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CNN Special Reports
CNN Special: Where Have All the Theme Songs Gone? Aired 11p-12a ET
Aired July 30, 2021 - 23:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[23:00:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(PIANO PLAYING)
(MUSIC PLAYING)
CHRISTOPHER KNIGHT, "THE BRADY BUNCH" ACTOR: (SINGING)
(MUSIC PLAYING)
DON LEMON, CNN HOST: Bring back the theme song.
FRAN DRESCHER, "THE NANNY" ACTRESS AND CREATOR: Yeah!
(MUSIC PLAYING)
DRESCHER: (SINGING)
LEMON: (SINGING)
(LAUGHTER)
ROBERT THOMPSON, MEDIA HISTORIAN, SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY: UNKNOWN (voice- over): Television theme songs became almost part of the folk music of a nation.
LEMON: (SINGING)
GARY PORTNOY, CO-CREATOR AND PERFORMER, CHEERS THEME SONG: (SINGING)
(MUSIC PLAYING)
THOMPSON: We don't do ourselves any favors by underestimating the cultural penetration that these little songs had in this culture.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
KURT FARQUHAR, THEME SONGS CREATOR: (SINGING).
(MUSIC PLAYING)
LEMON: Whatever happened to the TV theme song?
(MUSIC PLAYING)
LEMON: (SINGING)
PORTNOY: (SINGING)
(MUSIC PLAYING)
LEMON: Outside of your own songs, what's your favorite team theme?
PORTNOY: Ever?
LEMON: Ever.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
PORTNOY: I loved "Green Acres" because I grew up in a town called "Green Acres."
(MUSIC PLAYING)
LEMON: (SINGING)
PORTNOY: (SINGING)
(MUSIC PLAYING)
PORTNOY: (SINGING)
LEMON: (SINGING)
LEMON: Outside of your own amazing show, which I love, I have to say that, what is your favorite TV theme song?
DRESCHER: "The Brady Bunch."
(MUSIC PLAYING)
DRESCHER: Because I like when the song tells the story of the series and I was very influenced with that growing up.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
KNIGHT: "Addams Family."
(MUSIC PLAYING)
LEMON: (SINGING)
KNIGHT: Spooky and ooky.
LEMON (voice-over): (SINGING)
KNIGHT: How do you spell ooky?
(MUSIC PLAYING)
LEMON (voice-over): Here is the biggest question. Whatever happened to the theme song?
KNIGHT: You know, it's a good -- it's a good question.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
THOMPSON: There was a sense that those shows that came out in the 60s and the 70s, everybody knew them as well as you would know "Happy Birthday" or "Mary Had a Little Lamb."
(MUSIC PLAYING)
THOMPSON: those four notes would immediately cause that almost Pavlovian knee-jerk reaction.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
THOMPSON (voice-over): Everybody knew how Gilligan got on to that island.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
THOMPSON (voice-over): Because they had heard the song over and over again.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
THOMPSON: We don't do ourselves any favor by underestimating the cultural penetration that these little songs had in this culture.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
PORTNOY: When "Cheers" started, nobody was watching.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
[23:05:00]
(MUSIC PLAYING)
PORTNOY (voice-over): But fortunately there was a lot of interest in the song.
LEMON (voice-over): What happened?
PORTNOY (voice-over): Judy Hart-Angelo was a friend of mine for a number of years. We wrote this song called "My Kind of People."
LEMON (voice-over): Let's hear it.
PORTNOY: (SINGING)
Here is the really bad part --
(SINGING)
So -- LEMON: Wait, I liked it.
PORTNOY: You liked it?
(LAUGHTER)
PORTNOY: Okay. Well, we sent it and they turned it down. And we said, can we write you another one? And they said, yes. So we wrote this song called "Another Day."
(SINGING)
They liked it. But they turned it down. So we went from zippity, zippity, zippity (ph), and we crossed the line into total melancholy.
LEMON (voice-over): Yeah.
PORTNOY: But at that point, honestly, we thought it was over.
LEMON (voice-over): Yeah.
PORTNOY: We felt it just -- the air was going out of the tire and we were never going to get it, so I sat down and I literally just plunking.
(SINGING)
And we started writing words.
LEMON (voice-over): Ah-huh.
PORTNOY: The words that we wrote were --
(SINGING)
So, we finished it and they said, we really like this, but you've got to change those words at the top. So we booked studio time before we ever even wrote it, we were like, this thing --
(LAUGHTER)
LEMON: You can say the bad word. You said (bleep).
PORTNOY: Because I can't take it anymore. So I remember writing in a cab going down to the recording studio, working on "making your way in the world today." You know, I remember. And I don't think we ever actually played the whole song until we got into the studio to get something -- to get something back for them.
(SINGING)
(MUSIC PLAYING)
PORTNOY: And we sent it out and they said, yes.
(LAUGHTER)
LEMON: And you said --
PORTNOY: Oh (bleep).
(LAUGHTER)
(MUSIC PLAYING)
LEMON: Rumor is that you were singing the song on the set and someone heard you and said, why don't the kids sing the song? Is that true or not?
(MUSIC PLAYING)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[23:10:00]
LARRY KING, TV HOST (voice-over): Why do we watch things over that we love?
MARY TYLER MOORE, ACTRESS: It represents a hopeful time in our past. Life seemed simpler, less threatening. There was probably something just as evil but it didn't seem like it was all coming at us at once as it does now.
KING (voice-over): Also, they hold up, don't they?
MOORE (voice-over): I think they do except for the hairdos.
KING: How do you explain to yourself the success of "Seinfeld"?
JERRY SEINFELD, ACTOR: It's like this miracle thing. I don't like a joke. If you add or subtract one word, it ruins the whole thing. This is like a perfect little joke, these four people, the way we mesh.
KING (voice-over): You couldn't have written it out that then.
SEINFELD (voice-over): No, a lot of luck and a lot of hard work.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
THOMPSON: Many people say that the first hit television show was the "Texaco Star Theater." And it also was probably the first theme song that immediately could be something that everybody was able to sing. The theme song was really a commercial. It was sponsored by Texaco Oil Corporation. And the entire theme song is four gas station attendants that do a chorus line and sing the theme song in full gas station attendant uniform.
And by the way, never mention the star of the show once. The theme song, once it was liberated from its sales obligation, was able to move into more rich, artistic, and dramatic territory.
(MUSIC PLAYING) LEMON: You have one of the most iconic TV theme songs ever. Could you have imagined that when you were a little kid and they cast you in this role?
[23:15:02]
KNIGHT: No, not even close.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
KNIGHT: All I know is that when asked to sing, I was petrified, because I'm that guy, you know, at a birthday party that can screw up "Happy Birthday."
LEMON: Rumor is that you were singing the song on the set and someone came up with the idea, someone heard you and said, why don't the kids sing the song? Is that true or not?
KNIGHT: Maybe. I haven't heard that rumor. If I was there, I wouldn't have been the one singing the song.
LEMON (voice-over): Do you remember anything from the recording session?
KNIGHT: All of a sudden they're dragging me into a studio and I know what I have to deliver. Not much. It's just amazing what my singing does to people's faces. So I try not to do it much.
THOMPSON: A lot more people could recite the theme song from "The Brady Bunch" than could recite that poem that's on the bottom of the Statue of Liberty.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
THOMPSON: Is it because these songs were so brilliant? And I think in their own way, they were. But is it because they were written by the greatest composers of all time? In most cases, no.
Sherwood Schwartz was a comedy guy. He wrote two of the most classic of all time TV theme songs, "The Brady Bunch" and "Gilligan's Island."
(MUSIC PLAYING)
THOMPSON: He wrote those songs because he needed them to serve a purpose, to give us the entire back story of those shows.
(MUSIC PLAYING
THOMPSON: The detail is so basic and specific.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
THOMPSON: The simplicity is almost like modern architecture that decided it was going to expose everything it was. You see the pipes, you see the support beams.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
THOMPSON: The (INAUDIBLE) level of TV theme song.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
THOMPSON: And "The Brady Bunch" just does it. Here is the story, once upon a time, of a lovely lady who is bringing up three very lovely girls. All of them had hair of gold, goldilocks. I mean, this goes deep into our medieval way of telling stories.
And the fact that it was kind of hip back then. It was a blended family when most of TV was mom, dad, in a first time heterosexual relationship, in a suburban single family dwelling with their own biological kids.
We were at least beginning to explore that families could love each other and not necessarily fall into that very old-fashioned notion of the American family.
LEMON: Can you please sing it for us?
KNIGHT: (SINGING)
(MUSIC PLAYING)
KNIGHT: By the way, that's why she should never leave the curls behind and always had a headache.
KNIGHT: (SINGING)
(MUSIC PLAYING)
LEMON: Does it make you cringe or do you still love it?
KNIGHT: Can't cringe.
(LAUGHTER)
KNIGHT: It's an honor. It's an honor. I mean, who could have predicted this? Having been part of this thing that affects everybody, it only generates camaraderie and brotherhood, because that's really what I feel I get from it.
THOMPSON: We knew they were silly. That whole 60s, 70s television era, we approach with a loving sense of disdain. In the 1980s, television started coming (ph) attitude. We can do shows like "Cheers" and the old idea of "The Brady Bunch" theme song seemed positively part of that old school thing.
[23:20:00]
THOMPSON: So the only reason we get an expository theme song, an old- fashioned theme song, is when it's done tongue in cheek. "The Nanny" is a great example.
(MUSIC PLAYING) THOMPSON: It aggressively went back to a 60s-style thing.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
LEMON: You get the show, they said deal, and then when do you say, okay, now, theme song?
DRESCHER: When you make a pilot, we don't know if it's ever going to air. They don't spend money on an opening title.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BUD BUNDY, ACTOR, "MARRIED WITH CHILDREN": Great news, everybody. It's official.
UNKNOWN (voice-over): Why do you think this show worked?
ED O'NEILL, ACTOR, "MARRIED WITH CHILDREN": I'm not really sure. If I knew that, I would be doing my second one.
KATEY SAGAL, ACTRESS, "MARRIED WITH CHILDREN: I thought you were beautiful.
O'NEILL: Come on, Peg, you used to diaper his face.
CHRISTINA APPLEGATE, ACTRESS, "MARRIED WITH CHILDREN": We had very faithful viewers. They'll stick with us as long as we keep doing it.
PIERS MORGAN, TV HOST: "Frasier" was like "Cheers." They were just phenomenal shows, (INAUDIBLE) popular, global shows. You get inkling early on, this is going to be huge, and this is going to change my life.
KELSEY GRAMMER, ACTRESS, "FRAZIER": You do have a sense there is a beauty about releasing it to the public, to saying, okay, here it is, love it or hate it, we did our best.
[23:25:00]
(MUSIC PLAYING)
DRESCHER: (SINGING)
LEMON: (SINGING)
LEMON: What was the spark for the show?
DRESCHER: It was when I was in London with my girlfriend (INAUDIBLE), her and her husband were busy working. And so I ended up hanging out with their little daughter. And I'm (INAUDIBLE) a roll over London. And the kid suddenly says, oh, my Fran, my new shoes are hurting me. And I'm thinking, what the hell is she telling me for? So I told to just step on the backs of them.
And she said, won't that break them? And I said, break them in! And I could not get this relationship out of my head because I wasn't really telling her what was good for her like a normal caregiver. I was telling her what was good for me. And so the wheels were turning in my head, what do you think about a spin on the sound of music, only instead of Julie Andrews, I come to the door?
Are you kidding? I practically raised my sister's two kids when she was still (INAUDIBLE).
LEMON: You get the show, they said, deal. And then when do you say, okay, now theme song?
DRESCHER: We made the pilot. Do you have a pen?
In fact, they didn't even give us enough money to make a full pilot. We insisted on doing the whole script. And we borrowed sets and had a very small budget.
UNKNOWN: All right, your hired, but on a trial basis.
DRESCHER: When the show got picked up, they said, now you need to come up with an incredible opening title. And that was when I said, let's get Ann Hampton Callaway to write it.
LEMON: Ann Hampton Callaway was a singer and the songwriter, right?
DRESCHER: Yes. A friend of mine took me to a club and there was Ann Hampton Callaway singing. And I had it in my head that if I ever had a show of my own, I was going to ask her to write the theme song.
LEMON: Did you help with the lyrics or was it all her?
DRESCHER: We spoon-fed her all of the details about the characters' journey. We described her as the flashy girl from flushing. We said she is the lady in red when everybody else is wearing tan. She made it into a song, added a lot to it, and came up with an incredibly catchy and very New York, almost jazzy melody.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
LEMON: When you heard it at first, did you know as soon as you heard it?
DRESCHER: Yes, absolutely.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
DRESCHER: She did a marvelous job. I mean, it became one of the most significant opening title songs of the -- certainly the 90s, if not in all of television.
LEMON: In all of television, Fran. Don't downplay or underestimate that theme song.
(LAUGHTER)
(MUSIC PLAYING)
LEMON: The acting is great. The characters are amazing.
DRESCHER: Thank you.
LEMON: But it would not have been the same without the theme song, am I wrong?
DRESCHER: I agree, I agree.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
LEMON: HBO Max streaming -- you ran for six successful seasons and you are running now in perpetuity, forever, and to eternity. How do you feel about that?
(LAUGHTER)
DRESCHER: To see millions of people all over the world, to this day, still love it, it just makes my heart sing.
You like? I borrowed it from my cousin, Miss Long Island, 1989.
Every single week, for six years, and actually for, you know, 22 more after that, everybody saw what was really the pilot episode.
Mom, pack my things, he wants me back!
UNKNOWN: Smile!
(LAUGHTER)
THOMPSON: In the 80s, some people got worried that, oh, if we spent too much on the television theme song, people might switch the channel.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
DRESCHER: Truth be told, they tend to underestimate the viewer because with quality comes a loyalty.
UNKNOWN: Is that like a (INAUDIBLE)?
DRESCHER: Yes, but they cost a lot more.
(LAUGHTER)
THOMPSON: It is few and far between, that throughout the 80s and 90s and into the new century, we had many of those old-fashioned things. And when saw them, they were retro homage to those old days.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
[23:30:00]
THOMPSON: Like the opening of "The Sopranos." That song, of course, had already existed. But what accompanies that is the great American immigrant story, those four scenes where each scene, the houses get further apart, more greenery in between and bigger, until Tony arrives in his palatial exuberant thing.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
THOMPSON: There are a couple of them that have no words, completely instrumental.
"Law and Order" is an example where you simply have to have something playing while you show who is starring in this thing. That was important because they kept changing their cast. "The Twilight Zone" is the same thing. And also four notes, doo-doo-doo-doo.
You grow up next door to somebody in a tiny little town in South Dakota, and then when you're 30, you go to Paris and you sit down in the cafe and there is the person that you grew up next door in your small town in South Dakota. You could say, what is the likelihood or the odds of this? Or you could go, doo-doo-doo-doo, and that says everything.
Those theme songs transcended not only the shows that they were associated with. They transcended music itself. They became part of the language.
KNIGHT: "My Favorite Martian," "My Three Sons," "Curb Your Enthusiasm," these songs don't have any lyrics but they set up the tone of the show immediately.
"The Outer Limits" or "Twilight Zone," "Mission Impossible," "Hawaii Five-O," it's amazing how much this stuff has influenced us.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
FARQUHAR: Before I was writing scores, you would see a black show, but you wouldn't really hear a black show.
LEMON: Ah.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[23:35:00]
(MUSIC PLAYING)
UNKNOWN (voice-over): Did you have doubts about "All in the Family" being a success?
UNKNOWN (voice-over): I just hoped for the best.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
UNKNOWN: I remembered Sherman from "Purlie," when he was singing and dancing and was one of the most unique actors on the stage.
SHERMAN HEMSLEY, ACTOR AND MUSICIAN (via telephone): The first time I went to the reading, they handed me the script and I had no idea. See, I was new in town, I didn't know anybody. I was scared to death. But there was something about him. When I looked in his eyes, he put me at ease.
UNKNOWN: How long before there was a spinoff?
HEMSLEY (via telephone): I think it was the third episode, they started talking about it.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
LEMON: (SINGING)
(MUSIC PLAYING)
THOMPSON: My favorite television theme song would have to "The Jeffersons."
(MUSIC PLAYING)
THOMPSON: The performance.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
THOMSON: The gospel choir.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
THOMPSON: The pronunciation of "deluxe."
(MUSIC PLAYING)
THOMPSON: In just the right place in the theme song to make it work.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
LEMON (voice-over): You were homeless?
FARQUHAR: Yes. Living on the streets of Los Angeles. Walking up and down Melrose.
LEMON: What brought you out of that?
FARQUHAR: I ended up getting a record deal with Modern Records.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
FARQUHAR: We put out a single, did okay, nothing big. But the single that we did, "Livin' Large" --
(MUSIC PLAYING)
FARQUHAR: -- was chosen as the title for a TV show. And after that, I started trying more TV shows.
(MUSIC PLAYING) FARQUHAR: And the amazing thing of being homeless will make you figure out what your priorities are. One of the priorities had to be getting some food and start to eat.
LEMON (voice-over): You have scored more prime time television series than any other Black composer ever.
FARQUHAR: I've just been fortunate to get in at a time when there was a renaissance of black TV shows back in the 90s.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
FARQUHAR: (SINGING)
That was really a magical theme song. I co-wrote it with the star of the show, Brandy.
UNKNOWN: It came from the music. They saw my personality and my music and they offered me the part.
FARQUHAR: Originally, the way it went, the producers came to me and said, hey, you're doing the score but we want you to do a theme song.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
FARQUHAR: And a day or two later, they called me up and said, hey, a little change, Brandy is going to do the theme song with you.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
FARQUHAR: I said, oh, okay, well, we'll do that. And literally, they put us together like a day or two later. And she came over to my place and she sang me this idea.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
FARQUHAR: I said, hold it, hold it, wait here. I had written a music, she had written lyrics, and all of it worked together immediately.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
LEMON: So what would you call that?
FARQUHAR: I would call that lucky as heck.
(SINGING)
(MUSIC PLAYING)
FARQUHAR: A fun thing. We recorded it with the stars of the show, with Tia and Tamera Mowry.
UNKNOWN: You know Tia and I sang it. A lot of people don't know that.
[23:39:59]
UNKNOWN: So in the beginning, we're lip syncing and we're like dancing to the theme song. But we actually are singing it.
FARQUHAR: And it was such fun, they wanted to sing the song.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
FARQUHAR: It was just exciting.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
FARQUHAR: (SINGING)
(LAUGHTER)
FARQUHAR: That's about as much as I got.
(LAUGHTER)
FARQUHAR: As you can see, I'm not the singer in this band.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
FARQUHAR: I just loved that show, everything about it.
UNKNOWN: We tried our best when it came to not objectifying the perception of Black women and our own struggles.
FARQUHAR: To say there's going to be a story about young Black women --
UNKNOWN: We were a show that was talking about the relationship between --
UNKNOWN: Women.
UNKNOWN: Women.
UNKNOWN: Yes.
UNKNOWN: And between Black women --
UNKNOWN: Black women.
UNKNOWN: -- and our support and love of each other.
FARQUHAR: And their excitement in life and going through life and telling it in a real story. I just thought that was an amazing idea.
LEMON: Is there anything that you need to know when you're writing a particular song?
FARQUHAR: You need to know what the characters are like. You need to know the length of the theme song. You don't want to write a three- minute song and edit it down.
UNKNOWN: (INAUDIBLE) little happy, too? THOMPSON: It is true that many TV theme songs have made it into the great American songbook. But the basic theme song actually really needs to stick to, in the old days, maybe 90 seconds, but 60 seconds maybe when it gets introduced, then it gets cut shorter as people get to know it.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
THOMPSON: You spent your first season of "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" and you do the whole song.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
THOMPSON: For one thing, you needed that first season because people don't have the whole story.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
THOMPSON: The back story theme song, theme song as the in the beginning there was, you know, this, the fresh prince, this is the story, all about how my life got turned upside down.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
THOMPSON: How this guy from West Philadelphia is now in this rich Bel- Air neighborhood.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
THOMPSON: By the second and third season, you don't need to be giving the entire song. So it becomes completely tempting and within the best interests of everybody involved to start chopping that thing off, because then you can use that to put more promotions for whatever is on next, you can sell more advertising.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
THOMPSON: There's a long version of that that very few people know, the whole thing.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
THOMPSON: Both "Cheers" and "Friends" are sort of the last gasps of a network television theme song as a popular hit.
LEMON: Whatever to the TV theme songs?
DRESCHER: Business happened.
PORTNOY: I quit.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[23:45:00] UNKNOWN: Our job is to come up with the funniest thing all day long. The writing is so good.
UNKNOWN: It does nothing better than having the audience left.
UNKNOWN: There are no ego trips at all.
UNKNOWN: That's why you're talking to six people that wouldn't go away.
UNKNOWN: You are wrong.
UNKNOWN: You guys really are friends.
UNKNOWN: Yeah.
UNKNOWN: We know how lucky we are.
THOMPSON: Some of these theme songs are fun. We remember them. They become iconic. But a pretty good number of theme songs that actually made it into top 40 regular radio play.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
THOMPSON: And probably the greatest example would be "Friends."
(MUSIC PLAYING)
THOMPSON: Life always stuck in second gear, the fact that you're really getting too old for this, but things haven't really kicked in yet. That's really what "Friends" was about, that they were still kind of stuck in certain kind of arrested development. It's not a back story theme song. It's not here's the story of how they met. It's a story about they feel.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
MARTA KAUFFMAN, CO-CREATOR, "FRIENDS": The music was composed by my ex-husband. We went through a couple of drafts. But it was not a difficult process. When things are right, they sort of right themselves.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
THE REMBRANDTS, THEME SONG PERFORMER, "FRIENDS": We got the offer on a Wednesday, went over the arrangement on a Thursday with the music director, Michael Skloff, cut the song on a Saturday, and it aired the following Thursday.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
KEVIN BRIGHT, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, "FRIENDS": I remember getting in my car and driving away from Warner Brothers one day and I just turned on the radio.
(MUSIC PLAYING) BRIGHT: And there was the theme song. And that to me was, wow, this is big, this is huge.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
THOMPSON: Both "Cheers" and "Friends" sort of the last gasps of a network television theme song as a popular hit.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
LEMON: Whatever happened to the theme song?
KNIGHT: You know, it's a good question.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
PORTNOY: I know. It's a crime.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
LEMON: Why aren't there catchy theme songs like "The Nanny" anymore? What happened?
CRESCHER: I think that business happened.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
FARQUHAR: They needed more space. I know where we can get 60 seconds right now. I know where we can get 55 seconds. We'll take this down to five.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
PORTNOY: That happened on a lot of shows, yeah. And why?
[23:50:00]
PORTNOY: Advertising.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
LEMON: The shows weren't longer. It was the commercial breaks that were longer.
PORTNOY: Oh, absolutely. No, they didn't give it to the show.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
THOMPSON: Every second you spend on opening theme song, is a second you can't be spending on the content itself. No problem. But it's also a second you can't be selling to advertisers. Big problem.
UNKNOWN: When did you start baking from scratch?
UNKNOWN: It's not scratch, mom. It's new Pillsbury Plus.
LEMON: They kept shortening the theme song, right, from like a minute and a minute to 45 to 30 seconds to make more room for commercials.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
LEMON: Have you experienced that? Is that an issue for you?
FARQUHAR: Yes, I've experienced it. Is it an issue for me? No. I mean, it's a part of reality. You only have five seconds. Imagine (INAUDIBLE) five seconds. It is just -- you get (INAUDIBLE).
(LAUGHTER)
(MUSIC PLAYING)
PORTNOY: A lot of people think it happened with streaming, with cable. But I remember when it happened because, I remember, back in the 80s, the first time somebody gave Judy Hart-Angelo and myself a script and said, give us 45 seconds instead of 60. Okay. And not too long thereafter, somebody said, give us 30 and 20 and 10.
And, you know, there are people who can -- who can do that, like, orchestraters, arrangers. I'm a songwriter. I can't express myself in 10 seconds. I don't want to. So, I quit.
FARQUHAR: As a composer and as a person, a part of the whole TV-show- making experience, trust me, a lot of thought goes into those theme songs.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
FARQUHAR: I know of a lot of people that relate to their TV show through its theme song. So, why give that away?
KNIGHT: Right now, there is so much to watch. There isn't, really, one thing that everybody can rally around.
THOMPSON: We spent the first 80 years of the 20th century building up this unbelievable consensus audience. And then we spend the last two decades of the 20th century and all of the 21st century breaking that up into a million little pieces. First with cable and now with streaming where there is infinite number of varieties.
One can argue that streaming has been a great friend of the theme song and that streaming allows young people to discover and watch multiple episodes of "Fresh Prince," of "I Love Lucy," of any of this stuff they may not have access to before. But the bad thing is, they may decide to watch these things but they're given the effortless opportunity to skip the theme song.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
FARQUHAR: You know, I don't think it's getting the opportunity to get engrained in people's head and be totally linked with the show as they were in the past.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
LEMON: I mean, "The Brady Bunch" is one of the most popular theme songs ever. It's from the 1970s. It keeps getting reintroduced to new generations and new audiences every single day.
KNIGHT: The theme song is catchy, popular at the time, but it has only grown more. So, these 50 years later, you can still remember it because it's that simple.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
UNKNOWN: Honey, are you gorgeous? You look just like a virgin.
UNKNOWN: You know, I brought you some crackers for your morning sickness.
(LAUGHTER)
DRESCHER: You know, now that the show is having this incredible moment again since it's been on a streaming platform, people are really appreciating the facets of it that made it so wonderful. And I think that they're digesting it in a whole, new way. And that starts with the opening titles, the theme song, the animation, and goes all the way through.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
LEMON: There's certain nostalgia, I think, for TV themes. Do you think that there will be a renaissance? Do you think it will come back?
PORTNOY: Well, I do, only because I think everything that goes around comes around.
KNIGHT: Everything seems to cycle, eventually. Maybe we're on a rather extended orbit on this and maybe it will come back.
LEMON: Bring back the theme song! Bring back the theme song!
DRESCHER: Yeah.
LEMON: We're on a mission, Fran.
(LAUGHTER)
LEMON: Okay, so, one last thing. I have this little show called "Don Lemon Tonight."
PORTNOY: Yes.
LEMON: Can you write me a theme song?
PORTNOY: Oh, my god. What do you have in mind?
LEMON: I don't know.
[23:55:00]
PORTNOY: (SINGING)
I like the "deal with the truth."
LEMON: Yeah. That was it. That's it. That's your 20 seconds. I know you're not an arranger.
PORTNOY: I need 60, Don.
(MUSIC PLAYING)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
