I love movie and TV scores.  I also love news music.  Which makes me a giant nerd.  I also know everything there is to know about news music, so you should just basically assume my opinions are as ironclad as the Ten Commandments.  Or just realize they are only my opinions, whichever works for you.

The best:

5) Right Here, Right Now (615 Music)

At once warm, friendly and intense, this theme package was developed for CBS San Diego.  One of only a handful of contemporary packages with a substantive image campaign song, it successfully conveys investigation and intimacy.  Normally I don’t care for themes with a lot of electric cues, but this one is pretty much perfect.

4) WNBC News Redesign 2003 (Rampage Music NY)

This theme now seems to be relegated to Spanish language newscasts on Univision O&O’s, which is unfortunate because this is one of the most haunting and beautiful news themes I’ve ever heard.  Featuring sweeping and swelling cinematic orchestras and the integration of the NBC chimes, this package includes every image you would want to convey in a newscast: integrity, tradition, accuracy and compassion.  I honestly am not sure why it isn’t used by more NBC stations or why NBCU feels that 615′s The Tower is more appropriate.

3) Impact (615 Music)

I’ll try to avoid the bad pun, but I don’t think any other news music package has had quite the same reach since the “Cool Hand Luke” themes of the 1970s.  The various versions have branding signatures for three of the four major broadcast networks and cover every possible type of newscast and market size, and you’ll even hear traces of the Impact theme signature in other 615 packages like The Ignitor. WTMJ-TV in Milwaukee commissioned a brassy, orchestral take on the package which really enhanced its versatility in my eyes, but also introduced this puzzling war-at-sea cut.

2) Overture (Stephen Arnold Music)

I am obviously biased, since KSTP commissioned this package in 1999, but this is one of those themes that sticks with you, and even seven years after they stopped using it, I still associate that station with this theme.  There’s just something about the SAM themes; I believe they are the only TV music production company that uses only studio musicians and do no electronic programming, and the Overture package is a great example of what a rich, organic sound that setup can produce.

1) Third Coast (Stephen Arnold Music)

I think this is the best example of a news package that would play as well in New York City as it would in Montana City, MT (pop. 2,094).  Full and brassy, but unpretentious, with a dynamic hook, this package would fit in well with any station’s visual branding.  As a SAM suite, like Overture, it was recorded with 100% live musicians, which means that tracks like this AM news open get authentic touches like hearing the guitarist’s fingers rub on the strings between frets as he noodles.  As with any news package, there are missteps, like the sports rejoin that sounds like ti has no business in this suite, but in Third Coast they are few and very far between.

Honorable mention goes to the Fox O&O news package (OSI Music) for not deploying mass suckitude to a station cluster like Gannett. (See below.)

The worst:

2) CBS Enforcer Collection/Enforcer New Generation (Gari Media)

Maybe it’s a little unfair of me to pick on a package that’s been around since 1994, but 615′s Impact and In-Sink have been around for almost as long and have held up much better.  It’s also hard to take a news show seriously when its main theme sounds so much like Sim City SNES.  This package is one of the reasons I am against broad-based applications of branding mandates, but it pales in comparison to…

1) Gannett News Music Package (Rampage Music NY)

It’s really hard to believe that a music production house that turned out something as beautiful as the WNBC package could also poop out something as universally terrible as this.  As with The Enforcer, there’s just nothing terribly special with this package and it lacks a definitive hook.  I can understand the desire to have a one-size-fits-all music and graphics package for your cluster to make it cheaper, but you should invest at least some money into it., especially when you have a presence in two top-10 markets  As the theme sits now, it’s over-synthesized, and it can’t decide if it wants to be hard-hitting, urban, contemporary or folksy.  Accompanied by that awful pulsating present in every cut except the orchestral ones, this is easily my least-favorite news music package.

Big thanks to News Music Now and the SouthernMedia News Music Archive for providing the audio sources.