page_title: Dragnet (franchise)
section_title: 1967–70 revival
hierarchical_section_title: Dragnet (franchise) / Television / 1967–70 revival
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo of Jack Webb and Harry Morgan from the television program Dragnet. The caption associates the photo with the episode "Community Relations (DR-10)".
context_page_description: Dragnet is an American radio, television, and motion-picture series, enacting the cases of a dedicated Los Angeles police detective, Sergeant Joe Friday, and his partners. The show took its name from the police term "dragnet", meaning a system of coordinated measures for apprehending criminals or suspects.
  Dragnet is perhaps the most famous and influential police procedural drama in media history. The series portrayed police work as dangerous and heroic. Dragnet earned praise for improving the public opinion of police officers.
  Actor and producer Jack Webb's aims in Dragnet were for realism and unpretentious acting; he achieved both goals, and Dragnet remains a key influence on subsequent police dramas in many media. The show's cultural impact is such that seven decades after its debut, elements of Dragnet are familiar to those who have never seen or heard the program:
  The ominous, four-note introduction to the brass and timpani theme music is instantly recognizable.
  Another Dragnet trademark is the show's opening narration: "Ladies and gentlemen: the story you are about to hear is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent."
context_section_description: Webb relaunched Dragnet in 1966, with NBC once again chosen to air the series. He tried to persuade Ben Alexander to rejoin him as Frank Smith. Alexander was then committed to an ABC police series, Felony Squad, and the producers would not release him. Webb reluctantly came up with a new character to take the role of Joe Friday's partner, calling upon his longtime friend Harry Morgan to play Officer Bill Gannon. Morgan had previously portrayed rooming-house proprietor Luther Gage in the 1949 radio series episode "James Vickers". George Fenneman returned as the show's primary announcer, with John Stephenson replacing Hal Gibney in the role of announcing the trial dates and subsequent punishments for the offenders. Fenneman replaced Stephenson in that role during the fourth season. Unlike the previous Dragnet series, the revival was produced and aired in color.
  Webb produced a TV movie pilot for the new version of the show for Universal Television, although the pilot was not aired until January 1969. NBC bought the show on the strength of the movie, and it debuted as a midseason replacement for the sitcom The Hero on Thursday nights in January 1967. To distinguish it from the original, the year was included in the title of the show (i.e., Dragnet 1967). Although Friday had been promoted to lieutenant in the final episode of the 1950s production, Webb chose to have Friday revert to sergeant with his familiar badge, "714".
  When real-life LAPD Sergeant Dan Cooke, Webb's contact in the department during production of the revived Dragnet series, was promoted to lieutenant, he arranged to carry the same lieutenant's badge, number 714, as worn by Joe Friday. Cooke was technical advisor to the KNBC documentary Police Unit 2A-26, directed by John Orland. He brought that to the attention of Webb, who hired Orland to direct and film This is the City, a series of minidocumentaries about Los Angeles that preceded most TV episodes during the 1969 and 1970 seasons. The show had good ratings on NBC's schedule for four seasons, although its popularity did not exceed that of the 1950s version.
  Much as was done 11 years earlier, Webb decided voluntarily to discontinue Dragnet after its fourth season to focus on producing and directing his other projects through Mark VII Limited. The first of these projects was a spinoff of Dragnet titled Adam-12, a 30-minute police procedural like its parent series, but focusing on patrol officers rather than detectives. The series premiered in the fall of 1968 and ran for seven seasons, coming to an end in 1975. Adam-12, in turn, spawned its own spinoff in early 1972 called Emergency!; running as a weekly series until 1977 and as a series of made-for-television movies for two years after that, Emergency! was centered on a fictitious Los Angeles County Fire Department paramedic rescue unit, Squad 51.
  Reruns of this version were popular on local stations, usually during the late afternoon or early evening, in the early 1970s. From 1991 to 1995, they aired on Nick at Nite, then moved to its sister cable channel TV Land. From October 1, 2011, to April 26, 2013, the series ran daily on the digital cable channel Antenna TV, and before that, the show aired on the Retro Television Network.
  Dragnet aired Monday through Friday on Me-TV. The show was part of the "CriMe TV" morning block with Perry Mason and The Rockford Files, with Dragnet airing back to back from 11:00 am until 12:00 pm. In December 2014, Me-TV added a third airing of Dragnet to its late-night lineup; the series airs at 12:30 am following a second episode of Perry Mason. Me-TV ended the run of Dragnet on January 1, 2015, whereupon it became part of Cozi TV's regular lineup. In January 2020 Dragnet returned to MeTV along with its sibling series Adam-12 after Cozi TV dropped both series; Dragnet currently airs weekday mornings from 5:30 to 6:30 AM.
caption: Webb and Morgan in 1968
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