Fictional News Themes

[WWUpdate 1293]

I thought it might be interesting to have a thread devoted to news themes from movies, TV shows, and other fictional sources.

 

One of my favorites is the KXLA theme from The China Syndrome: You can hear it at 23:35 in this clip. (It's a bit difficult to fiddle with the player's controls, but I think it's worth it):

 

http://www.mojvideo.com/video-china-syndrome-1979-1-4-full-movie-eng-subs/7b8311e75be4322ac334

 

And here's the FYI theme from Murphy Brown:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id=m5CtS_ik9_w;m=1;s=1

[WWUpdate 1293]

The West Wing used a real news theme for the Crossfire-like Capital Beat political talk show -- The Awakening, better known as the ITN / ITV News theme:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id=D93295KpIZw;m=1;s=06

[WWUpdate 1293]

And let's not forget the the the "KWW theme" from Anchorman -- complete with a news open:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id=Cnh5MQsAIAo;m=3;s=6

[serya 1]

Good topic, some cool themes in movies.

There is a great short one by Lalo Schifrin for Sam Peckinpah's Osterman Weekend. (which is itself a thriller critical of news media)

 

Has that real neo-TV News sound-

you can listen here to the album track, "News Break":

http://www.allmusic.com/album/the-osterman-weekend-soundtrack-mw0000240556

 

Ironically, nothing will ever compare to the "news theme" he wrote for Cool Hand Luke.

[plnewsfan 9]

The Fast Show's Chanel Nine went with drums, synths and Gong (Like Tagesschau) at the end of the opening:

[MEDIA=dailymotion]x32rcjj[/MEDIA]

[WWUpdate 1293]

How about a fictional news promo? Here's Family Guy's take on those cheesy '80s image campaigns:

 

 

It reminds me of this very real WPDE promo:

 

[cityprod 9]

The West Wing used a very real news theme for Crossfire-like Capital Beat political talk show -- The Awakening, better known as the ITN / ITV News theme:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id=D93295KpIZw;m=1;s=06

 

Technically, that's not The Awakening. That's the 1999 version, called "Breaking News" composed by Dave Hewson, based upon the Johnny Pearson composition.

[ABC 7 Denver 1741]

The West Wing used a very real news theme for Crossfire-like Capital Beat political talk show -- The Awakening, better known as the ITN / ITV News theme:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id=D93295KpIZw;m=1;s=06

 

Yep. I have that theme.

[tw-804 194]

Good topic, some cool themes in movies.

There is a great short one by Lalo Schifrin for Sam Peckinpah's Osterman Weekend. (which is itself a thriller critical of news media)

 

Has that real neo-TV News sound-

you can listen here to the album track, "News Break":

http://www.allmusic.com/album/the-osterman-weekend-soundtrack-mw0000240556

 

Ironically, nothing will ever compare to the "news theme" he wrote for Cool Hand Luke.

 

KOMU in Columbia, MO used this and Cool Hand Luke: The Tar Sequence for their newscasts in the late 1980s.

[serya 1]

KOMU in Columbia, MO used this and Cool Hand Luke: The Tar Sequence for their newscasts in the late 1980s.

Interesting, since of course Schifrin's Cool Hand Luke theme was re-recorded over the years after they used the original for so many ABC affiliates, but they followed Schifrin to Osterman Weekend's fake news theme as well! And that movie is a commentary about news television. Very interesting!

[WWUpdate 1293]

Since the FYI theme in the opening post got deleted, here's another clip:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id=aoj2LIO0xXs;m=1;s=2

 

And here's the news theme pitch scene from the movie Broadcast News (the theme is credited to "Michel Camilo for Score Productions"):

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id=d0DMtYp7aco;m=45;s=20

[WWUpdate 1293]

Here's the FYI news theme in its entirety:

 

 

And since the previous video got deleted, here's the news theme sequence from the movie Broadcast News:

 

 

[Eat News 4745]

Oh this is my favorite game!

 

Here is the world famous KBEX-TV News  open...

 

Did I mention it's royalty free, and translated into 175 different languages worldwide?

 

 

 

 

[Chris Hadley 129]

On 2/22/2016 at 4:08 PM, WWUpdate said:

One of my favorites is the KXLA theme from The China Syndrome: You can hear it at 23:35 in this clip. (It's a bit difficult to fiddle with the player's controls, but I think it's worth it):

 

http://www.mojvideo.com/video-china-syndrome-1979-1-4-full-movie-eng-subs/7b8311e75be4322ac334

 

 

 

The name of the cue is "News at 6:00", composed by the late veteran film/TV composer Michael Small (ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, NIGHT MOVES, THE PARALLAX VIEW, KLUTE, among others). This was taken from his rejected score to THE CHINA SYNDROME, which was released several years ago on Intrada Records and quickly sold out. For anyone here who's into film score music, it's common for composers (with the exception of John Williams) to write a score for a film and then have it tossed when the director doesn't like what he/she's heard. As it turned out, this and maybe 1 or 2 related TV source cues were ultimately kept in the 1979 film.

 

 

[RGSJenkins 435]

From Lisa on Ice, "It's Channel 6 Action News!"

 

[TSSZNews 1053]

37 minutes ago, RGSJenkins said:

From Lisa on Ice, "It's Channel 6 Action News!"

 

 

It just hasn't been the same since they brought the consultants into Channel 6...

[panewswatcher69 29]

Classic Network (1976). The Network News Hour The Howard Beale Show.  The theme is used several times and is at 2:15 in the following clip:

 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=37nkErzdTOA

[Weeters 1981]

On 3/23/2019 at 12:07 PM, Chris Hadley said:

 

The name of the cue is "News at 6:00", composed by the late veteran film/TV composer Michael Small (ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, NIGHT MOVES, THE PARALLAX VIEW, KLUTE, among others). This was taken from his rejected score to THE CHINA SYNDROME, which was released several years ago on Intrada Records and quickly sold out. For anyone here who's into film score music, it's common for composers (with the exception of John Williams) to write a score for a film and then have it tossed when the director doesn't like what he/she's heard. As it turned out, this and maybe 1 or 2 related TV source cues were ultimately kept in the 1979 film.

 

Something similar happened with Wendy Carlos' original score for A Clockwork Orange. The original score was mostly tossed, but one of the tracks "Timesteps" remained... And became actual news music.

 

 

The relevant cut starts around 29:11. It was heard on WXIA and WVUE, and heard again in Atlanta on WTCG in an obvious parody of WXIA's usage of it.

 

I'd post the usage of it in the movie, but it's... disturbing... to say the least.

[WWUpdate 1293]

On 2/23/2016 at 7:09 PM, WWUpdate said:

And let's not forget the the the "KWW theme" from Anchorman -- complete with a news open:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id=Cnh5MQsAIAo;m=3;s=6

 

For those who missed it the first time around (and yes, that's WBBM's Bill Kurtis doing the VO at the beginning):

 

 

[DonDonP1 118]

Speaking of Family Guy, Ron Jones composed a "Breaking News" cue for an episode of that show.

[WWUpdate 1293]

On 3/23/2019 at 2:07 PM, Chris Hadley said:

 

The name of the cue is "News at 6:00", composed by the late veteran film/TV composer Michael Small (ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN, NIGHT MOVES, THE PARALLAX VIEW, KLUTE, among others). This was taken from his rejected score to THE CHINA SYNDROME, which was released several years ago on Intrada Records and quickly sold out. For anyone here who's into film score music, it's common for composers (with the exception of John Williams) to write a score for a film and then have it tossed when the director doesn't like what he/she's heard. As it turned out, this and maybe 1 or 2 related TV source cues were ultimately kept in the 1979 film.

 

 

 

Speaking of The China Syndrome, I've always thought that the movie's opening scene is an unusually realistic (at least for a Hollywood movie) portrayal of what goes on in a local news control room (and Small's news theme makes its first appearance toward the end):

 

 

[WAVY 10 Fan 233]

If we're including production music that was used later for news, 615 Music commissioned a production track called "This Just In" (basically a store-brand knockoff of Move Closer to Your World) that got used for a fictional newscast on some episodes of Disney Channel's "Lizzie McGuire".

 

Interestingly, around the time that show wound down in 2004, Springfield, IL PBS station WEIU used it for theirnewscasts for a few years and it has also been used by a couple of stations in Puerto Rico. 

[ColumbusNewsFan 218]

On 4/3/2019 at 3:51 PM, WAVY 10 Fan said:

If we're including production music that was used later for news, 615 Music commissioned a production track called "This Just In" (basically a store-brand knockoff of Move Closer to Your World) that got used for a fictional newscast on some episodes of Disney Channel's "Lizzie McGuire".

 

Interestingly, around the time that show wound down in 2004, Springfield, IL PBS station WEIU used it for theirnewscasts for a few years and it has also been used by a couple of stations in Puerto Rico. 

And to bring it full circle, WPVI I believe uses that theme as a Breaking News sounder music.

[Weeters 1981]

"Channel 5" from the Adult Swim series "Check it Out! With Dr. Steve Brule" uses a cut of production music for it's news and sports segments:

 

 

If the theme sounds familiar, that's because it's Deaf Dog's KYW package from the early 2000's. Now production music.

[WestleyWolf 123]

I couldn't find a clip but both the phineas and ferb and milo murphys law Cartoons used a Fictional version of the 1994 Dateline NBC theme By Michael Karp whenever they show a news reporter.

 

EDIT: Found one.