Television news music

Television news music is used by television stations to brand their news operations. Each television station uses an identifiable news theme; some themes are used by multiple stations while others are composed specifically for a certain station.

In the United States, news themes used on local television stations are typically organized into news music packages, with each theme within a package sharing a similar musical signature. A typical television news music package consists of anywhere from 50 to as many as 1000 cuts of music. One of the largest news music packages is Overture, created by Stephen Arnold Music. This package consists of a total of 36 themes and over 1000 cuts.

News music packages consist of the following: opens, closes, bumpers, topicals (promo beds), franchise opens/stingers, IDs, utility tracks and billboards.

Stations within the same market area will always use different music packages, unless they are related to each other in some manner; e.g., if two stations may be owned by the same company (or operated by the same company under a local marketing agreement (LMA), or one station may contract out its news production to the other. For example: in Ft. Myers, Florida, ABC affiliate WZVN-TV is owned by Montclair Communications, Inc., while NBC affiliate WBBH-TV in the same market is owned by Waterman Broadcasting Corporation, which operates WZVN under an LMA. That said, both stations currently use This is Your News by Gari Communications. In newscasts airing on WZVN, NBC network ID stingers can be heard in the news opens, even though WZVN-TV is an ABC affiliate.

A case where the opposite of the aforementioned is true is in Denver, Colorado, Fox affiliate KDVR and CW affiliate KWGN are owned by the Tribune Media.

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