Cacophony

Remember all those years ago, when local news programs actually had opening titles? Cheesy footage of camera men out in the streets, fuzzy film animation of the station logo chroma-keyed in, perhaps using state of the art Scanimate animation? Still photos of the news team? Those days are over. Now a news opening is only a few seconds, cut down to the bare minimum to squeeze in more "fork in the eye" stories and commercials.
For some bizarre reason, I have TV news themes littering my hard disk, so let's take a look at one particular station and how its theme has changed over a decade.
In what may be a standing record, Washington's WRC-TV 11pm news theme was a whopping 35 seconds long (inclusive of the station ID) in 1982.
The cheesy disco-era themes gave way to more orchestrated versions in the late 80s and early 90s, then made a swift turn toward, well, stock music crap in the mid 90s.
By 1994, the theme music for WRC news broadcasts was down to a pointless five seconds. It's been there ever since.

WRC News Themes Retrospective 1981-1994 [3:50]

More WRC-TV News Themes

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January 19, 2005 Remember all those years ago, when local news programs actually had opening titles? Cheesy footage of camera men out in the streets, fuzzy film animation of the station logo chroma-keyed in, perhaps using state of the art Scanimate animation? Still photos of the news team? Those days are over. Now a news opening is only a few seconds, cut down to the bare minimum to squeeze in more "fork in the eye" stories and commercials. For some bizarre reason, I have TV news themes littering my hard disk, so let's take a look at one particular station and how its theme has changed over a decade. In what may be a standing record, Washington's WRC-TV 11pm news theme was a whopping 35 seconds long (inclusive of the station ID) in 1982. The cheesy disco-era themes gave way to more orchestrated versions in the late 80s and early 90s, then made a swift turn toward, well, stock music crap in the mid 90s. By 1994, the theme music for WRC news broadcasts was down to a pointless five seconds. It's been there ever since. WRC News Themes Retrospective 1981-1994 [3:50] More WRC-TV News Themes Channel 4 News 1986 Live at Five 1989 News 4 at 6 close 1989 News 4 at 11 close 1989 News 4 at 6 open 1989 News 4 at 6 open 1990 News 4 at 6 close 1990 News 4 at 11 open 1989 News 4 at 11 open 1990 News 4 at 11 open 1990 (#1 station tag) News 4 at 11 close 1990 News 4 gospel promo News 4 Live at Five close 1989 News 4 Live at Five close 1990 News 4 Live at Five open 1990 News 4 Today We Work Well Together promo 1 We Work Well Together promo 2 WRC Nighttime Logo permalink	This site is an archive of sound. Snippets and samples of sounds collected over the years for no apparently good reason. It goes without saying that some - or most - of the sounds here are from sources that were originally copyrighted, so they are presented here only for personal use, as a historic record of popular culture in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. rss 2.0 Collections WAVA Jingles The More You Know	View complete archive Recent Additions - All Themes Considered - Ringtones: My Collection - A West Wing Christmastime - You’ve Got Post - Something for Everyone on WETA - PBS Pledge Music - Sister Kate and The Nutt House - Designing Women and Teddy Z - Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow - Are You Being Served, Sir? - BBC One (2006) - Three’s a Crowd - BBC 1 Moving Idents - C’mon Home! - The More You Know - WRC-TV News Themes - Doctor in Distress - The Library in Alexandria - Proud as a Peacock - Hi, I’m Madonna The files presented here are for personal use only. This site is intended as a historic record of popular media and culture, and as such is not intended to infringe upon any copyrights which may be in force on these audio and video snippets.