Eyewitness News - Music Package

Music Package

Eyewitness News is also the name of a syndicated news music package, composed by Frank Gari of Gari Communications.

Since 1968, ABC's large market owned-and-operated stations had used the "Cool Hand Luke" theme on their newscasts. In 1983, they started using News Series 2000, an updated version of the original Schifrin theme, composed by Frank Gari, that had been originally commissioned by WLS-TV in Chicago.

However, in the early 1990s, Schifrin raised his royalties for using Cool Hand Luke and its variations to a level that effectively priced the theme out of the local news market. As a result, in 1994, Gari was commissioned by WABC-TV in New York to compose a new music package called Eyewitness News. This new package, based slightly on Cool Hand Luke with Paul Newman, has been updated several times. WABC-TV currently uses the Series 4 version, which was specifically updated for the station in 1999.

Besides being used in America, the Eyewitness News music package has also been picked up for use overseas. Hong Kong Cable News has been using it for its morning newscast, and POP TV in Slovenia has been using it for its main newscasts. It is also used by Nine Network and its affiliates for their newscasts in Australia. Its rival network, Network Ten, used Move Closer to Your World as theme music for their Eyewitness News newscasts on all of its stations except for its Brisbane station, TVQ-0, from 1976 to 1988 (Network Ten did not reach Perth until May 26, 1988), a record twelve years before the theme music was changed to reflect the full reach of the network across Australia's five major cities. By then, Frank Gari's Turn To News, the then Ten news theme in both Brisbane (in 1986) and later in Adelaide (in early 1987), was adopted by Ten's stations in Melbourne, Sydney, and later in Perth that year.

Another news theme, Team to Watch, used by KNXT-TV (presently KCBS-TV) in the 1980s, was the Ten News update theme in almost all its stations, and in the mid-1980s became the Eyewitness News theme on TEN-10 Sydney.

A station using the Eyewitness News music package might not necessarily use the Eyewitness News title for its newscasts, and vice versa. For example, WXYZ-TV in Detroit uses the music package, but uses the Action News format and branding, and in 2006 KGO-TV started using the Eyewitness News package but brands its newscasts as 'ABC 7 News HD'.

In 2005, Gari Communications renamed the Eyewitness News-New Generation news package to the ABC O&O News Collection, as the packages are now only commissable by ABC owned-and-operated stations and affiliates. Despite this, many still refer to the package as Eyewitness News. In Buffalo, New York, Move Closer to Your World is known as the Eyewitness News theme. It was used on WKBW-TV from 1972 to 2003, and from 2008 onward.