Company Says It Is Now the Leader in TV Music for the U.S. Market
Warner/Chappell Production Music (WCPM) got newsier with the acquisition earlier this year of Frank Gari Productions and Gari Communications. In fact, with the new Gari Music offerings complementing the existing news music owned by its 615 Music and Non Stop Music Brands, WCPM claims the acquisition makes it the largest provider of music for local TV news in the U.S.
"I'm thrilled to welcome the undisputed champions of news theme music … into the Warner/Chappell Production Music family," said WCPM President and CEO Randy Wachtler in a prepared statement. "I look forward to offering our clients an even wider array of first-class music and to working with the talented Gari team to soundtrack fantastic television."
Before reinventing himself in the 1970s as a composer and producer of TV news music, Gari was a New York musician in the Brill Building tradition who placed three singles ("Utopia," "Lullaby of Love," and "Princess") on the Billboard Top 40 as a pop singer in the early 1960s before relocating with his wife and children to Cleveland, Ohio, where he started a company that wrote ad jingles before finding a niche in the TV news business. "We write and produce music for some 300-and-something television stations in this country alone," he told the blog Music Weird in an interview last year.
He's also composed music for broadcasters in Europe, including Sky in the U.K. and RTL in Germany. For a taste of Gari's work, check out blogger Mike Parson's "Homage to Newschannel (and to Frank Gari)," which features YouTube links galore.
