Stephen J. Canell's memorable motif

At the end of every A-Team episode, after the credits, there's a mysterious motif. A writer, typing. A musical riff. It's one of the smartest signature moves I've seen.

The writer is Stephen J. Cannell. The guy who created the show.

In 1979, Cannell was a successful writer at Universal - he'd just won an Emmy for The Rockford Files. The usual move was to stay, take the studio's cash, keep writing hits.

Instead, he left. He started his own production company. And made himself the logo.

"Early 80s, I was referred to as a TV mogul. I hated that. A mogul was a guy in a green suit who kept trying to score actresses.

I'd say - I'm not a mogul, I'm a writer. I write every day for five hours."

When working on logo ideas, his publicist suggested doing something at the typewriter. So they did. Cannell typing, throwing paper over his shoulder, name on screen.

The A-Team, Hardcastle and McCormick, Hunter, Riptide - all carried that same closing shot. Over 1,500 episodes on network TV, syndicated around the world.

Pretty soon, people weren’t coming up to Cannell and calling him a mogul - they’d say ‘ah, you’re the writer!’

This was decades before Netflix's 'ta-dum' or the Windows 95 startup sound.

Watching in a rural village in England, it burned into my 8-year-old brain. And given I'm writing about it 20 (ok, 35) years later, it was a pretty smart thing for him to build.

Your signature doesn't have to look like what everyone else is doing. Sometimes it's quieter. Sometimes it's just a motif, done consistently, in a place only you thought to claim.

Even when today's world can feel noisy and saturated, there are still untapped spaces. Where's yours?

P.S. For more riffs like this, subscribe to Groove Theory. Or I’ll set B.A. and Howlin’ Mad Murdoch on ya.