electric Company." References to this purported link date back to at least 1945. However, this was over a decade after the NBC chimes were adopted, and NBC's own early historical reviews make no mention of this supposed origin.
In 1919, General Electric founded NBC's parent company, the Radio Corporation of America. At the time the NBC chimes were being developed, GE was still RCA's largest shareholder and also held 30% of NBC's stock. The small handheld chimes commonly used when the NBC chime sequence was being developed had only four tones: High G, Low G, E and C. Given these limited choices, it was most likely only a coincidence that the adopted sequence matched GE's initials, and while useful as a mnemonic for remembering the notes' correct sequence, there is little evidence actually supporting any link.

Early radio station sound signatures

Because radio is sound oriented, it was a natural development for stations to independently adopt a variety of audio signatures, which in some cases took the form of chimes. Examples existed from the earliest days of organized broadcasting, including at least three by the summer of 1923:
What differentiated the NBC chimes from these earlier identifying sounds, at least in the beginning, is the use of the NBC chimes for network communications and coordination. Later they would also become a signature sound representing the network, but their primary initial purpose was to help ensure smooth network operations. In 1932, NBC stated that: "The purpose of the chimes... is to synchronize local station identification announcements and to serve as a cue to engineers at relay points all over the country to switch various branches of the networks on or off as the programs change every 15 minutes." This reflected the organization of the network schedule, which was divided into 15 minute program blocks. In addition, effective May 11, 1927, the Federal Radio Commission's General Order No. 8 specified that each station was "directed to announce its call letters and location... not less than once during each 15 minutes of transmission". The use of the NBC chimes as network switching cues eventually allowed the network to save money on infrastructure costs. Until 1933 it was common practice to run a second line that used telegraphic signalling to provide networking communication. After that date the normal policy was to eliminate this second line and send the networking cues over the program lines.
Information about the early development of the NBC chimes is very sparse, although work began shortly after the first NBC network broadcast on November 15, 1926. A 1950 internal NBC memo, "NBC Chimes: First Use of the famous NBC Chimes", states that "The use of chimes for identifying NBC was first conceived by Phillips Carlin," and this memo has a timeline entry for December 22, 1926 that states: "Chimes purchased from Lesch Co for $48.50". Phillips Carlin was a well-known NBC announcer, who had experience employing chimes in radio broadcasts dating back to at least 1924. At that time he was the announcer for the Silvertown Chimes program, which was broadcast over the "WEAF chain" network originating in New York City. A contemporary review of this show noted that each program opened with "the soft ringing of chimes", followed by Carlin's announcement that "The Silvertown Chimes have rung out their greeting. Each week they have announced an hour of music, a program of dance so delightful that it drives all thoughts of care away."
A 1942 NBC account of the origin of the chimes gave additional credit for their refinement to NBC chief engineer O. B. Hanson and Ernest LaPrade, an NBC orchestra leader. This account also states that there was an ongoing evolution during the developmental period, as the chime sequence originally consisted of seven notes, which, according to Ernest LaPrade, proved difficult to play correctly, so the sequence was shortened to five, then four, and finally three notes. The notes were manually played on four-bar chime sets manufactured by the J.C. Deagan Company of Chicago. Additional reports state that the initial sequence was G-C-G-E-G-C-E, which became G-C-G-E and then just G-E-C. November 29, 1929 is sometimes reported to be the date that the three-tone sequence was adopted, however the longer intervals were still in use until 1931 according to surviving network recordings.
The use of signalling tones to indicate the end of a program would be unique to the NBC networks. The CBS Radio network, founded in 1927, never adopted anything similar, instead keying its network switching to the standard phrase "This is the Columbia Broadcasting System". Initially NBC had two national networks, the NBC Red Network and the NBC Blue Network, however the Federal Communications Commission was unhappy with this and worked to eliminate the common ownership. In late 1942 Phillips Carlin became vice president of programming at the soon-to-be independent Blue network, which later became the American Broadcasting Company. One of his first decisions was whether to adopt "a new set of chimes ", and the choice was to instead end their use on the Blue network. However, the remaining NBC network operations considered the chimes to be an important part of their corporate identity. In 1942, NBC estimated that the average listener heard the tones 16 times a day, while annually there were nearly 20 billion impressions worldwide.

Additional origin explanations

Once the NBC chimes became established, a few claimants appeared who stated they were the original inspiration for the practice. However, like the earliest days of the NBC chimes history, there is very little information available to evaluate these claims.
The original chimes were played by hand by the announcers, which led to occasional errors and undesirable variations. In 1932 a standardized "chimeless chime", which promised to play the notes consistently — one reviewer commented that "there will be no more sour notes from those NBC chimes — was developed by Richard H. Ranger, a former RCA engineer who had invented an electronic organ. Ranger's creation was a music box-style electro-mechanical device, which played the three-note sequence at the push of a button.
The initial installation was made at New York City headquarters, and went into operation on September 18, 1932. Following successful tests, the network ordered multiple additional units, which were distributed to major sites throughout the United States, including Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago and San Francisco. About a dozen of the Ranger units are estimated to have been constructed, a few of which survive in collections. Around 1941 the Rangertone devices started to be replaced with an all-electronic system developed by NBC engineers. By the mid-1980s, these dedicated devices had been replaced by a magnetic tape cartridge recording of a chimes machine that was played back as needed.

The "fourth chime"

The "fourth chime" was a variation of the standard three-segment version, which repeated the closing "C" chime, to become "G-E-C-C". It was initially adopted as a paging method for the New York City area, summoning employees listening at home to report for work at NBC headquarters in order to assist with an important developing story. However, as knowledge of the signal's meaning spread, it also became a way to notify affiliate stations and knowledgeable listeners of pending urgent programming. The "fourth chime" was first used in 1937 in response to the Hindenburg disaster, and saw a majority of its use during World War Two. An NBC account of its employment at the start of the "D-day" invasion on June 6, 1944 stated: "At 2:30 a.m. the network was put on 'flash' basis; the NBC four-chime-alert calling all newsmen and commentators to their microphones, key operating personnel to their stations, sounded from the newsroom control room."
There are very few recorded examples of fourth chime transmissions. Although NBC publicity, and some of the contemporary recordings, agree that the "fourth chime" sequence merely repeated a "C" at the end, some of the other recorded examples, although composed of 4 tones, have pitches that appear to be significantly different. The use of the "fourth chime" ended shortly after the close of World War Two.

Service Mark registration

Prior to 1946, U.S. law limited registered trademarks to tangible goods. The law was changed that year to allow "service marks" for offered services, and, in an application made with the U.S. Patent Office on November 20, 1947, NBC filed for service mark protection for use of its chimes in conjunction with the "broadcasting of radio programs". Notification of the pending application, which stated that the chimes had been in use since November 1927, was published by the Patent Office on January 17, 1950. There were no objections raised, so on April 4, 1950 the three notes of the NBC chimes became an officially registered service mark.
It is sometimes incorrectly stated that this was the first grant of a U.S. service mark. Actually, numerous earlier service marks had been approved, but previously they had been logos or descriptive names for the service being provided. What made the NBC chimes grant unique was that this was the first time that a service — in this case NBC's radio broadcasts — was granted protection for the use of a service mark that was a "purely audible" trademark, or what became to be known as a "sound mark".
The original radio broadcasting "sound mark" registration expired on November 3, 1992, after NBC Radio had become a content subsidiary of Westwood One. However, a second registration, made in 1971 and covering the "broadcasting of television programs", remains in force.

Later usage

Although the Rangertone chime machines had to be manually triggered, in 1950 RCA reported that the chimes now normally "sound automatically at 30 seconds before the hour and 30 seconds before the half hour". A December 1953 report in The Billboard noted that:
The use of the chimes as a network communications signal ended around 1971, the result of automation, which in the case of radio led to shorter tones and "chirps" that were commonly filtered out by the stations so they were unheard by listeners, and in the case of television included use of the vertical blanking interval to transmit cues that were not seen by viewers. However, subsequently there have been numerous examples of the chimes being used in NBC programming as an audio signature.
In 1938, NBC's Advertising and Promotions Director, E. P. H. James, made an agreement with NuTone Chimes of Cincinnati to provide chime sets for sale to the general public. The chimes were used in the dining cars for a few railroad and steamship company lines, starting with the Baltimore and Ohio and New York Central railroads. A line of toy chimes was also produced. That same year the network's fans could buy their own set of chimes from NBC for $2.95 each, with the suggested uses of "Call your family to dinner. . .signal your maid". 1938 also saw the installation of outdoor clocks, in New York City and Chicago, that rang the NBC chimes on-the-hour.
In the 1940 Disney animated short film Fire Chief starring Donald Duck, the NBC chimes are used when Huey, Dewey, and Louie fall on top of Donald. A number of Three Stooges shorts, such as The Ghost Talks, used the chimes when someone hit all three of them in the head.
For a few years in the 1940s and 1950, NBC produced an in-house magazine named NBC Chimes.

Musical adaptations of the NBC chime notes

A number of news theme packages have included the NBC chimes, for example ones made for exclusive use by NBC stations, or as a variant used by NBC stations in themes syndicated to stations regardless of network affiliation. Songwriters have also incorporated the sequence, and some NBC-owned radio stations, including WNBC included chimes in their station ID jingles. Examples include:
Songs:
Jingle packages: