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The end of the end credit
The theme song to the Western song Gunsmoke is one of the most beautiful tunes ever played on television. The theme had an actual title - “Old Trails,” written by Glenn Spencer and Rex Koury. It was also known as “Boot Hill.” The version that played over the opening credits of the show was charged and exciting, summoning viewers to the TV for an hour of drama on the Plains, but I was always partial to the slower, more reflective version that accompanied the end credits. Loved those trombones and timpani drums.
Annoyingly, TV Land - the network that delivers Gunsmoke to my house - often blares programming information over the closing tune (always for shows I have no desire to watch) and just when when the theme is getting to the good part. On such occasions, I am reminded of one of the signal moments in the degradation of television and our culture at large - the decision to sacrifice the venerable end credit in the name of more commercials.
I have often wondered who exactly is to blame for this societal wrong. Apparently, I should blame the Peacock Network.
The notion of a new inducement to watch commercials appealed to NBC, which has previously pushed through several innovations in prime-time formatting. In 1994, for example, NBC became the first network to squeeze the end credits all but off the screen, and create a seamless (and commercial-free) transition from one program to the next. All the other networks subsequently adopted the practice, intended to keep viewers from straying during long commercial breaks between shows.
Predictably, it’s all about retaining the viewer by leaving her or him even a second to think about picking up that remote. Stay where you are! You don’t want to miss (blah, blah)! Coming right now! Meh.
The effect of this corporate urgency, the desire to squeeze a dime out of every moment, has affected the front end of programs as well as the closing moments. Such urgency is endangered whenever the consumer is allowed to do anything other than, well, consume. Networks can hardly allow viewers to wander like directionless cattle, and are even willing to risk skipping commercials - theirs, and those of their affiliates - between shows and trimming the opening credits in order to keep you right where you are.
Clearly, brevity is key. No drawn-out intro or hokey theme. Networks don’t have time for that — and neither, prevailing TV thinking goes, do the country’s couch potatoes.
“Producers feel, rightly or wrongly, that that interruption, if you will, is going to lose viewers,” Brooks said.
“I think one of the things that has squeezed themes out is this relentless kind of move toward tightening everything, making it go right from joke to joke, from action to action, from shootout to shootout, so that you won’t press the dreaded remote control.”
Thanks to the elimination of commercials between the end of one show and the beginning of another, shows overlap before fickle viewers have a chance to channel-surf to Another Network. More commercials air within a show, making episodes shorter. Main titles and well-rounded theme songs and scores? Sorry, no time, no money.
Time is money, after all, and networks have become increasingly stingy with each - to the detriment of viewers and such quaint pleasures as a quiet moment after a show, and a good theme song.
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And this is the joy — and sometimes surprise — of the DVD sets. We see the actual closing credits, full-size and readable, in the colors and fonts, with the graphics, and set to the music the creators chose. Network credits are generic: tiny font on solid background, the same for all shows.
TNT has an interesting way of handling it. The next episode begins while the end credits roll at the bottom 1/4 of the screen. This allows them to cram more commercials in the middle while still hooking us IMMEDIATELY into the next episode.
I’ve read that they’d (the nets) do away with the credits entirely, but the contracts with the people who actually make the shows require that they get their credits. Even if they are illegible.
This is exactly why I own a lot of television disc releases of series from the ’60’s, ’70’s, and ’80’s, with two of “I Love Lucy” in the ’50’s. The DVD releases present the closing credits the way that they actually were. Take “Hawaii Five-O” for instance– the first season’s worth (1968-69) had closing credits set against a strobing police light on top of what I believe to be a police cycle racing westbound down Kalakaua Avenue. Dark as it is, it’s hard to tell. However, the DVD release from CBS DVD (of the first season’s worth) recreates this very well– so well that I strongly believe that it is one of my favorite end title sequences. Shame it only lasted one season, because it was one of the best. Of course, I wasn’t alive then, but just the same, I enjoy looking at stuff from my first 8-9 years of life, as well as what was before my time.
Ben, I remember those H50 closing credits well - though I’ve always been partial to the credits set against the outrigger guys. Either way, that show had one of the best theme tunes on TV…tied, maybe, with the Gunsmoke closing tune and the theme from Mission: Impossible.
I feel an incredible nostalgic rush right now. :-)