Jim Long, who wore many hats in his five-decade career in the broadcast and entertainment industry, has died. He was a record producer, DJ and the creator of a number of entertainment companies in Los Angeles, Dallas and Nashville.
Timothy John Moynihan started his career when he was 18 at WDEW in Westfield, MA. Jim Long took his professional name from his grandfather.
He was 24 years old when, along with composer Tom Merriman, he co-founded TM Companies. Other businesses he developed were FirstCom, a production music company. He also had a hand in developing CrucialMusic, an internet music licensing service.
He is credited with creating “shotgun” jingle formats, developing 24/7 automated radio station programming and offering the first production music library on compact disc.
The Dallas Morning News once reported in its Business Section that “Just about anything you hear on a radio – except the news, the time, and the temperature – could have first been a product of Jim Long’s imagination.”
Long died May 30th at his home in Pacific Palisades, CA. He was recovering from knee surgery and died unexpectedly from a pulmonary embolism. Jim Long was 79.
