Hear It Now: Fifty Years of CBS TV

“CBS: The First 50 Years.” You may have seen one of the TV specials devoted to the anniversary, but have you heard the CD? Or did you even know there is one?

Such weighty questions aside, the CD is now in record stores, which means CBS would like you to buy an advertisement for itself instead of giving it to you for free. “CBS: The First 50 Years,” the CD, has no fewer than 58 tracks, most of them themes from CBS shows of the past and present, a few of them sound snippets from great voices in CBS history, including that of founder William S. Paley.

The disc opens with a famous excerpt from “See It Now” starring the patron saint of broadcast news, Edward R. Murrow. We hear Murrow turning to his director, Don Hewitt--now producer of “60 Minutes”--and asking him to punch up some buttons on remote cameras. Soon Murrow declares that for the first time in history a person can sit in the living room and see both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans at the same time.

Somehow, believe it or not, this is moving even on a CD where you can’t see a thing. Murrow also says of the new medium of television that “we hope to use it rather than abuse it.” For a while, it looked as though that hope might come true. But eventually the selling of advertising became not just the source of the network’s income but, along with enriching its stockholders, its raison d’etre.

Themes heard on the CD are bound to stir memories, especially among the first generation of viewers who can recall seeing “I Love Lucy” episodes before they had been rerun 8,000 times. Many of the older themes have been rerecorded by an uncredited orchestra, however, and don’t sound authentic. For years, the theme for “The Ed Sullivan Show” was a show-bizzy ditty called “Toast of the Town,” which was also the Sullivan show’s original title. But on the CD you don’t hear “Toast of the Town.” You hear some dull, undistinguished junk that was used much later.

It’s still possible to hear “Toast of the Town,” though. Every now and then Paul Shaffer and “the CBS orchestra” play it after the monologue on “Late Show With David Letterman,” while Letterman walks to his desk. Calling Shaffer’s rock band an orchestra is some kind of inside joke. Once, there really was a CBS Orchestra, conducted by Alfredo Antonini, just as there was once an NBC Symphony conducted by Arturo Toscanini.

A long, long, long time ago.

There’s a smattering of true classics on the disc: “Mission: Impossible,” revived two years ago for the feature film version of the old CBS series; the immortal do-do-do-do from “The Twilight Zone”; Carroll O’Connor and Jean Stapleton singing “Those Were the Days” from “All in the Family”; and one of the greatest TV themes from one of the greatest opening-credit sequences of all time, “Hawaii Five-O.”

That’s been turned into a motion picture, too, and will open later this year.

Current themes like “Promised Land,” “Walker, Texas Ranger” and “Everybody Loves Raymond” (they do?) are utterly forgettable. The most conspicuous omission from the early days of CBS, when it was “the Tiffany network” and offered TV’s most prestigious programming, is Alex North’s imposing anthem for “Playhouse 90,” one of the most ambitious of all the “golden age” live drama shows.

North, who scored such films as “A Streetcar Named Desire,” “The Misfits” and “Cleopatra,” wrote for “Playhouse 90” a theme that was the very embodiment of importance. It said, “Sit up and take notice, because something splendid is coming.” Or, since you were hearing and watching from an easy chair in the living room, it said at least, “Sit back and take notice.”

“Playhouse 90” was everything good about television then and is a reminder of everything bad about television now. No wonder, to judge from this semi-satisfying CD, CBS would rather just forget about it. What CBS used to be is so much grander than what it has become.