By Ron Rodman
Sports fans eagerly anticipate television broadcasts of their favorite sports, whether it is baseball, basketball, soccer, hockey, boxing, golf, auto racing, or any of the other events aired on the tube. In the USA, the biggest television sports event is undoubtedly (American) professional football: the National Football League. In 2011, NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” was the highest-rated program on American TV; nine of the ten most-watched shows that year were NFL games or pregame shows (the other was the Academy Awards), and each of the 21 biggest audiences in TV history are Super Bowls. Football’s popularity may be attributed to the coincidence of the NFL season with the American holiday season (i.e., Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanza, New Year’s Day, etc.). For many sports fans, football on TV is synonymous with the holidays, and vice versa. One might say that football is part of American holiday festivities.
Professional football was broadcast on television as far back as 1939, when the Philadelphia Eagles played the Brooklyn Dodgers on October 22nd. Games were not telecast with any regularity until the 1950s, but after the 1958 NFL Championship Game between the Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants — the so-called “Greatest Game Ever Played” — football on television gained an enthusiastic following. The DuMont Network and ABC broadcast games in these early years, but NBC and CBS soon bought the rights to broadcast all professional football, with CBS broadcasting the NFL games, and NBC broadcasting AFL games.
By the early 1970s, NFL football became so popular that telecasts featured “pregame shows” that had high quality sets, analytical commentators (many of whom were former players or coaches) and, of course, catchy musical themes — all done to add an air of festivity to the broadcasts of the games. CBS offered one of the first pregame shows dating back to 1961, eventually becoming “The NFL Today,” in the 1970’s. The program was introduced by an upbeat, “light rock” musical theme, with a sort of light rock motif.
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The theme was updated in 1982, adding a disco-style “wah-wah” guitar, and omitting the trombone glissando.
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The arrangement was tweaked again in 1983, with the alteration of computer-generated visual images.
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Not to be outdone, NBC had their own pregame show, “The NFL on NBC.” NBC became the sole broadcaster for AFL football games in 1964, and when the league merged with the NFL in 1970, NBC retained rights to the AFC games, with CBS taking the NFC. (ABC began airing “Monday Night Football” in 1977.)
The musical theme of “The NFL on NBC” in 1973 featured a driving brass section with “wah-wah” guitar, and a jazz-like sax solo:
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Unlike CBS, NBC changed its musical themes frequently. Here’s composer by John Colby’s 1992 theme to the show:
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And the 1995-97 version by Randy Edelman:
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Like the CBS theme, the latter two NBC themes are festive, almost joyful, reflecting the playful nature of sports telecasts.
The Fox Network entered the NFL TV market in 1994 when the network outbid CBS for NFC games. The theme for its show, “Fox NFL Sunday,” was composed by Scott Schreer, Reed Hays, and Phil Garrod, who pitched three separate songs to Fox, who then spliced them together into one.
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The use of the minor key and heavy percussion of the Fox theme creates a more serious tone than the more laid-back light jazz/rock themes of its predecessor. The theme leads to a perception that the broadcast is less about a festive game of skilled athletes, and more about a life-or-death combat by gladiators.
Fox’s gladiatorial theme was soon imitated by both NBC and CBS, who in turn used minor key, martial music for their own broadcasts. In my September blog post, I wrote about John Williams’ theme to NBC’s “Sunday Night Football,” called by at least one fan as “Football’s Imperial March.”
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What caused the shift from festive athletes to combative gladiators in American pro football TV broadcasts? It may have much to do with America’s militaristic posture during the past decade (two wars fought), or television networks’ desire to align the game with the combative, hyper-masculine ethos that emerged from the post 9/11 era.
However, I would contend that we haven’t lost the festive spirit completely in pro football on TV. While the “Fox NFL Sunday” theme has become nearly synonymous with the NFL with its serious, militaristic tone, if we listen to the opening motif of the theme, we might detect a resemblance to a portion of a famous winter holiday song:
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The song is Leroy Anderson’s famous “Sleigh Ride,” sung here in a classic recording by Johnny Mathis. The melody at the beginning of the “B” section (“Giddy up! Giddy up! Giddy up! Let’s go!”) has a melodic profile identical to the beginning of the Fox football theme. Here is a melodic comparison:
So, did Schreer, Hays, and Garrod get their inspiration from a festive holiday song? Maybe televised football hasn’t lost its festive spirit after all!
Happy Holidays, everyone!
Ron Rodman is Dye Family Professor of Music at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. He is the author of Tuning In: American Television Music, published by Oxford University Press in 2010. Read his previous blog posts on music and television.
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Image credit: Image courtesy of Ron Rodman. Do not reproduce without permission.
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I stumbled across your lovely blog recently - keep up the beautiful work, m'lady.
Hope you feel much better soon, chickadee - we've had the mad throat lurgy in these 'ere parts of the land of late, so I can sympathise with feeling iffy.
Vigs
x
Oh Gretel! Get yourself under a blanket and keep nice and cosy! That's an order.
Hope you are feeling better and your landlord fixes the pipes in the bathroom. That does not sound good. I'm looking foeard to seeing more detailed paper cuts.
You poor dear...dealing with the ravages of a tummy eruption as well as leaky pipes and wet ceilings! How you manage to keep your wit in tack is beyond me! I so hope you both are feeling back in tip top shape VERY soon!
Drink lots of fluid - we don't want you dehydrated!
I will check out the new blog as well as the new SOSF event.
Sending you broth, a comfy cozy chair with a blanket and more DVDS to watch!
XOXO
O I remeber your littel books from CL!! I love black on white cut outs ! I sahl get Madme Grognonne to send yo some calves foot jelly or alternatively perhasp it might be better if she came and fixed theloo!
Oh my goodness, you poor things :( - I hope that at the very least the toilet has been fixed by now, and that you are both suffering less. Sounds awful.
Collywobbles and a leaky toilet!? Oh dear! If I was still near by I would bring round some chocolate brownies.. when your stomach is a bit better of course!
Hello G,
I love that decoration on the envelope, such wonderful quirky characters.
Hope you are feeling better now.
Penny.
xx
Oh dear, I hope you both feel better again very soon, and the loo's fixed too. I just got over a tummy bug too, simply ghastly.
Love the cut-outs!
oh my, there is nothing worse than the collywobbles! Too sick to really do anything but not sick enough to do nothing. Hope you are over them soon.
Oh my, we got to see Cirque de Soliel and it was so FABULOUS my DH said he would pay to see it (we were lucky to be guests :) and that's saying a lot.
Get well soon, love the cirque too and think Reg is great, thanks for the intro.
Hope your tummy is feeling better and that your landlord is looking after that leak!
What pretty little books :)
tea
xo
I hope you all have recovered by now (it's the 20th of June).
Have to make a comment because I love the work you show us here and would like to know if these illustrations are still for sale somewhere. Would you show me the way, please?
It's my first official day of "vacation" (well, sort of, I want to use the followings week to be "creative", but right now I am catching up visiting all those wonderful blog links I saved over the months, and yours is just so delightful, I have a hard time not reading all of your posts at once. I am afraid I need to schedule my blog visits in an orderly fashion, otherwise I get lost therein. *g*).
Thank you for sharing all that beauty you create.