BBC Nationwide - The Title Sequences 

I loved him as a punk newsreader on The Goodies episode "Rock Goodies" where he swore profusely and spat during his announcements. Hilarious!

I’ll never forget him interviewing Chantelle Cuer (she used to do French language programmes). He had a persistent cough all the way through then came out with “sorry about this terrible frog” - being a BBC broadcaster she gave a half smile.

Yes of course that was so right then there too at the time. Open Air came later from BBC Manchester/North West on BBC1 at the time; along mainly with Pattie Coldwell and Eamonn Holmes. Janet Ellis and Natalie Anglesey also presented it. I used to see it then when it ran from 1986 to 1990 at the time?!

Bolton was probably added as producer to beef up the current affairs in advance of 60 minutes. But since the BBC must have known they would have problems pushing News and Current Affairs too close together - why bother?

You are indeed so right then there too alas? The series was alright up until then really?

Bolton eventually admitted he messed the whole thing up… but he’d already had a track record with ‘Tonight’ and Panorama

How twee can a theme be but it was catchy (the later one). ITV usually had something millions preferred watching around that time and the BBC often didn't seem to care! So much was gotten away with in the 70s.

Usual for BBC if it works okay change it

I don’t know why they felt the need to change the theme and titles so much. The same happened with Tonight. Every year a revamp. Both Midweek and the original Tonight kept for the most part the same theme and viewers were comfortable with it.

@@bdavebaldwin I used to hate change. Was peeved when they ditched the Johnny Scott version which was the best imo. Quite like the later string version too though.

@@bdavebaldwin The fast moving visuals , though now admittedly dated, with Barratt / Bough etc are just superb, love the crash zooms etc.

@@bdavebaldwin BBC Northern Ireland used their own copy of the Headlines theme without all the regional programme names being shown, the titles only showed the name of their own local programme. They kept the intro mostly the same from the time the Headlines theme was adopted by the network, until the 1982 Nationwide theme was introduced, so in NI at least the titles stayed more or less the same for about 4 years. The discordant titles at 4.33 were not shown in NI who retained the older Headlines titles, though they did show them for one week when there was a special edition of Nationwide and they had to show the network intro which was the version at 4.33

All of England had their local news at first at 6.30pm then. But Northern Ireland; Scotland and Wales at first had their news instead at 5.35pm for a number of years. However, they too later switched to the 6.30pm time instead?

Here they seem to think new music and titles as a cheap way of pretending it’s something new (Coronation Street has survived well thanks to Granadas reluctance to chuck money around). In America the second series of H. R. Pufnstuff (sort of pre Swap Shop) suffered from keeping the same cast and sets. As the series could (and was) shown in no particular order viewers thought the new series were repeats and it got ditched. Add to your list Z Cars, Dr Who, Pebble Mill.

The version up to 1977 was The Good Word by Johnny Scott. The version from 1977 to about 1982 was called Headlines. For some reason the Headlines titles received a high profile in the final week of Nationwide when they were looking back. The Good Word was only played once that week and the final edition of Nationwide in August 1983 featured the Headlines theme both at the start and at the end. Like you I preferred The Good Word. In 1991 a retro Lets go Nationwide was shown by the BBC when Lime Grove Studio where Nationwide was transmitted from was being sold off, and this rightly featured The Good Word by Johnny Scott as the titles associated with Nationwide

@@Omnicient. license to print money (unquote) and judging by Granadas logo they weren’t spending a lot of it.