In 2010, when CBS and Turner Sports joined in producing the telecasts, they examined every detail of tournament production. But the theme song, which was modernized slightly, remained true to its original form.

“It really gets your motor running when you hear it,” said Sean McManus, the chairman of CBS Sports. “It has a way of making your heart beat a little bit faster in anticipation of more great college basketball.”

Christianson, now 66, with soft brown hair and a feathery mustache, still lives above the studio in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan where he wrote the N.C.A.A. tournament theme and hundreds of other jingles, including those for ESPN’s N.H.L. and “Sunday Night Baseball” telecasts and CBS’s coverage of the N.F.L. and the Olympics.

Many of them have long since faded into oblivion. Harder, heavier tunes (think Fox’s blaring N.F.L. theme, complete with its armored robot) have replaced the more rhythmic and synthesized selections in the past, which typically went lighter on the drums and guitar.

“It wasn’t Metallica,” Christianson said.

But when a former CBS executive, Doug Towey, asked him to submit samples for a new college basketball theme, Christianson knew he needed something with energy. Something in a major key. Something that immediately suggested the brisk pace of a game.

“The melody couldn’t be so fast that it would fly by and you wouldn’t get it,” Christianson said. “It had to be a simple melody, but it had to have enough energy behind it to reflect the sport.”

James Kellaris, a composer and professor of marketing at the University of Cincinnati who studies the influence of music on consumers, noted that the presto tempo of 168 beats per minute in Christianson’s tune is consistent with a human heart rate during exercise. The percussive groove also lends an impression of forward motion.