Search for Tomorrow
Thirty-five years of American daytime, and the serial that was on air before most of the networks carrying it were.
Search for Tomorrow opens with a main title sequence of 24 seconds.
At 24 seconds, it opens well under the 50-second median for drama sequences in this catalogue.
It arrived on CBS in 1951, when Candid Camera, Truth or Consequences and What's My Line? were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 1
24sThe 1984 title card, the show's name over cloud. Counting a season a year from the 1951 start puts that near the thirty-fourth, which is arithmetic rather than a label, so it stays filed at the first with the year stated here.
More drama opening titles from the 1950s
1 sequenceBonanza
A burning map and four men riding out of it — one of the first title sequences designed to show off colour television, which is precisely why it looks like that.
- Season 1
2 sequences
As the World Turns
The turning globe that gave American daytime its most-copied image, over fifty-four years.
- Season 41
- Season 52
2 sequences
Guiding Light
Seventy-two years on radio and television between them — the longest-running story ever told in any medium.
- Season 44
- Season 51
1 sequenceRawhide
A cattle drive that never arrives, with Frankie Laine's theme and a young Clint Eastwood.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Rifleman
A widowed rancher and his son, opened by twelve rounds fired down a street in under ten seconds.
- Season 1
1 sequenceWagon Train
A wagon company crossing to California, and the series Gene Roddenberry pitched Star Trek against.
- Season 1