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Shows that used recycled themes

Wright County Guy said:
The main theme for the game show "Merv Griffin's Crosswords" was an old "Wheel of Fortune" prize cue.
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Correct. Oh that Crosswords.....I'm still hoping to find the ep where the "winner" had MINUS $250.

cd
 
EJM said:
BTW, the original Jackpot theme supposedly is titled Jet Set and was composed by Mike Vickers. (He may have also, under a pseudonym, composed TWIB's other piece of well-known music, Gathering Crowds
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Vickers composed quite a few compositions for the KPM music library, with Jet Set appearing on KPM #1111, Brass Plus Moog from 1972. A release in 1975 was a second volume in the KPM library but I don't recall the title at the moment.
 
BD Sullivan said:
To promote their new 1977 Fall shows (and the returnees), ABC co-opted Orleans' hit, "Still the One," since they sat atop the Nielsens at the time.
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That campaign was also used Down Under...with the Nine Network and Tasmanian regional channel TNT9 (which covered the north of the island) using it as well. Nine still uses the slogan today...
 
Not a specific national show, but the theme from the movie 'Cool Hand Luke' was reused as a news theme by the ABC o & o's in the '70s and '80s(and also by a network in Australia).
 
onairb said:
Not a specific national show, but the theme from the movie 'Cool Hand Luke' was reused as a news theme by the ABC o & o's in the '70s and '80s(and also by a network in Australia).
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Just for clarification, not the movie's main title but the music referred to as the "Tar Sequence," which was composed by Frank Gari. That served as the basis of the Eyewitness News theme. I ended up buying the movie just to show that to people.
 
In local stations WMC NBC 5 in Memphis used Isaac Hayes's Theme From Shaft for their news theme in the late 70's, since he was from the Memphis area.
 
I recall WALB 10 in Albany GA used another Isaac Hayes theme, from "The Men" (ABC's answer to "The Bold Ones"), for its newscast.
 
onairb said:
Not a specific national show, but the theme from the movie 'Cool Hand Luke' was reused as a news theme by the ABC o & o's in the '70s and '80s(and also by a network in Australia).
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The aforementioned Nine Network was the one that used the "Tar Sequence" music, and I believe they still do today.
 
EJM said:
Just for clarification, not the movie's main title but the music referred to as the "Tar Sequence," which was composed by Frank Gari. That served as the basis of the Eyewitness News theme. I ended up buying the movie just to show that to people.
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Thanks, the two thoughts "crossed" while composing that reply.
 
WUTR-TV 20 in Utica used BIRDLAND by Weather Report for a while in the 70's as news bumps. I think some Pink Floyd was used, too. The end theme was Jethro Tull.
 
WMC in Memphis also used George Benson's Breezin' for background music during stock market reports and other things that were scrolled on the screen on their news at about the same time in the 70's and possibly early 80's that they were using the Theme from Shaft for the opening.
 
Someone a few pages (and years) back mentioned Goodson-Todman game shows...besides Now You See It and Quincy Jones' "Chump Change" (which was also used for Bill Cosby's '70s CBS variety show), Goodson used "Working Girl March", a Dave Grusin song from the Tootsie soundtrack, for three mid-80s game show pilots--Body Language, Star Words (hosted by Nipsey Russell), and On a Roll. Of course of the three, Body Language actually on to air for a near two-year run on CBS, after replacing the Tattletales revival on the Eye's game show schedule in 1984. Star Words was also a candidate to replace Tattletales, but CBS went ahead with Tom Kennedy and Body Language instead, and Russell (at least from I can remember) was a semi-regular on that show. The actual theme that BL used for its actual run was very good in its own right, but Working Man March (I'm sure with Grusin's blessing, especially since he himself composed his share of TV themes alongside his other work) could have been a good theme on its own (Body Language or otherwise).

Speaking of Body Language, its ticket/mid-show plug music was remixed/tweaked, and was used as the theme for Classic Concentration.
 
This may have been mentioned before but is worth repeating due to the untimely death of Harry Anderson. The theme for his 90s show, Dave's World was Billy Joel's "You May Be Right.". The song was removed in syndication, so I guess the producers no longer wanted to pay for using the song.
 
C.P.O Sharkey, the Don Rickles sitcom from the mid-70's, not only recycled themes from McHale's Navy and Gomer Pyle, it recycled whole scripts from them.
 
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Dominic Frontiere's theme from The Invaders was originally composed for The Unknown, an unsold suspense anthology pilot prooduced and written by Joseph Stefano of The Outer Limits fame. A reworked version of the pilot aired as the Outer Limits episode "The Forms of Things Unknown", which also used the Invaders music.
 
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