Ted Nichols

Ted Nichols (born Theodore Nicholas Sflotsos, 2 October 1928, Missoula, Montana) was a music director at Hanna-Barbera. He is known for composing many well-known and acclaimed scores for some of Hanna-Barbera's shows throughout the mid-late 1960s, for example Jonny Quest, The Flintstones, The Herculoids, The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Scooby-Doo.
While serving as the director of the Church of the Open Door choir, an animator at Hanna-Barbera who sang in the choir took interest in his work and made his acquaintance. He first became involved in composing the background score for the second half of season four of The Flintstones. Both William Hanna and Joseph Barbera were impressed with Nichols' work ethic that he was hired as a joint composer at the studio alongside its main music director, Hoyt Curtin. His next major project was composing the incidental music of Jonny Quest. The show's success resulted in recycling his background music for subsequent action series through the late 1960s, even for the final season of The Flintstones (1965-1966) and its upcoming film, The Man Called Flintstone. He added new cues for each season's line of Saturday-morning shows, and recycled them for use in later shows during his tenure, including for The Herculoids, The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the animated segments for The Banana Splits, Scooby Doo Where Are You!, and Josie and the Pussy Cats. His music would be used in virtually all Hanna-Barbera shows up until around 1973, and although he left Hanna-Barbera in 1972, many of his cues would still be used on occasion until the early 1980s, like The Scooby-Doo Show (1976-1978). 
== Trivia ==
* Nichols was a high school band and a college band director before he went to work for Hanna-Barbera in 1963.
* The music cues Nichols utilized for the original Scooby-Doo were remixed for the 2003 direct-to-video film Scooby-Doo and the Legend of the Vampire.
== External Links ==
* Ted Nichols at the Internet Movie Database
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