A Look Back at Television's Greatest Hits

And a tease for some upcoming reviews

Recently on X, or The App Formerly Known As Twitter, a post made the rounds about what was the best TV show theme.

I weighed in with my opinion on what was the best theme, but then that post got me to thinking about what I happen to have stashed in my collection of compact discs that I haven't played in some time, given that this is the age of Spotify and related playlist apps.

For those of you who weren't around for the 1990s, that was arguably the heyday for the compact disc, but that's another topic for another day. The point is that among the compact discs (CDs for short) in my collection was the almost-complete collection of Television's Greatest Hits.

Now we go back a step further to 1985 when the TeeVee Toons record label first came into existence. At the time, this record label released a collection of 65 TV themes from the 1950s and 1960s, made available on a collection of either two records or two cassette tapes (the former music format is still around, proving there's plenty of nostalgia for records, and the latter has fallen out of usage).

The record for the first collection included not only various TV themes, but had an introduction to the collection on the first record, in the form of "TeeVee Toons proudly begins its broadcast day." You see, back in television's early years, TV stations didn't air programming 24 hours a day. They would usually start broadcasting at 5 or 6 a.m. and give some type of "good morning" message to viewers who were fortunate enough to turn on the TV that early in the day.

That message (provided by Don Pardo, an announcer known for his work on shows like Jeopardy and Saturday Night Live) kicked off the first record, which featured theme songs from popular children's shows from Captain Kangaroo to Howdy Doody.

The record concluded with a "test of the emergency broadcast system" which frequently aired on TV stations to get viewers in the habit of paying attention if there was a need to take shelter. Over time, this became more about doing so in case of severe weather, but back in the 1950s, the concerns about nuclear war meant this warning was about the advice from Bert the Turtle to "duck and cover" in case of a nuclear attack. (See, this is the type of thing that should make you wonder about people who think the 1950s were "the good old days" when you were being warned by the government about what to do in case of a nuclear strike.)

The second record featured "mid-morning sit-coms" with theme songs from mostly situational comedies, ranging from The Beverly Hillbillies to The Andy Griffith Show. It concludes with a "please stand by" message, which recognizes the days when TV stations would sometimes have technical issues and would automatically run this message when programs got cut off. In the case of this record, Pardo is helpful to remind viewers to tune into Jeopardy later in the day.

The third record was all about "afternoon adventure," in which the majority of TV themes came from Westerns that were popular back in those decades (such as Bonanza and The Long Ranger), plus notable science fiction shows (Star Trek and The Twilight Zone are two examples) and a couple of family shows (Flipper and F Troop) that didn't quite fit either genre. This record concludes "we interrupt this program" to pay homage to when TV stations would jump in the middle of programs to provide breaking news updates.

And the fourth record is dubbed "prime time drama" and features mostly shows about law enforcement, otherwise known as crime dramas. This collection includes the likes of Mission: Impossible, Hawaii Five-O and Secret Agent, the last of which is an obscure TV show which had a theme song that was a top 10 hit on the American music charts. The fourth record closes out with the original Tonight Show theme, the Late Late Show theme (utilized for TV stations that aired movies in the late hours of night) and the TeeVee Toons sign-off, which recognized when TV stations ended their broadcast day, often with the national anthem.

The first collection was followed by the release of a second collection called Television's Greatest Hits Volume 2 in 1986, which featured 65 more themes from the 1950s and 1960. Then came a third collection in 1987, Television's Greatest Hits 70s and 80s, in which case the 65 themes were from those decades. After that, TeeVee Toons released in 1989 a collection of commercial jingles from the 1950s and 1960s, then the releases stopped coming.

That is, until 1996, when TeeVee Toons released those collections again on CD, plus four more volumes: Black and White Classics, In Living Color, Remote Control and Cable Ready. The initial release of the CDs featured lenticular covers, in which the image changed depending on how you titled the box. (Later releases did not include lenticular covers.)

TeeVee Toons had also expanded to include a number of musical artists under its label (notably Nine Inch Nails, Sevendust, Gravity Kills and Snoop Dogg) before the label filed for bankruptcy in 2008 after a legal battle, then had its assets acquired by Bicycle Music Company in 2010.

As you can see from the header photo, I happen to own the seven collections of TV themes on CD, plus I own two of the three original collections on record. I don't own Volume 2 on record, nor do I own the commercial jingles collection. But I do own a related novelty record.

And that brings me to another TeeVee Toons release from 1985, a 12-inch single (a standard-size record, as opposed to the seven-inch size for most record singles) that included the original Jetsons theme, plus an extended version recorded in 1985 (it was recorded at the time that new episodes of The Jetsons were released in syndication). It also included the TeeVee Toons Master Mix titled "Jane, Get Me Off This Crazy Thing."

The "master mix" was dance music that mixed in clips from multiple TV themes, starting with the closing theme to the original Jetsons in which George Jetson is begging Jane to "stop this crazy thing." (For those who never saw The Jetsons, I'll let you watch a clip of the opening and closing credits so you understand what's going on there.) That's where the title of the "master mix" comes from.

But wait, there were two versions of this mix — the first one is a "prime time" mix at a length that's meant to be aired on radio stations (about three-and-a-half minutes in length). On the "B" side of the record, there's an extended version called the "late night dance mix" which runs for more than six minutes and features additional TV theme clips, plus a track that features just the dance music with no TV theme clips.

All of this brings me to what I'm about to embark on for my Substack in the coming weeks, because part of what I wanted to write about where things related to comic book geekery, and what better topic to go over than TV themes of years past. Besides, it will allow me to take a longer break from the political topics that took over the Substack for a while, plus offer something different other than the NFL.

In the coming weeks, I'm going to sit down, listen to my TeeVee Toons collections and talk about them. I'll also talk about what I think are some of the best themes and what may be the most iconic, even if some of them may be getting lost to time, particularly as we move into a new era of entertainment in which there are fewer shows with themes you can't get out of your head. In some cases, I'll provide link to TV theme clips, but I'll avoid doing too many of them because I don't want to bog a piece down with 65 different TV themes.

At any rate, I do hope you get a kick out of this topic, even if it's not necessarily what you came here to read about. I would at least hope you are all willing to take a mental health break by exploring a topic like this. And who knows — maybe you'll get a bit of nostalgia along the way.