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.

Composed by VideoHelper, this theme started and ended as a promo cue for ABC’s evening newscast. While it was used as a promo in the late 1990′s for Peter Jennings’ broadcast, someone at ABC liked it so much that they suggested it’d be a good 20/20 theme. Five years after it was dropped as a theme for 20/20, it was used to promote the debut of Diane Sawyer as anchor of the program.

20/20 used this theme at a time when there were significant and constant changed in the anchor line-up for the first time in its history. 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 live analysis during marathon coverage of the September 11th attacks, became co-anchor. But he never got very comfortable as an anchor and a year later he jumped at the chance to rejoin law enforcement and leave TV news. 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.

As an overnight newscast, the tone of World News Now can be more relaxed, casual and lighthearted. This theme, composed by JOEDtracks, reflects that. It was actually not originally composed for ABC’s overnight newscast. It was composed in the early 90′s by Joe DeSanctis of JOEDTracks and was called: Blueness. To make it fit as a news theme, they went back to the studio and added some elements, such as a big drum sound at the end and an orchestral sting. Once ABC liked the theme, JOEDTracks composed additional music for the show.

To celebrate the start of the year 2000, ABC News sent reporters to notable places in every time zone to cover New Years celebrations. It was a huge operation, with Peter Jennings anchoring for 25 straight hours, that won critical acclaim. They did not attempt to do this again a year later, but created a smaller and more budget-friendly version of this program on New Year’s Eve 2002. This theme was used for these programs. However, it perhaps became most famous as the theme for most of ABC’s election coverage in 2000. Since then, it has been brought back occasionally, such as for the inauguration of Barack Obama in 2009.

This theme was originally not composed for ABC but for Disney World in Orlando, Florida. The Epcot attraction uses it for their presentation called “IllumiNations 2000: Reflections of Earth”. Of course Epcot and ABC-TV are owned by the same company, Walt Disney, which often share resources. This theme is composed by Gavin Greenaway, who won an Emmy for it.

In 1998 Primetime Live disappeared in name but stayed around in spirit, only to make a full comeback as Primetime Thursday. All of ABC’s news magazines in the late 90′s were merged into editions of 20/20 so that ABC had just one news magazine brand with multiple editions a week, like Dateline NBC. So Primetime Live became 20/20 Thursday. While it worked for NBC – which at its peak aired four editions of Dateline a week – it did not work for ABC. In 2000 Primetime Live returned as Primetime Thursday. Diane Sawyer now anchored the program alongside Charles Gibson. Why did they not reinstate the name Primetime Live? Well, the program wasn’t live anymore but pretaped. Both anchors had early morning duties at Good Morning America, which was preventing them from anchoring a live weekly news magazine in primetime. During this era of the broadcast, which lasted from 2000 to 2004, they used an update of the original Primetime Live theme. The orchestration was slightly updated and it is significantly shorter.

Unlike most other news magazines, 20/20 Downtown (or later just Downtown) was never carried by any big name anchor. An ensemble of anchors fronted the broadcast, which was aimed at attracting younger viewers. The anchor and reporting duties were covered by the team of Elizabeth Vargas, Cynthia McFadden, Chris Cuomo, and John Quiñones. For the theme ABC turned to Score Productions. Though Downtown was officially cancelled in 2002, it returned for one season as Primetime Monday a year later. Same anchors, same format and same theme (though a slightly different arrangement).

In the fall of 2000 the Barbara Walters news magazine was given a totally new theme for the first in its history. Previously they had used a version of its classic 1979 theme with slightly modernized instrumentation. Although this theme includes some notes from the previous theme, it is without a doubt more contemporary. Like the previous 20/20 themes, this theme is composed by Score Productions.

This is the current version of the World News theme by Edd Kalehoff that was used in a period during which the broadcast underwent significant changes. Longtime anchor Peter Jennings died and one of his replacements, Bob Woodruff, was severely injured by a roadside bomb in Iraq. Eventually the other replacement for Jennings, Elizabeth Vargas, who was in effect sole anchor as Woodruff was out of the running, was replaced by Charles Gibson. He retired after three years as anchor of the program and was succeeded by Diane Sawyer. This theme is fifteen seconds shorter than the previous versions of the theme. This is because in 2000 ABC wanted a slightly different open. Kalehoff then compressed the front part giving it a more urgent sound.

This theme was supposed to debut when World News Tonight premiered its new graphics in 2000. It didn’t. While Peter Jennings, then-executive producer Paul Slavin, and others had cleared it, Senior Management had not. And that was a problem. At the very last minute, they decided that the show already had altered its appearance enough and that it might alienate viewers if it also changed it’s long established theme. That’s very unfortunate because it is a good theme. It’s composed by the people at VideoHelper. The story, however, continues. Good Morning America later adapted this as their opening theme.

“More and more Americans get their news from ABC News, than from any other source,” according to the slogan of ABC News. NBC News, interestingly enough, claims more Americans watch NBC News than any other news organization “in the world”. Two very similar slogans that seemingly can’t be both correct. So who’s right? Perhaps both. NBC has the top rated network broadcasts and a cable news outlet which ABC does not have. This means a lot of people on a daily basis will see an NBC News broadcast. However, ABC claims more people get their news from ABC. And you can get your news by other means than television. As it so happens, ABC owns a lot of radio stations and has an extensive network of affiliated stations all airing the ABC Radio News. Add those numbers to the TV ratings and website visits and that number will likely be higher than the amount of people getting their news from NBC on TV, radio and the web combined.

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In 1999 Diane Sawyer and Charles Gibson were named interim anchors for Good Morning America, filling in until ABC found new permanent anchors for the breakfast program. However, as months became years, their status as interim was dropped. This theme started being used when the program moved into the Times Square Studios. The studios are owned by Disney and besides GMA, a wide array of ABC programs are taped there. The theme is composed by Desmond Child, who is known for composing hit songs for, among others, Ricky Martin, KISS, Aerosmith and Bon Jovi.

“This is an ABC News Special Report.” Whenever breaking news warrants an interruption of regularly scheduled programming, this theme is used. While it is solemn and conveys both importance and urgency, it does not scream hype and sensationalism. It thereby sets the right tone for the coverage that was lead by anchors such as Peter Jennings, Charles Gibson and Diane Sawyer.

This theme was used on ABC World News Tonight with Peter Jennings until September 29, 2000 when they got brand new graphics. The theme was actually used on the weekend editions of World News Tonight until well into 2001 when that program got a graphics update as well. The music is essentially the same as the other versions with the exception that an extra “ta-dum” was added at the end. The primary difference is that this theme sounds louder. This is because the string instruments seem to have largely been replaced with more brass.

Here is the headline cue which is slightly different than the ’89 version. Updates of the World News Tonight theme have, since 1998, been composed by New York-based composer Edd Kalehoff.

For most of the early years, Nightline used the World News Tonight theme to open the broadcast. That changed in 1997 when they started using a theme that they would use through the rest of the Ted Koppel years. He retired in 2005, amidst a flurry of network anchor retirement parties. During the last few months of his run, they experimented slightly with the program. One of the things they tried was doing multiple topics. During their months of experiments, Nightline used cold opens, so this theme was used until a few months before the retirement of Koppel.