Awesome Music / News and Weather Programs

• Even for a news show, Meet The Press has some pretty awesome opening music. It was composed by John muthaflippin' Williams. Yes, the same guy responsible for the music for Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Superman, and a bazillion other awesome soundtracks. And the preposterously awesome theme for the NBC Nightly News.
  • That's the watered down newer version. Here is the closing theme to the Nightly News from 1995. By the way, the theme is called "The Mission".
  • The Seven Network versions such as the 1999-2003 opening or 2004- opening which both put a distinct European spin with the synth-orchestra mix or a quick summary of the lot is fisnationstate's mashup.
  • NBC and MSNBC's election theme music, which they share. It just screams 'awesome'.
• The old Wall Street Week theme was pretty badass for a show about money.
• Philadelphia-based WPVI's theme song for Action News, called "Move Closer to Your World", has been used since the 1970s, with some updates here and there, and is still used to this day.
• BBC News's kickass 1999 music, by David Lowe, who has done newer themes for them, still with the "countdown" motif. Yes.
  • Before BBC News 24 (as it was known back then) had the countdown music, there was this, composer unknown. Even better is the full version used at the top of the hour.
  • For those of us who find the later BBC News themes too frivolous and/or ravey, the 90s versions are reminders of a simpler time, when news was serious shit. There were different themes depending on the time of the bulletin back then; this version was 9 o'clock news broadcast. That set was replaced by these in 1993. In order: Breakfast, 1 o'clock, afternoon bulletin, 6 o'clock, weekends then 9 o'clock. Things were epically grand in the mid-90's.
• For many British TV viewers, the classic theme to ITN's "News at Ten", driving strings and brass punctuated by the striking of Big Ben, is synonymous with TV news. It's iconic enough that it got parodied by Spitting Image.
• ABC's World News Tonight theme:
  • The 1978 version (original version) is powerful, especially the drums from 0:25 forward.
  • The 1998 version adds even more instruments.
  • "An American Dream" which takes the ABC World News Theme and expands it with a full concert orchestra into an emotional seven minute-long piece. A little bit of warning, the first 2:09 and 5:00-5:45 may bring back sad memories of 9/11 memorials or Peter Jennings' death.
• The theme used by KUSA in Denver from 1995-2009, at which time they unfortunately replaced it with another theme (mandated by then-owner Gannett).
• "The Spirit of Virginia", a song WSLS-10 in Roanoke, VA used officially from about 1990 to 1995, and continued to use in bumpers and station ID's up to its purchase by Media General and its revamp around April 1997. By the way, WSLS is an NBC station, AKA "The John Williams Channel" (as was previously mentioned).
• Now, everyone might have heard Lalo Schifrin's "The Tar Sequence" under the Film section from Cool Hand Luke and how it became the theme song for the Eyewitness News format used in ABC stations nationwide. At first they used it wholesale from 1968 to 1982. And then in 1983 Frank Gari remixed it (including a Texas custom version). The News Series 2000 package by Gari became widespread until Lalo Schifrin raised the royalties, forcing Gari and company to make a Suspiciously Similar Song of the new theme into the Eyewitness News package. This theme was used until around 2008 when it updated to the New Generation theme.
  • Frank Gari's son, Chris, did an update of the package in 2005 for KABC in Los Angeles. The closing theme of Eyewitness News New Generation 1 is truly awesome.
  • The US isn't the only country to experience Gari's work: Sky used his Great News Package (originally made for WXIA in Atlanta) as the theme for Sky News from the launch in 1989 until 1995; the entire family of networks then used a special Gari package for all their idents. Termed the Sky Symphony, you can listen to it in all its glory here.
• The Weather Channel has some awesome "local forecast" music.
  • There's nothing better than hearing the first minute and a half of the Home Alone theme while watching snow head towards your hometown on Doppler radar.
  • One of their forecasts was accompanied by "Linus and Lucy".
  • The Jurassic Park theme once played on TWC. Made a high of 43 with a light breeze sound incredibly epic, and slightly scary.
  • A local weather forecast (tracking thunderstorms, among other things) was once set to the "Solar Sailer" track of TRON: Legacy.
  • Back in the 1980s, the local forecast bits on the Weather Channel (the "Local on the 8s" bits) featured really awesome and addictive bits of smooth jazz — and the haunting instrumental opener to The Eurythmics's "Here Comes the Rain Again". AWESOME.
  • The Storm Alert Theme of 2006 has been frequently compared by listeners to the music of Yoko Shimomura.
• The Nightly Business Report theme, composed by Edd Kalehoff, who also did the themes to the aforementioned ABC, The Price Is Right, and Double Dare. Listen to the themes from 1992-2002, 2002-10, and 2010-12.
• Channel 4 News has had the same theme music for most of its existence. And it is pretty damn awesome.
• In 1979, Philadelphia's KYW took the great risk of launching an entire promo campaign themed "The Direct Connection" that featured EPIC disco songs and KILLER editing. Sadly there doesn't appear to be a YouTube link anymore to the full five-minute video Klein & Klein (the ad agency in charge of said campaign) made for this campaign.
• TVE's Telediario is not only the oldest news show in Spain, it also tends to have the best headline themes in the country. The 2012 versions are specially awesome.
• A lot of the opens used by WAVY-TV 10 (NBC) in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia have used an ocean motif, tying in with the call letters and logo, often featuring the logo amongst and/or forming from ocean waves. This is one from 1991, and the package "Wall-to-Wall News". By 1996, they had switched to the "Newswire" package, with this intro as an example. From 2008 to 2013, they used a new, HD graphics pack from Giant Octopus, with this intro. Since 2013, the music and graphics have gotten even more nice, although the intro seen here does look like a toilet flushing (whoever designed the intro must not have thought it out). All of the intros since late 1989 have the deep, rumbling bass voice of Charlie Van Dyke, announcer for many of the ABC O&Os and for KPNX-12 in Phoenix (where he appeared in a parody of those Geico ads with Don LaFontaine, narrating/re-describing people's liking of KPNX's news). This trope as an example for WAVY dates back to at least the mid-1980s, as this link illustrates.^note This theme was produced by another firm known for classic TV news jingles, Dallas-based VTS Productions.
• In 1993, the new ITV breakfast service, GMTV, took to the air with a killer music package. It perfectly reflects how you want to start your mornings: bright, sunny and cheerful.