As I was marveling over the efficiency of the opening credits of a show I’m currently binging (The Good Wife, a 3- or 4-second sequence consisting of the title and the creators’ names) I tuned in to Bill Maher’s HBO show, and thought “What a colossal waste of time! Every week, after the ‘HBO presents’ BS, he puts on a total waste of time sequence of 20 or 30 seconds (seems like longer) just to give you the title of the show, replete with a pounding hip-hop tune over a rapidly changing collage of images designed to suggest that the show will (AMAZING!) discuss current events, and then that is followed by BM, appropriate initials if there ever were, getting studio audience applause for another 20-30 seconds, while the host insists “Oh, thank you, you’re too kind, please, stop applauding, thank you very much” and so on, making it at least a minute, probably more, that I need to fast-forward through week after week.
It occurs to me that this waste of time is deliberate, a way to pad out the show, which often has to be cut short just as they’re getting into an interesting subject (which is why I watch—he often has guests on whom I’d like to hear from). Is there a reason I’m not getting for Maher to stick this 2 minutes of wall-to-wall BS at the beginning of his show, and then inevitably cut off some discussion with his guests with “Now we have to go to New Rules”? I don’t get the need for credit sequences at all (they could run with lettering superimposed on the first scene of almost any show) but this seems to be a deliberate waste of my time and attention.
So, there are a couple of reasons to pad out the opening and end credits, at least back in the broadcast era; specifically, that the sequences could be truncated or (in the case of end credits) sped up to allow for more commercial time without cutting any of the actual story. Also, having that ‘padding’ on the front end of a show allowed for viewers to transition from the previous show and large commercial block to the next show (at least, in the era before the ‘cold open’ in television became more popular.). It doesn’t generally make much sense in the era of streaming and where credit information can be found in online databases, but it can still be used to set the tone and convey plot information, such as the openings of Game of Thrones or The Expanse which evolved with the story developments, or Better Call Saul where the constantly changing opening hinted at some plot development.
Frankly, I find Maher’s entire show to be “wall-to-wall BS” so however much time is wasted on credits is time that doesn’t go directly to his self-aggrandizement about how smart he is, but to each their own.
I prefer “Just the title, ma’am.” types following by people credits overlaid at the bottom of the opening sequence. Good shows do these while giving the opening setting pan shot, people walking up to the place where Things Happen and the dialogue starts when the credits end.
A long crappy theme while they show screen after screen of credits just sucks. I’m look at you Murdoch Mysteries.
The trend in recent decades has been to make the intro shorter, which I always understood was to make more time for commercials. Check out the intro from the original Hawaii Five-0. If the version in this video is the one the played in every episode, it’s a full minute and a half, and most of it isn’t even credits, it’s mostly just the theme song playing over shots of the actors interspersed with shots of Honolulu landmarks. Nowadays if a show has an intro sequence it’s at most 30 seconds.
Long intros were also used to explain the shows premise back when people would randomly channel surf and an intro explaining anything is handy for a first time viewer.
Matt Groening once explained that he gave The Simpsons its unusually long opening credits sequence because he hadn’t watched much TV since childhood and didn’t realize long intros were a thing of the past.
The appeal of Hawaii Five-O wasn’t really its repetitive plots but the then-exotic setting of the Hawaiian islands (unvisited at that time by most Americans unless they were residents or in the Navy), and the opening credits put that on display set to Morton Stevens pulse-pounding theme song, whichis still one of the most recognizable instrumental themes ever made. Honestly, the opening credits were often the best thing about any given episode, which were often pretty dully procedurals with an occasional spy-oriented flair.
Yeah, that was ridiculously long. I never watched that show but that must have been from a season when James MacArthur wasn’t in the cast. What a list of great second bananas from the 1960s and 70s. And the always lovely Nancy Kwan!
Coincidentally, yesterday afternoon, I was listening to an interview show on NPR, and the guests were musicians/composers Wendy Melvoin and Lisa Coleman (a.k.a. “Wendy & Lisa”), who were members of Prince’s “Revolution” band in the 1980s.
For the past few decades, the two of them have been largely focused on composing theme music and and musical scores for television shows and movies; they’ve won several ASCAP “Composer of the Year” awards for that work, as well as an Emmy for writing the theme song for Nurse Jackie. They noted that writing actual theme songs for TV shows is largely an extinct thing now, for the reasons already discussed (streaming and binge-watching), as many producers now want no more than a 5-second riff to play over the (very brief) opening credit.
The opening for Evil is pretty cool but damn long. I’ve watched it all the way through once and that’s enough. When you choose “skip intro” little messages pop up, like " the skipping ghost is angered" and "if you skip the show will be canceled(it has been).
I have to admit, I like long opening sequences. The original Hawaii Five O was one of my favorites.
What was disappointing was that, when the shows went into syndication, the opening sequences were often abbreviated, giving more time for commercials, I suppose. It wasn’t until I heard a recording of the original opening credit music for The Mickey Mouse Club and realized that it was much longer than what I recalled seeing (and hearing) on TV that I realized I’d been cheated of the full opening. I wasn’t in the first wave of Boomers, so I got my Mickey Mouse club second hand, in syndication, and the opening had been clipped. I was finally able to watch the whole thing on the DVD (in color, no less, which original viewers didn’t get to see). You can see it now o YouTube:
The “heart in satin” opening for I Love Lucy is another vestige of syndication. The original openings were animated, and were prety clealy dropped because they contained advertising that wasn’t being paid for in syndication:
New Girl’s credits kept getting shorter and shorter as the seasons progressed - they started with Zooey Deschanel singing the theme song, then just a brief instrumental clip of the theme over a static “New Girl” screen, and for some reason, even that was thought to be too long as they cut a couple of beats between the third and fourth notes out of it.
How many network shows still have credits where the stars’ names and images appear in them? The last one I can think of was Brooklyn Nine-Nine, although there are some that I don’t watch that might; I know Roseanne did, so The Conners might.
