My very special friend sent me a video of John Williams conducting the NBC Nightly News theme in 2006 for a fresh version. It does go to the end at three minutes forty seconds but the cutoff's echo is severed. It reminds me of end themes for this credits geek. For television shows there is barely any of the closing credit music which will now reside on DVD or showings on "networks" such as ME-TV.

On the talk shows with live bands not even sizeable chunks of the closers are heard, in general. Having a brother who teaches high school mathematics and can give you a lot of amazing information about probabilities and statistics, it means I must watch a lot of late night---which I do online---to have seen an episode of the Leno Tonight Show in which Mr. Minor's assembled force did reach the end and a nanosecond of shuffling shoes and instruments being set down serenaded the corporate logo occupying the screen in stentorian manner.

Is there a talk show superstition associated with such ending? On Letterman's Show, the Stone Soup concept of throwing in all kinds of self referential over-information and jokes may have touched on something like this, though much as I have watched I am not certain of the wording. During the time of the show's shifting of formats from the original Dave "commented", no doubt after the angle had been worked over in a writers' meeting, the show had never had a drum solo.

For the vast majority of Letterman shows the theme is barely cranking up before Alan Kalter utters his goof line, and when there was time for more credits a "canned" sequence of the band would be slipped in. With two of the three horn players changing since then that has not been used. At the taping the ending theme concludes with a drum flourish and a final chord from the ensemble and maybe twice I have heard this chord, cut off at that final nanosecond.

For Leno's latest final program---well, just following what may be an ongoing script (right, Conan?)---the show was played out by Garth Brooks. I suspect when the day comes, we hope by design, for Letterman a similar specialized conclusion will usher things out.

Time for my final chord, kind of unresolved itself. Does anyone remember the George Michael Sports Machine? I've always wished to hear his segment intro in its entirely. The closest I ever saw was during a post Super Bowl edition. There's something beside the commercials.