Image News (Piano Arrangement)

The year was 1995. Local newscasts across many markets in the United States have adopted a tabloid format, with most of those stations being Fox affiliates. While some affiliates of the Big Three networks had attempted this before that year (with most of them failing), it was not until after a successful attempt at Sunbeam-owned Boston television station WHDH that something shocking would happen to one of its rivals, which itself happens to be owned by Hearst.

The format that WCVB adopted several months after WHDH switched from CBS to NBC in the wake of the deal between CBS and Group W (which also affected its sister station in Baltimore, WBAL) was groundbreaking. WCVB incorporated tabloid elements to a lesser extent than WHDH did, but still preserved some hard hitting elements, including the news theme that is featured here. Although Gari Media had been well-known for its traditional news music packages during the 1980s and the first few years of the 1990s, it was not until 1993 that it had composed a series of packages with tabloid elements. The A-Package (as it was known when it debuted in the fall of 1995) was one of the first news music packages that was composed for a television station group in the country. The other stations Hearst owned at the time (KMBC, WDTN, WISN, and WTAE) would start using the package throughout late 1995 and early 1996, but it became so popular that Gari let stations owned by other companies (including Fox affiliates) start using it later that year. As a result, Gari created a second package for other stations that were eventually acquired by Hearst after the end of 1996, which was called The B-Package.

By the start of the 1999-2000 season, the names of both packages had been changed to "Image News" and "Revolution", respectively. While "Revolution" was withdrawn from distribution during the early 2010s, a new version of "Image News" would be created for independent stations owned by CBS. However, as of the early 2020s, the package is no longer available for syndication.

This piano rendition features arrangements of the station identification sequence, the primary open (starting from measure 5), and the primary close (starting from measure 37). Please note that the primary close was extended to accommodate an alternate outro, which is a rendition of the variant that was used by Jacksonville television station WJXT from 1997 until the station's disaffiliation from CBS in 2002. To close the outro, a special element of the theme from Brazilian television news program "Jornal Hoje" was added; this was a self-made element that was not part of the variant that was used by WJXT.

Serenity Rune on Bluesky: serenityrune.bsky.social