Where Everybody Knows Your Name the Charles Brothers gave it their stamp of approval, and once Portnoy and Hart Angelo had complied with a request for a few lyric changes intended to broaden the song's appeal to a more general audience, "Where Everybody Knows Your Name" was officially designated the "Theme from "Cheers"". The original opening verse: was changed to: After several months of mulling over possible outside singers, the producers eventually asked Gary Portnoy to record the vocal for the opening credits of their new series. (The chorus of the song is six of Portnoy’s vocals that he recorded one on top of the
Steven Portnoy High School in 1999 and received the school's Distinguished Alumni Award in 2012. Portnoy reported for WSYR (AM) and produced at WSTM-TV and WIXT-TV (now WSYR-TV) while he was a student at the S.I. Newhouse School for Public Communications at Syracuse University. In 2001, he took first place at the Hearst Journalism Awards for his reporting on the economic downturn in the early part of the decade. Prior to joining ABC News in 2006, Portnoy reported for WMAL, a Washington radio station that was owned by ABC until 2007. In 2008, Portnoy was named a Peter Jennings Fellow at the