The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
A curtain, a rainbow arch and an announcer saying the two words — thirty years of the same entrance.
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson kept one opening title sequence, 61 seconds long, across season 18.
At 61 seconds, it opens well above the 38-second median for comedy sequences in this catalogue.
It arrived on NBC in 1962, when Truth or Consequences, Search for Tomorrow and Dragnet were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 18
61sFan upload dated 1979; counting a season per year from Carson's October 1962 start, that is the eighteenth.
More comedy opening titles from the 1960s
2 sequences
Sesame Street
Children running through a New York street to a song asking how to get there — an opening that has been remade every decade for over fifty years.
- Season 1
- Seasons 24–25
1 sequenceThe Addams Family
Harpsichord, bass clarinet, and two finger snaps that half a century of television has never managed to shake off. The family assemble for a portrait while Lurch supplies the only three adjectives the song needs.
- Seasons 1–2
1 sequenceThe Brady Bunch
A three-by-three grid of faces all looking at each other — a title sequence so structurally famous that the grid alone is the reference.
- Season 1
1 sequenceBewitched
Animated witches and a swing arrangement — a live-action sitcom that opens as a cartoon, which was the only way to show the magic on a 1964 budget.
- Season 1
1 sequenceGilligan's Island
A theme song that narrates the entire premise, names every castaway, and was rewritten after the first season to stop leaving two of them out.
- Season 3
1 sequenceThe Andy Griffith Show
A father and son walking to a fishing hole while somebody whistles — twenty-three seconds, and one of the most quoted pieces of music in American television.
- Season 1