The NBC chimes are a sequence of three tones played on National Broadcasting Company (NBC) 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. 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 (GE). 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 (RCA). At the time the NBC chimes were being developed, GE was still RCA's largest shareholder and also held 30% of NBC's stock. As part of an antitrust case settlement, in late 1932 GE agreed to relinquish its RCA and NBC holdings. Fifty-four years later, RCA was repurchased and made defunct by GE, which rechristened the RCA Building to the "GE Building", and later the "Comcast Building" after GE divested itself of NBC. The small handheld chimes commonly used when the NBC chime sequence was being developed had only four tones: G, F, C and E. 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: WSB in Atlanta, Georgia claims it was the first station to sound a musical identification at the end of programs, using a four-bar xylophone given to station manager Lambdin Kay by a performer, Nell Pendly. A three note signature, E-G-C, was developed, based on the first three notes from the chorus of the World War One classic "Over There". WHAS in Louisville, Kentucky. Station manager Credo Fitch Harris, who wrote in his memoir "what devil put the idea in my head to begin with, may never be known", in 1922 had eight metal chime bars constructed so that he could play — "with fear and trembling, lest the do-dad I struck with hit the wrong thing" — the chorus of "My Old Kentucky Home" at station sign-offs. KFI in Los Angeles, California. The caption on a 1923 photograph of the station's studio mentioned the "electric chimes which open and close the program".