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For many years, in style tv sitcoms opened with a brief, catchy theme track that ran all through the opening credit. Many of those theme songs, like The Brady Bunch and Gilligan’s Island, weren’t solely used as a degree of branding but additionally as a type of exposition to present new and returning viewers a quick rundown of the final plot. It did not matter if a viewer was tuning in to those applications for the primary time or the hundredth; these songs revealed precisely what the present was about, who the characters had been and the place the story occurred.
This development continued all through exhibits like I Married Joan, The Jeffersons and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and over time these songs grew to become synonymous with these sequence a lot that lengthy after they went off the air, just some notes had been sufficient to fire up recollections of nostalgia for followers. Several theme songs even registered on mainstream music charts; MeTV reminded audiences that All within the Family‘s “Those Were The Days” by Lee Adams and Charles Strouse (carried out by sequence stars Carroll O’Connor and Jean Stapleton) was a modest grownup modern hit, whereas Pratt and McClain’s titular theme to Happy Days went to No. 5 in 1976. So why have sitcom themes disappeared?
Over the years as tv applications developed, so did TV networks’ want for extra industrial promoting house, that means these opening sequences — with some theme songs working virtually two minutes in size — had been trimmed down considerably or omitted altogether in favor of a easy, fast title display. This allowed the networks to suit extra commercials, thus making them more cash. In the minds of producers and community executives, a 30-second theme track was 30 seconds of wasted revenue and thus, these iconic theme songs started to fade as some trendy sitcoms removed openings altogether. Others selected current pop songs for his or her openings as an alternative of unique music.
This is not to say that unique music within the opening sequences of sitcoms has gone away. Many in style sitcoms within the early 2000s and 2010s featured brief musical stingers or themes as a calling card for the sequence. Brooklyn Nine-Nine and The Office are examples of those: their respective theme songs do not comprise any lyrics however they’re each catchy and simply recognizable to viewers. Some sitcoms like New Girl tried to revamp the thought of a sitcom theme track with a brief and candy opening quantity, however over time even these sequences had been decreased to nothing greater than a fast jingle with a last button.
Now, within the age of sitcoms transferring to or being resurrected on streaming, commercials are largely a factor of the previous. This could be the proper time to reintroduce theme songs to sitcoms on digital platforms. With no actual constraints on run time, there is not any actual argument as to why not to place theme songs again into the opening credit. Disney+ demonstrated this with the Scarlet Witch-altering WandaVision that includes spoofs of in style sitcom songs in its first two episodes.
There’s a enterprise purpose to return to theme songs, too. With the recognition of social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram and their artistic use of music and audio clips from exhibits and flicks, the potential of a sitcom theme track making its approach to the Internet appears fully possible. Content creators are fast to leap on what’s trending and or create new traits, which might trigger a possible growth in the usage of sitcom theme songs ought to streamers elect to reintroduce them.
Older sitcoms launched sure bands to stardom by merely utilizing considered one of their songs as their opening theme, such because the eternally in style Friends making stars out of The Rembrandts after “I’ll Be There For You.” Should streaming platforms cross-promote by way of TikTok, they might assist launch the music of latest sitcoms and construct their fan bases. With the flexibility to work round promoting and new platforms to advertise the music, it is time to carry again one of many components that made sitcoms so timeless.
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