Greatest News Themes of All Time

Funny how nobody has mentioned the car park of news theme in this thread.

Indeed, there's a good reason for that!

Regarding the 2004 ITV News theme, I didn't particularly like it when it replaced the more orchestral 1999 theme music. Initially I thought it was far too percussive and a bit weak. However, over time I have definitely come to appreciate it a lot more now. I didn't much care for the 2006 reworking of that theme - I thought the original was much better. However, the 2009 theme was horrible and I was very glad when it was finally replaced. The 2013-present suite of themes is far superior. Perhaps only the NAT 2008 music could rival it in modern times.

While watching some of the other examples shown from YouTube, this popped up as a suggested video.

Now, I'm not proposing that it was a good theme tune, but I did chuckle at the complete failure to even attempt to hide the fact that the presenters weren't in the 'newsroom' (which happens to look like the back office of a local weekly paper).

There is an establishing shot of the newsroom, then the presenters/desks pop out of nowhere, before one of the presenters (Richard Baker) magically moves both himself and his desk closer to the camera - all within the same background shot.

I did like the lovely retro BBC1 COLOUR clock.



VR it certainly wasn't. No doubt these guys would have been amazed by later examples such as the 'Multi-storey Car Park of News' . . . which did have a nice theme tune.

The Two Ronnies parodied that:

I always recall there being softer music for GMTV Newshour in the early days (though with the same titles) but I've never found it since

This will always be my favourite ever news theme and titles (I don't think they were even pretending to be a serious news service by this point).

Out of interest, does anyone have any information at all about the BBC News theme music used in the early 1960s? You can hear it on TV Ark - click on the first bulletin under the heading "1960s & 1970s" - it's dated 1963: http://www2.tv-ark.org.uk/news/bbcnews/news_50s.html

I've searched for information about this for years but never found anything. Even a title or composer name would be a step forward!

I've no idea when it was first used or indeed retired - it had certainly been replaced by Peter Hope's music by the late 60s.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Good sample of one of my top 5, Ten Eyewitness News from 1992 - with a strong "natural sound" background in the mix (just uploaded by me):

Can't really hear that theme properly but it kind of reminds me of this:

Problem with it was that the music was utterly tuneless.

It just wasn't a news tune - and also it followed something truly iconic.

Well I disagree - one of my favourite news themes and very memorable. As I said it's a marmite thing.