5 News

News music has a hard job. It has to sound urgent without sounding alarmed, serious without sounding grim, and it has to sit under a presenter's voice for half an hour at a time without ever asking for attention. ITN was rebuilding 5 News around Dan Walker and a new visual identity by James Mobbs, built on the idea of a prism, the 5 logo catching and bending light. The sound needed to work the same way: one piece of musical material, refracted into every part of the programme, so the headlines, the weather and the closing titles all obviously belong to each other.

The theme is strings, brass and percussion, arranged to read as contemporary rather than as orchestral heritage. At its centre is a five note sonic logo, short enough to land as a sting and strong enough to carry the full titles. Everything else is built from it. The headline bed holds tension under a voice without pulling focus. Around the World in Three Stories gets its own bed with more movement in it. The weather has a sting and a bed of its own, and the seasonal bumpers take the same melody somewhere different for each time of year. The end titles come in 12, 30, 60 and 120 second cuts, so the programme lands on time whatever the running order does.