“ABC News” 1975 – 1976 Theme

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ABC first started a newscast in the fall of 1953. Its anchor was John Charles Daly and the broadcast lasted only 15 minutes, as was customary at the time. After many different anchors and other stunts (such as naming a young unknown man from Canada named Peter Jennings as anchor from 1965 – 1967), ratings still weren’t great. From 1970 to 1975 Harry Reasoner and Howard K. Smith were at the helm of ABC News. The broadcast had no theme music, having a cold open and quiet close. In 1975 Smith was assigned a commentary role and Reasoner anchored solo. The broadcast was renamed “ABC News with Harry Reasoner”. During this time, they used this theme, which is part of the KPM production music library and can be found on CD #433 but was originally found on vinyl 1138. The name of the piece is ‘Gathering Crowds’ and was also used on Fox’s This Week in Baseball. On the air the theme sounded quite differently due to heavy editing, hence below you can listen to the original piece and how it was used on air. This theme was dropped in 1976 when Barbara Walters was named co-anchor of the renamed “ABC Evening News”.

ABC News Open 1976
KPM Music – Gathering Crowds

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