Nightline
1980–ABCDocumentary
A late bulletin that began as nightly updates on the Iran hostage crisis and outlived the crisis by forty-five years.
Nightline opens with a main title sequence of 87 seconds.
At 87 seconds, it opens well above the 37-second median for documentary sequences in this catalogue.
It arrived on ABC in 1980, when One Life to Live, All My Children and The Bugs Bunny Show were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 1
87sThe 1980 premiere, which dates it to the season this entry is filed at. ABC News over the crescent moon and the city skyline; the clip then carries on into Koppel's opening from the Washington newsroom, so it runs 87 seconds for a much shorter sequence.
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