Dark Shadows
Waves against a cliff and a theremin-adjacent wail, broadcast live on weekday afternoons — a gothic soap that ran over twelve hundred episodes.
Dark Shadows opens with a main title sequence of 25 seconds.
At 25 seconds, it opens well under the 50-second median for horror sequences in this catalogue.
It arrived on ABC in 1966, when The Bugs Bunny Show, ABC's Wide World of Sports and American Bandstand were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 1
25sThe original black-and-white opening.
More horror opening titles from the 1960s
1 sequenceNight Gallery
Rod Serling walking through a gallery of paintings, each one introducing that week's story — a title sequence rebuilt around new artwork every episode.
- Season 1
1 sequence
Grey's Anatomy
Twenty-six seconds of surgical instruments and a guitar figure, from a series that has now outlived most of the shows that copied it.
- Season 1
2 sequences
Twin Peaks
A bird, a sawmill blade and a waterfall, over Angelo Badalamenti at a tempo no network would approve today — ninety seconds of a town being described before anyone in it speaks.
- Seasons 1–2
- Season 3
1 sequence
The Rookie
A five-second card: THE ROOKIE in tall white capitals over a row of Los Angeles palms against a hazy blue sky, and the episode is under way.
- Season 1
1 sequence
Dancing with the Stars
The American Strictly, which runs two seasons a year and rebuilds its titles for most of them.
- Season 10
1 sequence
Scrubs
Twelve seconds, an X-ray and a guitar — a medical comedy that spends less time on titles than most shows spend on a network ident.
- Season 1