When George Stephanopolous succeeded Diane Sawyer as anchor of Good Morning America, this theme was launched. This update of the previous theme – also by DreamArtists Studios – is intended to reflect the more newsy direction that GMA has taken. The new theme was accompanied by a new opening format: (1) opening vamp under introductions by the main anchors, (2) main theme under a montage announcing the featured stories, (3) musical build over announcer with visuals of Times Square and (4) bumper into the show. The weekend edition of GMA continues to use the previous theme.

20/20 started using this theme in september 2009. However, the theme was originally used for ABC branding promos starting in 2008. The promo was popular and the network liked the music so much that they asked the composers – DreamArtists Studios – to develop an entire package around it for the ABC newsmagazine.

Focus Earth is a weekly newscast focussing on environmental and energy issues. It is produced by ABC News but not many people are aware of it. That’s because it airs on Discovery’s “Planet Green” channel, which is not available in all parts of the country. The theme is composed by DreamArtists Studios.

This very classy theme debuted in 2007. It’s composed by DreamArtists Studios, which is a New York-based music production house specialized in film and television music. This theme features the ABC News signature. In 2007 Good Morning America expanded to three hours, as NBC’s Today expanded to four. Unlike Today, however, the last hour is not seen on broadcast television, but pnly on the digital news channel ABC News Now.

Primetime Live in its heyday was a successful hard-hitting and investigative live newsmagazine. The program in its “Thursday”-days wasn’t as strong, likely due to the lack of energy anchors Diane Sawyer and Charles Gibson could afford to spend on the show considering their GMA-day jobs. To fix things, ABC appointed a prominent producer, renamed the show and added a whole bunch of anchors. Charles Gibson was dropped as an anchor officially, but continued to contribute to the program. Diane Sawyer does still anchor, rotating with Chris Cuomo, Cynthia McFadden, and John Quiñones. A new theme along with a totally new graphics package was introduced. In 2005 the program dropped the “Live” off of its name, simply now being called Primtime.

From 2001 to 2005 GMA used the popular though not commercially released song “Good Things are Happening” by Bill Deasy as their music in promos for the program. In 2005 they switched to an equally cheerful song, “Good to Go”. The song is sung by country singer Julie Roberts and, by means of warning, it gets stuck in your head very easily.

Nightline underwent drastic changes in 2005 when Ted Koppel retired from the program. First of all, it no longer focused on a single topic. A typical Nightline now has three topics. Secondly, three anchors replaced just one. Terry Moran, Martin Bashir and Cynthia McFadden anchor from studios in Washington and New York. And thirdly, they went a totally different direction with the theme music. It is composed by VideoHelper. I like this theme a lot. We knew Nightline featured hart hitting journalism. Now with so much percussion in the theme, it is hard hitting in the most literal sense of the word!

This is the 2004 open to Good Morning America by VideoHelper, originally composed in 2000 as the theme to World News Tonight. When the theme started being used for GMA, the program had regained much of its momentum that it lost in the late 90′s. Though Charles Gibson left in 2006 to anchor World News, he was not replaced on GMA. A year before he left Robin Roberts was added as co-anchor so the program simply went back to having two anchors. Male personalities were added to the mix when Chris Cuomo and Sam Champion were appointed news anchor and weatherman respectively. GMA, however, is now the first network morning show to have two female primary anchors.

As one of the first veteran anchors, Barbara Walters chose to (semi-)retire in 2004. While she continued to do The View as well as special reports for ABC, she stepped down as anchor of 20/20. ABC’s rising star at the time, Elizabeth Vargas, was promoted to the position. With a new anchor, they also debuted a new theme. It is composed by the L.A.-based music production team Transcenders. That company, which by the way also composed the theme to Friends-spin off Joey, produced an entire music library for use during broadcasts of 20/20.

Despite a rough start for George Stephanopolous, a few years into his stint as moderator of This Week he started finding his ways (and an audience). The graphics and theme for This Week have a distinctly fresh appearance, especially compared to its rival programs. The theme has the ABC News signature.

This is the variation of the ABC News Special Report theme that was occasionally used for ABC’s coverage of the war with Iraq. ABC made a couple of major blunders. On March 19th, the day President Bush’s deadline for Saddam expired, Peter Jennings was AWOL when the war began. He was reportedly at a dinner party. ABC News broke into regular programming later than the competition (some ABC affiliates broke in before the network), first with Chris Wallace anchoring and then a few embarrassing minutes later, Peter Jennings. But the network had told affiliates that their coverage would continue through the 11 pm hour; thus, the late local news would be scrapped. Many stations sent their crews home. A few minutes before 11 pm, however, ABC News decided to wrap up their coverage. They, however, failed to tell affiliates. So when Peter Jennings signed off for the night, affiliates were caught completely off guard. Many were left were with minutes of dead air only to put together a badly produced newscast. That does not happen often!

In 1998 both Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw came out with books that reflected on the century that was about to end. Dan Rather published his book a year later. The books were a success and were followed up. Peter Jennings, in 2002, co-authored In Search of America. That book was adapted to a five part TV series. To accompany the TV program Stephen Arnold, composed this piece of theme music.

In 2002 George Stephanopolous was named moderator of This Week. Stephanopolous is a former Clinton communications aid who frequently helped prepare members of the Clinton administration for these Sunday morning public affairs programs. And considering the intense scrutinizing, an adequate preparation is a must for politicians coming on. Often the guests on these programs spend the better part of Saturday anticipating questions and thinking through answers. What distinguishes a good moderator is his ability to cut through the prepared material, and elicit statements that they weren’t prepared to make. This short lived theme was composed by Score Productions.

This is the piece of music that is currently used after each ABC News program to remind us that more and more people are watching ABC News. A fifteen-second version of this wonderful piece of music is used in alternation with this one to promote the “50 States, One Nation, One Year” campaign. What’s that? Essentially that is World News Tonight and Good Morning America going on the road to broadcast from a particular state and do a feature report about that state. The music is composed by VideoHelper.

This theme, composed by Video Helper, is based off a World News Tonight promo cut in the late 1990′s. Someone at ABC liked it so much that they suggested it would be used as the 20/20 theme. It was used at a time when significant and constant changes in the 20/20 anchor line-up were made. When this theme first started being used, Barbara Walters anchored solo since former co-anchor Hugh Downs had retired in 1999. In early 2002 John Miller, who impressed many with his ability to analyze events during marathon coverage of the September 11th attacks, became co-anchor. But he never got very comfortable in the anchor chair and a year later he jumped at the chance to rejoin law enforcement. So for a few months in early 2003 Barbara Walters anchored solo again. But she was nearing retirement and preferred a co-anchor. In May of 2003 John Stossel, the man behind the controversial though popular “Give me a break” segments, was named co-anchor of 20/20.