BBC News - The Music

Still think these were the best news themes ever...

They were indeed fantastic, Moz. I can never really make my mind up as to which was better... the original versions or the virtual era remixes? I have fond memories from childhood of both, so it's quite hard to decide. In particular, I liked the Six and Nine themes in both eras. Although I can recall the white clockface design of the One titles from the late 80s (it takes me right back to sitting on the brown rug in front of my grandma's TV watching programmes like Playbus/days, the One O'Clock News, Going For Gold and Neighbours!) however I much preferred the virtual era version of the One's music. That version reminds me of sitting with my grandpa while he ate his "meal on wheels". Funny how signature tunes can evoke such vivid memories.

Anyway, I'd like to add two more themes from the same period:

On The Record:


Newsnight:

(I've always thought that was the best version of the Newsnight music. I've never been keen on the recent remixes, none of them have the authority of that old one).

I've tried to search for the 1993 to 1999 theme cuts everywhere with no result. All sites that seemed to have the sites had copyright claims from Untied [sic] Artists and had deleted the audio files. Has anybody got those stored, especially the 9 o'clock headline bed? PM me, thanks.

Oh i agree definitely. I think i preferred the 93 remixes overall, but i do prefer that version of the 9 O'Clock theme. They've aged so well too. I think you could use them now.

Amazing how the music has aged so well, yet the graphics and general looks have aged horribly. Especially the 1 O'Clock version. I still don't understand why they bothered having entirely different looks for each news bulletin.

I think that was just the done thing back then. ITN was exactly the same; each and every programme had its own distinctive branding. It was only in the mid-1990s that broadcasters became obsessed by image and started branding everything the same. It started with BBC News in 1993 and had spread to ITN by 1995. I must say I prefer individual looks. What I want a news broadcast to look like at lunchtime is totally different to late evening.

I agree to a certain extent. I think that while having the completely different looks and graphics packages that these 1980s bulletins had is a mistake, I think a generic set with different lighting for different times of the day would work very well. Say orange for morning, red at lunchtime, blue at night. Something along those lines. Perhaps have generic graphics too but match the colours of graphics to the time of day too. In fact thinking about it, i really am just describing the 1993 look aren't I?

There's something very 1993 about the new sets at NBH, so who knows!

Breaking news!

Davids site has been updated with a) The lovely Olympic close mix b) Sportsday and c).... THIS

http://www.davidlowe.co.uk/members

Woooooow!

I know it says '2012 sub mix', but what is that?

I've always liked the Olympic mix, and it sounds so much better without the, what I presume were in-house edits to the track.

Now that is awesome! Really hope that's one of the new mixes for the move to Broadcasting House.

Agree it's an awesome mix. Although the new countdown for W1 is very similar, the rest of the themes are staying the same apart from the odd tweak here and there, so don't get your hopes up!