This electronic piece was used to open almost all NBC News programs in this era, such as Nightly News, Meet the Press, NBC News Digest and NBC White Paper, a documentary series. Even Today wasn’t exempted from this early attempt at corporate branding. But after a few weeks, they returned to their beloved Ray Ellis theme. The only program that was given its own music, was the newly established NBC News at Sunrise.
The rotating globe graphics that the music accompanied are legendary because of the mistake that is in them. Most viewers saw it as Earth spinning the wrong way. However, NBC intended it to simulate the view from a spacecraft as it passes over Earth. NBC relented and in 1984 reversed the rotation of the globe.
Unknown – NBC Nightly News theme
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This was also the same exact theme used at the end of WNBC’s analog sign-off back in 2009.
Ch 7 Australia also used a variation of this at some point. Except it didn’t include the full NBC chimes to separate it from the original. There’s a bumper on youtube with the same globe animation, graphics, but no Peacock and the program is simply called “News Overnite.”
Meant to add, NBC Radio News also used this. The anchor would say “NBC Radio News” while this played. Mutual Radio News continued to use it after it purchased NBC Radio News. I wonder when it was composed as it sounds like something from the 40’s or 50’s. And I remember the controversy about the direction of the globe. TV Guide’s “Cheers and Jeers” section pointed it out after it debuted.