The Price Is Right
1972–CBSDocumentary
"Come on down" — the longest-running game show in American television, opening the same way for fifty years.
The Price Is Right rebuilt its titles: two distinct opening sequences are catalogued here across seasons 1 and 36, running between 37 and 64 seconds.
At 64 seconds at its longest, it opens well above the 37-second median for documentary sequences in this catalogue.
It arrived on CBS in 1972, when Candid Camera, Guiding Light and As the World Turns were also on the network.
Only 139 of the 2,618 shows catalogued here changed their titles at all; The Price Is Right did so once.
All 2 opening title sequences
Season 1
64sFan upload of the premiere, 8 September 1972.
Season 36
37sDrew Carey's first episode, October 2007 — the thirty-sixth season counted from the 1972 premiere, and the same three words to open it.
More documentary opening titles from the 1970s
2 sequences
Family Feud
Survey says — two families, a buzzer, and a theme rearranged for every host since Richard Dawson.
- Season 1
- Season 35
1 sequence
Monday Night Football
The programme that moved American football into primetime, and gave it a fanfare to arrive on.
- Season 2
1 sequenceSoul Train
An animated locomotive pulling into a city drawn in airbrush — the longest-running first-run syndicated show in American history opens like a record sleeve.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe World at War
Thames Television's twenty-six part history of the Second World War, still the benchmark for the form.
- Season 1
1 sequenceNBC Nightly News
Fourteen seconds of brass and a rotating globe, which is what a network evening bulletin has been reduced to.
- Season 47
1 sequenceThe Old Grey Whistle Test
The serious music programme to Top of the Pops' singles chart, with a harmonica riff and a star-kicker cartoon.
- Season 1