The CBS Evening News was given a total makeover when Katie Couric debuted as anchor. The theme was composed by James Horner (famous for his scoring of the hit movie Titanic). CBS wanted Horner to create a theme that stood out from other news themes, including its previous theme. Joel Beckerman of Man Made Music helped Horner convert his music to a real theme package by, for example, adding the three notes at the beginning of the headline tease. The theme has various opens and versions to reflect the different moods of the newscast. CBS likes the music so much, they asked Horner to adapt the theme for use on other CBS News programs such as the Early Show. This theme is also used by the CBS Morning News.

Below is the open to the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric. His voice accompanied the open even after his death.

This theme started being used by the CBS Evening News in 1991 and lasted until September 2006. Two years after it debuted, the CBS Evening News switched from a solo anchor format, to a co-anchor format. Connie Chung, the first female since Barbara Walters at ABC to anchor a nightly network newscast, got to sit next to Dan. The pairing, speculated to be for ratings purposes, was not successful due to tensions between the co-anchors and within two years Dan Rather was back to anchoring solo. The theme you are hearing now is off the air. The theme was also used on the CBS Morning News. It is composed by Patterson, Walz and Fox Music Productions.

This is the open without voiceover as used on the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather. During Bob Schieffer’s interum run the open was shortened by cutting out a few seconds in the beginning of the open.

This is the first orchestral theme for the CBS Evening News! Before this time, CBS News had a policy, imposed by CBS TV President Frank Stanton that no music could be used. This policy dated back to the old days of TV News when many newscasts consisted of syndicated pictures with cheap production music. To prove CBS supplied its own footage, they decided not to add any music. Besides, their music library at the time consisted of music used for those old radio soaps. It was inappropriate for news. For a few years, they had a ticker sound as open/bumper/close, but from 1984 to 1987 they had no music in the open and the close! After a few years of seeing their ratings decline, while John Williams’ The Mission was popular with the viewing public at NBC, the executives at CBS decided to finally reverse their policy and commissioned John Trivers, Elizabeth Myers, and Alan James Pasqua to compose the theme. You can listen to the open, the headline cue and the close.