Okay ABC, I know that you have to be sweating now that you're losing your last ratings powerhouse... CBS has all their legal and procedural dramas that continue to draw in all of middle America and my grandparents, and there's no need to worry about NBC because they're being run by the banjo player from Deliverance, but what will you have left? I assigned my crack team of researchers at Still Playing with Toys to help you come up with solutions, after all - you were responsible for TGIF which in turn made me a shut in when it came to Friday nights. I figure that I owe you.

Here's what I... I mean... the team... came up with.

Your network used to be the kings of the sitcom theme song...

That ended on one particular note.

Think about it, Full House, Mr. Belvedere, Who's the Boss, Growing Pains, Perfect Strangers, all of them had one constant... the accentuated note at the end of the theme songs. Every one of your successful shows had a theme song that ended with the upbeat one accentuated musical note that signaled that the plucky opening montage was done and the fun was about to begin. Your show could have been about putting babies on the freeway and it wouldn't have mattered because I would have been roped in from the theme song and that one note.

Let's take a look at the tape for the true evidence. Ladies and gentlemen of the court, Exhibit A, Who's the Boss:



Right there, at the 53 second mark. Hear it? BAMP! That one last sting that you hear right before the first commercial break. It doesn't matter that Judith Light freaked me out. It didn't matter that Mona was strangely attractive for a Grandma. None of the off-putting things about the show mattered at all because you had Alyssa Milano and that one note right at the end of the opening credits to make it all seem right.

How about another example? Exhibit B -- Mr. Belvedere:



Hear it again at 54 seconds?!?!?!? I don't remember a damn thing about this show except for the theme song and that last sting at the end before the commercials.

Let's move to Exhibit C, arguably the catchiest theme song ever to grace the airwaves of ABC, Perfect Strangers:



Does it matter that I couldn't point to a map and show you where Mepos was? No, not at all. Did it matter that Balki might have been as offensive to the Meposian people as Borat is to Eastern Europe? Not a chance. Why? Because I was standing tall on the wings of my dreams... oh... and the sting note at 1:09...

Another? Okay, let's go with the seventh (and my personal favorite - and I'm sure yours) season of Full House:



There it is again, at the -- wait... who the hell is Scott Weinger? When did the football throwing teen heartthrob join Jessie and the Rippers? I don't remember that at all. Okay, next blog I write is going to find out who that guy was and how he weasled his way into Full House -- but I digress... right at the 1 minute mark. Hear it? Yeah, it's the DOUBLE sting. You want to know why Full House ran for eight seasons and had 11 million viewers? It's the DOUBLE sting at the end before the credits. The Full House crew knew what they were doing. They knew about the accentuated note and took it a step further by doubling it and look what it got them... sitcom gold.

Okay Troy, we get the point, we get it...

But why don't they use it anymore? Oh wait, do you know what happens at the end of ABC's current highest rated show right before the first commercial break:



The LONGEST, most drawn out, deliberate, accentuated note in the history of American television...

The defense rests.