After the retirement of its longtime anchor in 2005, Nightline underwent drastic changes that ultimately made the program a ratings winner. Instead of focussing on interviews related to the news of the day – a role that cable news had undertaken – it became more of a news magazine. Ted Koppel was replaced by three people. Terry Moran, Cynthia McFadden and Martin Bashir (who was later replaced by Bill Weir) anchor from studios in Washington and New York. The program went into 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.

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.

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.