John Williams is not the first famous movie composer to do a news theme for NBC. This funky theme, used during the latter period of the John Chancellor era of Nightly News, is composed by Henry Mancini. He has done incredibly recognizable themes such as The Pink Panther. Aside from his work for Nightly News, Mancini also composed an election theme for NBC. While that one would stay on for decades, his theme for Nightly News only lasted 5 years.

NBC used this theme by Henry Mancini for a long time, from the election of Jimmy Carter as president to Bill Clinton. It has the patriotic title “Salute to the President”. Mancini is a well regarded composer, having composed instantly recognizable soundtracks to movies such as The Pink Panther. Here you can listen to the long close and an open.

Henry Mancini - Decision '76 open

Henry Mancini - Decision '76 close

When Chet Huntley retired, the Huntley-Brinkley Report became NBC Nightly News. While there were various changes to the anchor lineup, John Chancellor was the lead anchor for most of the next decade. Sometimes he shared the anchor desk with David Brinkley, who otherwise mostly did commentary under the title David Brinkley’s Journal. Ultimately Nightly News, dominant in the days of Huntley-Brinkley, was not able to overtake Walter Cronkite in the ratings. During much of this time, this theme was used to close the broadcast. It was definitely used as early as 1972, but may have been introduced in 1970, when Nightly News debuted. Ray Ellis is the composer, who also did the theme for Today at the time.

This jazzy theme by Ray Ellis was used on the Today Show for a number of years but ultimately forced off the air due to a plagiarism lawsuit. Publishers of the song “Day by Day” sued Ellis and NBC charging that the instrumental arrangement and harmonization of the Today Show theme is substantially similar to that of “Day by Day” and, more importantly, the differences in melody are relatively minor. The Court sided with “Day by Day” and NBC was forced to commission a new theme. It was later revealed that NBC had considerred using “Day by Day” as its theme. Here you can listen to the theme that was banned from television. It was at first only used as a long friday close, but starting in 1976 it was also used as an open. It was the first theme the Today Show used that was composed specifically for the program.

“Good night, Chet. Good night, David. And good night, for NBC News.” From the very first edition in 1956 until the last in 1970, that is how the Huntley-Brinkley Report signed off. Chet Huntley anchored the bulk of the news from New York and David Brinkley specialized in political news from Washington, DC The two were paired up on the evening news after they had garnered favorable attention when they anchored NBC’s coverage of the national political conventions together the year before. Their partnership helped NBC beat the competition at CBS: Douglas Edwards with the News. While Edwards was a good broadcaster, unlike Huntley and Brinkley he was not a journalist. From this point in time news anchors were expected to be journalists.

The music that played underneath the closing credits was the second movement (scherzo) of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. This is the original 1952 recording with Arturo Toscanini conducting the NBC Symphony Orchestra that was used on the Report. The music always started with the six notes and was faded out when they ran out of time. The program did not use an opening theme. It was not uncommon for news programs at the time to use classical music.