ABC's Wide World of Sports
1961–1998ABCDocumentary
"The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat" — a narration so well known that the ski-jumper who supplied the agony became famous for falling over.
ABC's Wide World of Sports kept one opening title sequence, 66 seconds long, across season 20.
At 66 seconds, it opens well above the 37-second median for documentary sequences in this catalogue.
It arrived on ABC in 1961, when The Bugs Bunny Show, American Bandstand and The Lawrence Welk Show were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 20
66sArchive upload of the 1980 open; counting a season per year from the April 1961 launch, that is the twentieth.
More documentary opening titles from the 1960s
2 sequences
Top of the Pops
Forty-two years of the chart, and a Phil Lynott instrumental called Yellow Pearl for a theme.
- Season 1
- Seasons 18–20
1 sequenceUniversity Challenge
College Boy by Derek New, and a split screen that has stacked two teams on top of each other since 1962.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTomorrow's World
Live demonstrations of things that did not work yet, opening on graphics that promised they would.
- Season 29
1 sequenceReady Steady Go!
"The weekend starts here" — the British pop programme that put the Beatles, the Stones and Motown on the same stage.
- Season 1
1 sequenceWorld of Sport
ITV's answer to Grandstand, which is remembered now almost entirely for the wrestling at four o'clock.
- Season 20
1 sequenceSportsnight
The midweek sports programme, and the strand most of British sports broadcasting learned its trade on.
- Season 26