A Requiem: Songs That Made the Hit Parade . . .

. . . Guys Like Them They Had It Made

Earle Hagen and Alexander Courage, who died days apart last week, were maestros of a musical genre that faded some years before they did. Hagen and Courage composed TV theme music, those signature snippets that sent Pavlovian signals to viewers.

It's fair to say they don't make TV theme composers like them anymore. In fact, it's fair to say they don't make many TV theme composers of any kind anymore. The TV theme song, while not gone, is ailing. Indeed, if TV theme songs had a theme song these days, it would be a single descending pennywhistle note.

Hagen, 88 at the time of his death, wrote some of the most memorable and beloved tunes of no more than a minute in length. He is perhaps best known for his themes to "The Dick Van Dyke Show" and "The Andy Griffith Show" (that's him on the soundtrack, whistling). He also wrote a bunch of the better themes from the 1960s and early '70s -- arguably the Golden Years of the form -- including those for "I Spy," "That Girl," "Mod Squad," and "Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C."

Courage, also 88, was less prolific, but his name will endure as the author of the "Star Trek" theme, which has perhaps the most famous four-note opening since Beethoven's Fifth.

TV themes, great and not-so, used to abound. At their best (think "Gilligan's Island," "The Brady Bunch," "Fresh Prince of Bel Air"), they did more than just worm into your ear and settle there for a lifetime. They introduced characters, established plots, set a program's mood and tone.

"Come listen to a story 'bout a man named Jed . . . "

"You're gonna make it after all."

"Welcome back, your dreams were your ticket out . . . "

" . . . where everybody knows your name."

"Going down to South Park, going to have myself a time."

Often, no lyrics were needed. Quincy Jones's musical theme for "Sanford and Son" magically conjured both a junkyard and the shambling Fred Sanford. Paul Anka's "Tonight Show" theme was inseparable from late night and Johnny Carson (can you even hum the tune Jay Leno uses?). The "Miami Vice" theme, set over a pastel-perfect credit sequence, efficiently evoked the '80s decadence to follow. Same with Danny Elfman's nearly 20-year-old theme song for "The Simpsons."

TV shows don't do that anymore, or at least they don't do it the way Hagen and Courage and theme-writing legends like Mike Post ("Rockford Files," "Hill Street Blues," "Law & Order," etc.) did it in a quainter, slower era of television. Few network TV shows now open with extended title-and-theme sequences. Instead, they open "cold," with the action and dialogue immediately in progress after the conclusion of the preceding program, almost literally before viewers know what's going on. The opening credits tend to be perfunctory; apart from a few brief chords, "Lost" and "Grey's Anatomy" barely bother with music at all.

The reason for this is largely a result of the competitive dynamics of TV: So many channels, so little time to hook viewers. "Executives at the broadcast networks are operating in a climate of fear," says Jon Burlingame, the author of "TV's Greatest Hits," a history of theme music. "They're paranoid that if they haven't grabbed you in the first two minutes, you'll go away."

He laments: "The value of a theme as an identifying signature of a program is not appreciated by producers."

Shorter opening sequences also mean more money. Why waste a full minute on an introductory sequence -- as shows regularly did up through the 1980s -- when half or more of that time can be devoted to another commercial? Themes may also be superfluous in the fast-forwarding TiVo age.

The demise of the theme may have been signaled by Garry Shandling's spoof of theme music in his 1986 Fox sitcom, "It's Garry Shandling's Show." The lyrics of the theme: "This is the theme to Garry's show . . . This is the music that you hear as you watch the credits . . . We're almost to the part of where I start to whistle . . ."

The last great TV theme, argues Burlingame, was "I'll Be There for You," a song written for "Friends" by Michael Skloff and Allee Willis and performed by the Rembrandts. The theme for the '90s show proved so popular that a full-length version of it made Billboard's charts as a standalone single, one of a number of TV themes ("Mission: Impossible," "Hawaii Five-O," the Partridge Family's "C'mon, Get Happy," "Greatest American Hero's" "Believe It or Not," among others) to become hits.

The more recent strategy has been to license a familiar pop song as theme music. "Dawson's Creek" may have started this trend by employing Paula Cole's "I Don't Want to Wait" as its theme (well, "The Lone Ranger" used Rossini's "William Tell Overture" a few years before that). "The O.C." played the same game (would Death Cab for Cutie exist without "The O.C."?), as did all of the "C.S.I.s," which are keeping the Who in residuals.

"It's almost the reverse of what it used to be," comments Jay Campbell, whose Web site, http://Televisiontunes.com, contains more than 6,000 sound files of TV theme music. "Now, instead of the song reminding you of the show, the show reminds you of the [single]."

Burlingame thinks this is a tactic driven by the need for instantaneous acceptance. A familiar song, he points out, may help an unfamiliar new TV show win viewers quickly.

There are a few exceptions, of course. As a rule, children's programs, such as the Disney Channel's mega-popular "Hannah Montana," tend to employ original theme music. And HBO's series tend to have generous opening sequences set to music (think "The Sopranos," "Six Feet Under," "The Wire," "Sex and the City," and "Entourage," among others). Then again, HBO -- as it constantly reminds viewers its promos -- is different: The premium cable network has no advertising and tends to repeat its shows multiple times over a week, a departure from the break-neck dynamics of commercial television.

But elsewhere on the tube, an era is almost past.

"It used to be," says Burlingame, "that you'd be in the kitchen getting a sandwich or a soda, and you'd hear that theme. It would remind you that your favorite show is coming on. There was a time when these composers really knew how to capture the essence of a show in music. It seemed so right and appropriate. That's the gift of composer. I hope we're not losing that."

"Oh, yeah, we're moving on up, to the East Side . . . "