Perfect strangers was also popular. Explain that one
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Gargoyles must have been extremely popular on the holodeck then.
Would have some interesting implications for Dwight Schultz’s Reg Barclay, playing H.M. “Howlin’ Mad” Murdoch in the The A-Team holodeck program. The line between fantasy and reality blurring again?
After retiring from his engineering role in Starfleet, did Geordi LaForge take on a new role as educator, encouraging youngsters to put down their PADDs and “Take a look in a book”?
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It seems to me that Reading Rainbow might have been Geordi’s holodeck OCR calibration program for his visor. 
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holy shit x2:
S&S was a show I never watched but I remembered the catchy guitar theme.
Riptide was a show I have absolutely no memory of but watching your video, not only is it a PI buddy action show with one light and one dark-haired PI and an exploding ship at the end of the opening theme, the guitar theme is almost note-for-note! Shame on Mike Post for biting, but the producers surely told him to do it.
secondly: Anne Francis! Honey West!
Every 80s TV theme is a remix of the same three guitar notes with a little synth-something track over it. Mike did so many of those that I wouldn’t be surprised if he unintentionally reused a phrase because it came to mind again. A fair question would be why 80s themes all existed in such a narrow thematic range, but I suppose that’s what the producers wanted and they kept hiring the guy that does that thing.
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The entertainment biz is just like the computer biz, nobody gets fired for going with IBM.
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Or the same three synth notes over a synth-something track.
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Anne Francis stars in…Forbidden Planet, wo-oh-oh-ohhh…
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Just to add tor your post. If you didn’t have cable back then (my parents wouldn’t pay for it), then you had 3, maybe 4 channels to watch. I had my favorite shows I actively looked for and watched but then if the show that played next had a catchy theme song and likeable characters then you probably stayed on that channel and passively watched whatever played next.
In the modern world of streaming I am so picky about what I watch. Even if a show’s trailer looks good I check reviews. If the show is not new I check the wiki to see if it was cancelled abruptly. So much is available now I am forced to be hyper selective. Back then it just had to meet the low bar of not being annoying in some way.
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I assumed that was the case but watching the S&S end credits reveals 4 theme credits, none were Post.
but otherwise I’m with you, they were all trend-following formulas to some extent, but Riptide really is either the same notes or like switching the 4th to a minor (or some form of trickery that I’m not learned enough to express) specifically to avoid copyright law.
Post is pretty great at his best, though. Rockford Files’ theme is one of the best ever.
I usually post this video when the topic of fantastic forgotten tv themes comes up:
the visual is a treat, too. bonus: Patrick Swayze and Kurtwood Smith.
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at the late-night, double feature, picture shoooooow…
from R.K.O.oooo
first place I ever heard of her lol.
@garymon yes, exactly this. except I’m super passive about selection still. I have 30 or so OTA tv channels and generally watch whatever’s on specifically to avoid being hyper-selective. I listen mostly to radio, too, for the same reason: maybe something will come on I don’t already know about. and if not, I can usually find something pretty good or at worst inoffensive. I have 163gb of music and a huge physical library. unfortunately, that means spending more time picking than listening. thankfully I get a college station and another non-commercial station as well as a classic soul and R&B station.
tv and, increasingly, movies, I care about a whole lot less. mostly I watch NHK World on mute with the radio on and browse the internet.
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My music listening is very different from my TV and movie patterns.
With music the songs are short and will be listened to may times so my concern is burning out on my favorite songs.
When I used to buy music I might get 10+ CD at once, rip them all, and add them to my various mixes without listening to any of them just so I could be surprised. When I started to just acquire music without physical restrictions things increased immensely. Now with spottily I have some custom lists that are 8-10 hours each that I can listen to on random and never get burned out on a favorite song.
But with movies and TV it’s a bigger commitment. When I watch, I stop everything and focus 100%. It’s a short term relationship until a show ends. Some shows are hella long. So if that’s the show I am watching every day for the next day, week or month (looking at you anime), then it needs to be worth the time it requires assuming my full attention. if it’s not worth of my full attention then I’d rather not bother.
Other people graze watch, which is fine, just not how my brain works and drives me crazy when I visit family and they will start watching a show in the middle, switch to another after 10 minutes, then watching the ending of something, then to the beginning of something else before switching again. They never set the remote down. if I start watching something, even if it’s bad, I will watch to the end to see how it ends. Only on rare occasions will I quit something and it pains me to do so. I had to quit a time travel movie recently and it still bothers me even though I know now that th ending is as terrible as the rest of the movie. [begins pulling out hair] 
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Another great theme song 
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Tenspeed and Brownshoe (Jeff Goldblum and Ben Verene) is on IMDB-TV right now. I couldn’t sit through an entire episode. I really didn’t remember it being that bad at the time.
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The songwriter Dave Frishberg has a cameo (he was playing guitar in a bar) in an episode.
Wow does Kurtwood look young in that intro.
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and yet, still just as bald as ever : )
Incorrect, 80s television in general was awesome.
It totally was, unless you watch it again now. In which case one discovers that top TV shows in the 80’s were crap. Rosy retrospection is a powerful bias.
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Oh, I’ve watched many 80s shows recently. I stand by my original assertion. 
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