One Tree Hill is an American television drama created by Mark Schwahn, which premiered on September 23, 2003, on The WB Television Network. After the series' third season, The WB merged with UPN to form The CW Television Network, and since September 27, 2006, the network has been the official broadcaster of the series in the United States. The show is set in the fictional town of Tree Hill in North Carolina and originally follows the lives of two half-brothers, Lucas Scott (Chad Michael Murray) and Nathan Scott (James Lafferty), who compete for positions on their school's basketball team. Their relationship evolves from heartless enemies to caring brothers as the show progresses, and the drama that ensues from the brothers' romances with female characters and from the basketball atmosphere are significant elements within the series.

The first four seasons of the show focus on the main characters' lives through their high school years. With the beginning of the fifth season, Schwahn advanced the timeline by four years to show their lives after college, and he made it jump a further fourteen months from the end of the sixth to the start of the seventh season. The opening credits were originally accompanied by the song "I Don't Want to Be" by Gavin DeGraw. The theme was removed from the opening in the fifth season; Schwahn said that this was to lower production costs, to add more time for the storyline, and because he felt that the song was more representative of the core characters' adolescent past than their present maturity. The credits then consisted only of the title written on a black background. The theme was restored for season 8, in response to audience demand, and was sung by different artists each week.