Remember the themes for shows like Andy Griffith, Dick Van Dyke, Mary Tyler Moore, and others? Even if you have not seen the program in decades you would immediately recognize their tunes. How many theme songs would you recognize for current popular shows?

Apparently the rationale includes...

“Producers feel, rightly or wrongly, that that interruption, if you will, is going to lose viewers... one of the things that has squeezed themes out is this relentless kind of move toward tightening everything, making it go right from joke to joke, from action to action, from shootout to shootout, so that you won’t press the dreaded remote control.”

Thanks to the elimination of commercials between the end of one show and the beginning of another, shows overlap before fickle viewers have a chance to channel-surf to Another Network. More commercials air within a show, making episodes shorter. Main titles and well-rounded theme songs and scores? Sorry, no time, no money.

… “The networks sort of assume we watch the show, so we don’t need to have the premise explained to us each week ... In the era of the DVR, half the people watching the show are just fast-forwarding that anyway,”

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/15320031

(I still get a chill thinking about the I Spy, or Mission Impossible theme songs.)

Hogan's Heros

I dream of jeannie - later tuned into a hip hoppy hoppy sort of song

Not many current ones, but I love the old ones.

The ones you mentioned and
Lost in Space (both versions of the theme)
Speed Racer
Hogan's Heros
The Avengers

Too many to name really. - I think I watched way to much when I was growing up.

The Rat Patrol.

The Prisoner.

Maverick.

Howdy Doody.

Yancy Derringer


GKC

You can buy them on CD. All the classics. Even though I'm a youngin' I've often gravitated to the older sitcoms. I have the CDs at home.