World News Now is one of the most casual and relaxed news programs on TV today. This theme, quite casual and relaxed itself, is composed by JOEDtracks. It was a pre-existing piece of music with a name: blueness. The theme was originally not composed for World News Now or ABC News. It was composed for other purposes in the early 1990s by Joe DeSanctis of JOEDTracks. 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.

Polka music to end a newscast. Weird. What’s the story behind it? Since the beginning World News Now plays random pieces of music leading into the weather. One day they played some polka music and anchor Lisa McRee commented on it, saying that she hated it. Offended viewers wrote in their many complaints. As compensation, World News Now asked Barry Mitchell to come on the show and perform a polka. He said he was not only willing to play a polka, but also compose one just for World News Now. The World News Polka was born and you could say that it was an overnight hit! The Polka still airs every last show before the weekend, while the full credits are shown. Over the years there have been many versions of the World News Polka – including one sung by an Elvis-impersonator – below you will find a couple of the most famous versions.

After some changes at ABC News, like the departure of Ted Koppel, some lyrics had to be changed. Here’s a more recent version of the polka.

In 1992 Aaron Brown and Lisa McRee anchored a relatively new style of newscast. It was titled ABC World News Now, designed to give the network news division an overnight presence to compete with the Cable News Network (CNN). In four blocks of 30-minute newscasts (since reduced to three) viewers are given all the day’s news with the inevitable irreverence, wit and sarcasm. It features some reports that did not make World News Tonight, shortened Nightline and 20/20 reports, Business News from the BBC and what’s in tomorrow’s papers. This music is composed by an artist who is usually associated with new age music: Yanni.