WHY GOD CREATED YOUTUBE™: The Rapid Evolution Of Entertainment Tonight's Opening Credits

I know I've been doing too many YouTube posts lately, and I swore I wasn't going to do another one today but I just can't resist this: above you'll see the original opening credits from the third episode of the short-lived pre-Mary Hart phase of Entertainment Tonight in 1981, complete with a pre-credits sequence announcing a story about Studio 54. It's amazing this show lasted beyond this first incarnation, what with the cheesy animation and the cavalcade of exciting star portraits including the likes of Burt Reynolds, Brooke Shields, Bo Derek, Barry Manilow (did they get a discount on stock photos of celebrities whose names started with "B"?) and my personal favorite, Kenny Rogers with the down-home thumbs-up. But wait, there's more!


Only a year later and so much has changed! The single-story cold opening is replaced by a rapid-fire multiple-story bumper including -- and MANOMAN did I hit the freakin motherlode with this one -- a video game expo in Chicago, Lee Majors proudly wears his sexism badge, and news of C.J. the orangutan guest starring on T.J. Hooker! But then watch how the opening credits have changed: gone are the cheesy portraits of celebrities, replaced by even more generic "Hollywood" graphics -- but for some strange reason they just couldn't let go of that camera sweep across the static photo of the Enterprise from Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Righteous!

Truly, these two videos are why God created YouTube.