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Have we seen the last of the TV theme song?

TV themes, from The Beverly Hillbillies to The Brady Bunch to Cheers to Friends, conjure up memories of cozy nights, childhood bliss and a universal nostalgia for bygone days. But today, show themes are doing a fast fade as the networks crunch their programming budgets.

Are they about to join the variety hour in the TV graveyard?

"It's a rarity today," TV historian Tim Brooks said of the catchy, tuneful opening. "It's kind of like the Broadway musical producing hit songs - it just doesn't do that anymore."

Back in the day, even into the '90s, shows usually had a "main title," a 40- to 60-second opening montage that introduced the cast and was often set to music written by a composer, said Jon Burlingame, author of TV's Biggest Hits, a history of themes.

But now many sitcoms and one-hour dramas dive straight into the action, sometimes flashing the show's title or logo at various points throughout an episode.

[...]

Tara Ariano, co-founder of the blog Television Without Pity, isn't sweating it. She thinks a "full-on opening credit (and) theme song is kind of a waste, from a business perspective."

"The networks sort of assume we watch the show, so we don't need to have the premise explained to us each week. ... In the era of the DVR, half the people watching the show are just fast-forwarding that anyway," she said.

Depends on the show and the theme. I never skip past the "Sopranos" theme song because it's so damn catchy, and because you miss who's in and not in that particular episode if you do. Surely people still watch the "Simpsons" credits to see what variations they have in it. I see no reason why a little creativity and thinking outside the box can't revive this concept in the way that much of episodic TV itself has been revived. I wouldn't go writing the theme song obituary just yet.

Did you know, by the way, that the theme song to "Cheers" had more than one verse? It got a fair amount of airplay on the radio back in the early 80s. Again, I don't see any reason why that could never reoccur. What do you think?

Posted by Charles Kuffner on October 21, 2006 to TV and movies | TrackBack