Twenty Years of the Thunderclaps

And Dundas did BBC World 97 as well.

Here's the News 24 97 package.
https://mega.nz/#F!aPAHECrT!B1hjINxVBmhGAPxBM20WQg

He didn't, it was Joe Glassman of Hum Music, whether or not Dundas was involved with them and provided some creative direction or not I don't know.

Do you have any samples by any chance?

Just to clear up who composed what:

Most BBC News themes before 1999: George Fenton
BBC World Service Television News 1993: David Dundas
BBC World 1995: Mike Rigg
BBC World 1997: Joe Glassman
BBC News 24: flags theme by Dave Hewson, Alan Coates & Kim Goody / most back-half hour programmes: Chris Blackwell

Hewson doing BBC? Wow, wasn't expecting that.

Also don't forget the work Hewson did for the BBC in 2008 with the BBC Arabic relaunch stuff! A little favourite of mine in all of the BBC News Themes since 1999.

I’ve put that up in the BBC News index in Requests.

George Fenton's themes were dramatic and orchestral, even the short but punchy theme used from 1981 to 1988 (the so-called "Chinese Lantern" era). I had a clean version of the theme for many years but stupidly saved over it by mistake

I liked George Fenton's BBC Breakfast Time theme of 1986-1989, later revised for the launch of Breakfast News in 1989. Very good theme in my opinion. Shame they butchered it in April 1993.

Perhaps it's my age but I still love the 93-99 theme music and look and I would have loved to have seen that develop over the years rather than the David Lowe stuff.

The David Lowe stuff is very good - don't get me wrong. For me, the 10-second countdown, ident, and theme tune for the standard bulletins from 99-02 (I think) was the best iteration of the David Lowe era - indeed, being the sad TV Forum freak that I am, the theme tune for these bulletins are my ring tone on my phone.

The worst iteration of it was the News 24 bulletin theme tune between 99 and 03 (the one with the elephant-sounding descending trumpet noise at the start of the tune).

And am I alone in thinking that the countdown is not as good as everything else thinks it is?

The real butchering was the very short lived version used from 1997-2000 when it was rebranded out of the virtual set and into what you might call “proto-Breakfast” (though still called “Breakfast News” at that point). Strange titles with a kite came with it too. Last BBC One/Two national bulletin to get a rebrand before the pips/thunderclaps came in, I think.