American Gladiators

Name: American Gladiators
Genre: Documentary

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Members of the public running an assault course against professional athletes in lycra, in a format that outlived its own slot by decades.

American Gladiators opens with a main title sequence of 47 seconds.

At 47 seconds, it opens well above the 37-second median for documentary sequences in this catalogue.

It arrived on Syndication in 1989, when Romper Room, Soul Train and Hee Haw were also on the network.

1 sequence

The opening titles

47s

Fan upload of the intro. The alternatives are a joke edit and four years of themes collected together.

1987–2002NBCDocumentary

Robert Stack in a trench coat, a synthesiser and a fog machine — the most frightening thing on American television that was not fiction.

1983–2006PBSDocumentary

LeVar Burton reading to children for twenty-three years, and "but you don't have to take my word for it".

1988–2013FoxDocumentary

The programme Fox launched itself on, and the one that turned a network into a switchboard.

1989–MTVDocumentary

Sixteen seconds and an acoustic guitar — a format whose whole argument is in the title card.

1986–ITVDocumentary

Say what you see, and a golden robot called Mr Chips who was the reason anyone watched.

1980–1988SyndicationDocumentary

The weekly chart countdown as a dance routine, with its own troupe named after it.