Jim Long

Long (who took his maternal grandfather's name when he began his career as a radio announcer) was the only child of John Francis Moynihan and Marion Long Moynihan, whose families came to New England from County Kerry and Mallow, County Cork, Ireland in the 1800s.

Always in some form of law enforcement, Long's father retired as a United States Air Force major (provost marshal in Germany) and corrections officer for the State of Massachusetts.

His mother was a registered nurse and homemaker.

Fascinated by radio since childhood, Long built his first vacuum tube radio transmitter at the age of 13 and started his own radio station in his basement in Marlborough, Massachusetts.

It was a successful enterprise until the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) showed up to confiscate his transmitter.

It was interfering with a local radio station's signal.

(Long later went to work for the station, WMRC, Milford, Massachusetts).

At 15, he produced his first record, "Liza Lee" by Roger and The Markees, and started his own record company, Dell Mont Recording, to release it (also in his basement, using his savings and a $200 loan from his mother).

This gave him his first taste of artist promotion, record production, and distribution, especially “returns”.

After high school, Long worked at Walgreens Drug Stores, while taking courses in broadcasting, to fulfill his goal of becoming a D.J./radio announcer.

He joined the United States Navy and was stationed at Anacostia Naval Base in Washington, D.C., where he served in the elite U. S. Navy Ceremonial Guard, with duty at Arlington National Cemetery.

Honorably discharged, he returned to civilian life to pursue a career in broadcasting, where he put his talents as a writer and producer to work.

Jim Long was the first to:

Jim Long (born Timothy John Moynihan; February 7, 1943 – May 30, 2022) was an American entrepreneur, whose pioneering marketing concepts and creative “firsts” are iconic in the broadcast music industry.

Experienced in the development of intellectual properties, his business holdings focused on music production, master recordings, music publishing, and broadcast licensing and syndication for the radio, television and film industries.

He founded/co-founded numerous broadcast and radio syndication companies, including Dallas-based TM Productions/Starr Broadcasting, FirstCom/Jim Long Music, Long-Pride Broadcasting, and a Nashville-based music and publishing group, OneMusic.

At various times, he also held owner interest in 19 radio and TV stations throughout the U.S. His record label, Honest Entertainment, produced Grammy-nominated albums.

Beginning in 1961, Long worked as an announcer, producer and program manager at radio stations in Keene (WKBK), Dover (WTSN) and Manchester (WFEA), NH; Westfield (WDEW) and Southbridge (WESO), Massachusetts; Waterbury, Connecticut (WWCO); Springfield, Vermont (WCFR); Bangor, Maine (WGUY); Messina (WSTS), Malone (WICY), Utica (WRUN) and Syracuse (WOLF) New York; Orlando, Florida (WKIS); and Indianapolis (WIBC), Indiana.

In early 1967, after a year as Program Director of WIBC/Indianapolis, the 24-year-old Long was given the opportunity to move to Texas by composer Tom Merriman who was working at Dallas-based Commercial Recording Corporation (CRC).

Within six months, he and Merriman would launch TM Productions, Inc.

with $10,000 capital.

In 1967 TM Productions began as a music production company, producing commercial jingles and broadcast station identifications (IDs).

Long conceptualized and co-produced an entirely new approach to station IDs which provided stations a natural flow from commercial breaks to station IDs to music programming, increasing listenership and ratings.

Called “Phase 2”, “The Propellants” and “The Winning Score”, these programs were quickly adopted by top stations including KILT Houston, WCFL Chicago and KHJ Los Angeles.

He also created IDs that sounded like the hit songs the stations were playing (e.g., “And the Beat Goes On” and “Charisma” for WCFL Chicago and KLIF Dallas).

These concepts were extremely successful and soon widely imitated within the industry.

TM Productions was the first production-syndication company to create and market comprehensive multi-media image campaigns for radio stations, complete with station IDs, print and broadcast advertising, promotional materials, and market research programs.

(“Someplace Special”, “Rhythm of the City”, “You”, “Where You Belong” and “Where Your Friends Are”) These image campaigns increased ratings at stations like WCOL Columbus, KRFC San Francisco, KHJ Los Angeles, and WIBG in Philadelphia.

These award-winning campaigns could be syndicated for use in non-competing markets.

A similar format image campaign was also developed for television stations, with WLKY-TV in Lexington, Kentucky serving as the pilot.

Called ColorTheme, it incorporated animation and music for station IDs and was customized for many major market TV stations, including the MetroMedia Group, Inc.

Long also introduced commercial services libraries – full service, multi-media advertising campaigns designed for local advertisers by award-winning composers and writer-producers.

For the first time, radio stations could provide high quality advertising campaigns to their advertising sponsor clients.

By the early 1970s, the TM Companies had become internationally recognized as the radio industry's leading provider of music libraries and programming.

The Producer (1973) and MasterPlan (1976) were licensed to over 2000 radio stations, worldwide, and generated millions of dollars in additional revenue for local radio broadcasters.

The scope of the business included three additional product divisions:

TM Programming, a full service radio programming firm, created and produced customized services for over 500 radio stations throughout the U.S., including market analysis, and music programming in four different musical formats: Beautiful music, stereo rock, soft rock, and country.

It was the first to successfully automate mainstream rock programming (WGY-FM in Albany, New York) and the first syndicator to successfully program country music on FM radio (WSOC-FM, Charlotte, North Carolina).

TM Special Projects produced music “specials” for broadcast, including the first-ever 48-hour history of album rock, Album Greats, which was aired by hundreds of top progressive rock radio stations, upon its release in 1977.

TM International provided worldwide distribution of the products of the TM Companies.