Total Request Live
1998–2008MTVDocumentary
MTV's daily video countdown, broadcast from a studio above Times Square with the crowd outside kept in shot.
Total Request Live kept one opening title sequence, 26 seconds long, across season 5.
At 26 seconds, it opens well under the 37-second median for documentary sequences in this catalogue.
It arrived on MTV in 1998, when The Real World, Celebrity Deathmatch and Daria were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 5
26sThe 2002 open. Counting a season a year from the 1998 start puts that at the fifth, which is arithmetic rather than a label on the upload.
More documentary opening titles from the 1990s
1 sequenceThe Real World
"This is the true story of seven strangers" — the narration that invented the reality format, and the one every parody since has copied.
- Season 1
1 sequenceDateline NBC
NBC's newsmagazine, which outlasted every other network attempt at the form by turning into a true-crime hour.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTime Team
Three days to excavate a site, with the clock running in the titles before anyone picks up a trowel.
- Season 1
1 sequenceWho Wants to Be a Millionaire?
Keith and Matthew Strachan's music, which unusually runs continuously under the questions rather than only over the titles — one of the few game shows scored like a thriller.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Beatles Anthology
The band's own account of itself, assembled with the three surviving members.
- Season 1
1 sequenceBill Nye the Science Guy
Science for children at the speed of a music video, with a theme that shouts the presenter's name.
- Season 1