The Top TV Themes of All Time

That Thing With Rich Appel, the weekly syndicated show targeted to ’60s/’70s Oldies stations, does a lot of countdowns, including the annual WOW Countdown, a favorite of Ross on Radio readers. Appel has done a “Job 40” of work-related songs for Labor Day and one with family acts for Thanksgiving weekend. But the one that has gotten the most traction over the years is the show’s Tele-lection of listeners’ 40 favorite TV themes. The seventh annual countdown aired last weekend, Feb. 17-19.

Tele-lection is a testament to the common currency of TV themes, but also “it probably does well because voting is easy to do. After all, there are far fewer recognizable TV show themes than hit songs, and most themes are short and easy to remember, and nearly all of these shows are still available to watch on cable, YouTube or somewhere else,” says producer/host Appel.

Among typical listener comments: “I loved singing along to the Tele-lection. Scary how I can remember words to TV show themes that are 40 years old, but I can’t remember what room I left my phone in.”

More than half of the songs on this year’s show were Billboard top 40 hits “or thereabouts,” including five out of the top 10. Despite this, and the universality of many TV themes, none of the top 15 seen here are songs regularly heard on Classic Hits radio. Some of that is age — of the top 15 vote-getters, the most recent is 1982, although some entries in the entire 40 position countdown were as recent as The Big Bang Theory. The oldest show represented is 1957’s Perry Mason.

The march of time has played another role. Many of each year’s biggest moves are driven by the loss of a beloved star, including the Laverne & Shirley theme following Cindy Williams’ recent passing. “Thank You for Being a Friend” had its best showing last year in memory of Golden Girls star Betty White. There have been similar tributes to Mary Tyler Moore, Batman’s Adam West and The Partridge Family’s David Cassidy.

“We hear a lot about the importance of ‘compelling content’ on radio,” says Appel. “But I believe even more important is unique content, features that stand out, that no one else is doing.” 

Here is the Top 15 from this year’s Tele-lection, led by “Hawaii Five-O,” which has been No. 1 for the last three years and for five in total. (The year shown reflects when the theme first appeared on the TV show, not necessarily when it charted, which was a year later in several cases.)

Appel’s WOW Countdown initially focused on songs that had never made the top 10. In recent years, to simplify and encourage listener voting, Appel has left it to listeners to decide if a song is a “wow,” even if it’s not always an “oh wow.” A song might be an archetypical lost hit (e.g., “Baby Blue” by Badfinger, last year’s No. 1) or never-quite-a-hit (“Can’t Find the Time” by Orpheus), but it can also be a G.O.A.T. song like the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows” that is a hit for Appel’s affiliates but not for ’80s-based stations.

Voting for WOW Countdown 2023 is now open. This year’s countdown airs on the weekend of April 15-16.