From a horse race perspective the 1996 presidential election was a bore. The minute that primary season was over, President Clinton seemed to be cruising to reelection. Nonetheless, ABC commissioned a new election theme by Score Productions. It was resurrected in 2004, Peter Jennings’ last election night broadcast, after being absent for two election cycles.

Score Productions – The ’96 Vote theme

In 1976 NBC introduced the concept of red states and blue states. To graphically illustrate the election results, they colored a state red if a Democrat won and blue when a Republican did. ABC copied that four years later but switched the colors because red started with an ‘r’ for Republican. Other broadcasters would copy ABC’s color scheme but NBC kept their original color scheme for some time during the 1980’s. So on election night 1984, NBC’s map was almost entirely blue while ABC and CBS’ were almost entirely red. Regardless of the color of the graphics, Ronald Reagan was reelected with a landslide margin. For this election NBC commissioned a hybrid of their classic Salute to the President theme by Henry Mancini and their electronic open to Nightly News. In conjunction with this open, the original Mancini theme was still used as a close.

Joseph Paul Sicurella, Tony Smythe and Bob Christianson – Decision 84 Open

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