America's Funniest Home Videos
1989–ABCDocumentary
A clip show assembled entirely from what the audience sent in, and the longest-running entertainment programme ABC has.
America's Funniest Home Videos opens with a main title sequence of 48 seconds.
At 48 seconds, it opens well above the 37-second median for documentary sequences in this catalogue.
It arrived on ABC in 1989, when One Life to Live, All My Children and The Bugs Bunny Show were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 1
48sFan upload of the 1989 opening.
More documentary opening titles from the 1980s
1 sequenceUnsolved Mysteries
Robert Stack in a trench coat, a synthesiser and a fog machine — the most frightening thing on American television that was not fiction.
- Season 1
1 sequenceReading Rainbow
LeVar Burton reading to children for twenty-three years, and "but you don't have to take my word for it".
- Season 1
1 sequenceAmerica's Most Wanted
The programme Fox launched itself on, and the one that turned a network into a switchboard.
- Season 1
1 sequenceMTV Unplugged
Sixteen seconds and an acoustic guitar — a format whose whole argument is in the title card.
- Season 1
1 sequenceCatchphrase
Say what you see, and a golden robot called Mr Chips who was the reason anyone watched.
- Season 1
1 sequenceSolid Gold
The weekly chart countdown as a dance routine, with its own troupe named after it.
- Season 1