The Night Watch Radio Program

Tri-City Herald 54-05-03:
DOWN HOLLYWOOD WAY
Realism Of 'Night Watch' Startles CBS Televiewers

By BOB THOMAS

HOLLYWOOD [UP]--The new Night Watch radio show tops Dragnet for realism in the cops-and-criminal department. It's the genuine thing.
Listeners to Night Watch on CBS Monday nights will hear the actual nabbing of a criminal. The recording was made during an arrest by the Culver City, Calif. police.
Columbia's answer to Jack Webb is an enterprising young man named Donn Reed. A radio veteran, he dreamed up Night Watch in an effort to find something new in radio.
"I remember one day I came out of a radio conference feeling very depressed," he told me. "I said to another fellow that I was tired of rehashing the same old things in radio. If only there was something new."
"That day I went over to the place where I play handball. Another person who plays there is Ron Perkins, a sergeant with the Culver City Police. He had his uniform on, and I asked him what he had been doing lately. He told me about some of his cases, and they sounded fascinating. He invited me to come along with him some night."
Reed went in the prowl car one night and found a wealth of material. Perkins talked to Chief W. N. Hildebrande of the Culver City police about allowing Reed to record some cases. Permission was granted, and the project got underway.
"Our first problem was the recording equipment," reported Reed. "To get really professional quality meant using about 1,000 pounds of gear. Obviously that was impractical, since much of the time I had to race after police to get my recordings."
"We finally worked it down to a self-inclusive unit that weighs only 16 pounds. That makes me much more maneuverable. We carry an engineer with us, but he stays in the car. It wouldn't be right to ask him to accompany us."
Reed referred to the danger. It can be considerable. Once he was in close proximity when a holdup man was apprehended. The hood reached for his gun, and Reed hit the deck. He saved himself from danger, but he was still angry. The fall damaged the recording equipment and ruined his report on the crime.
On another occasion, the police picked up a dope addict who confessed the source of supply. This led to the undercover interview with a dope pusher whose devious method of selling the stuff was recorded on tape.
Such exploits provide an exciting life for Reed. Too exciting, claims his insurance firm. "My premium has been tripled since I started this work," he lamented.
Reed spends most of his evenings with the Culver City Police. He now enjoys a night out with his wife only about once every four weeks. In addition to his night work, he keeps the radio in his CBS office tuned to the police reports. He knows the code numbers, and when a promising call comes over, he hops in his car and hurries to the scene.

That was the United Press article that introduced much of America outside of California to Night Watch and Police Recorder Donn Reed. What these two press clippings fail to capture is more a function of their own cultural myopia at the time. The post World War II and Korean War era was but a transition to the Cold War years. This was a period of intense fear mongering designed to underscore and gain further support for the 'the military-industrial complex' that President Eisenhower warned the nation to 'beware of', as he prepared to leave office in 1961.

Granted that it was a completely different time and place in American history, but by the same token, habeas corpus hadn't been suspended even then. Thus it requires a great deal of suspension of disbelief to actually believe all that transpires in the course of these fascinating recordings. And granted as well, that there's clearly an appeal to the voyeur in all of these recordings--and the similiarly themed Unit 99 that evolved shortly after this series. Indeed, Jack Webb had long since tapped into voyeuristic appeal with his long-running Dragnet. The Line-Up was another similiarly themed Crime Drama anthology that used hyper-realistic scripts to lend both a voyeuristic and schadenfreude appeal to the proceedings.

We must remember, after all, that this was the great 'keeping up with the Joneses' era. Everyone was getting the latest and greatest Television sets, built-in ovens and refrigerators, electronic washing machines and dryers, and of course dutifully covering every inch of the upholstery in their homes in custom clear vinyl slipcovers. Needless to say, in a society so overwhelmingly caught up with appearances, comparisons to each others' relative success, and continual reminders of almost universal reasons to fear almost anything and anyone, schadenfreude was a natural by-product. Oppressed people find it far easier to take pleasure in the misfortune and tragedies in others--the very definition of schadenfreude. Which explains why many programs similar to Night Watch could ocassionally capture the imagination of a national audience.

It was both escapism and 30 minutes to reflect that no matter how bad things might be going for one's own family, there was always someone else so much worse off, that one could revel in someone else's misfortune. Admitedly not the healthiest of cultural or social attitudes, but it was what it was. There was nothing particularly culturally, socially, or spiritually redeeming about the program. Its producers knew the audience it would appeal to. Indeed the simple novelty of a 'candid Police Recorder' running loose throughout Southern California was clearly something never before heard over radio--except by those who already sat listening to the Police Band frequencies all day.

The program, novel as it was, reached a predictable arc, then just as quickly dissipated when the novelty wore off, rather like the "Lookie Lous" that rush to view the gory details of a traffic accident or neighborhood fire, then just as quickly retreat back to their own lairs once their schadenfreude has been sated. Donn Reed tried another run at the concept, but from a slightly different angle, with Police Recorder. Police Recorder was auditioned as a psychological analysis of criminal behavior, again using the three years of tapes that Donn Reed and Sgt. Ron Perkins had accumulated in the course of producing Night Watch. Sgt. Perkins and Donn Reed would frame a particular recorded situation then turn it over to a Police Psychologist for analysis and deconstruction. The project never progressed beyond the audition stage.

The clear star that emerged from the series was Detective Sergeant Ron Perkins himself. He reportedly acquired something of a cult following throughout North America both during and after the program aired. When he was married in March 1954, the press was full of sidebars and notices announcing his forthcoming Beverly Hills marriage to Barbara Joyce Karr.

The series also suffered its own tragedy of sorts during its broadcast run: Producer Jim Hadlock's young son suffered a basal skull fracture when he was accidently hit by a car while running an errand for his mom.

Donn Reed may not have gotten the green light for Police Recorder, but he wasn't long out of the public eye. California Southland residents were treated to another 5 - 8 years of Donn Reed in another '-Watch' program, "Air Watch". Air Watch teamed Reed with helicopter pilot Max Schumacher for a morning and late afternoon drive time series of daily traffic reports from the skies over Los Angeles and its environs. Both entertaining and extremely helpful, Air Watch set the standard by which most major metropolitan areas throughout the U.S.--and the rest of the world--eventually established their own 'traffic watch' programs.

Tragically, in 1966 Captain 'Max' Schumacher himself died in a air accident involving his helicopter and an LAPD helicopter. Both he and two LAPD officers were killed in the accident over Elysian Park, the area immediately west of L.A.'s Dodger Stadium. In a further ghastly irony, Captain Max's replacement, Captain Jim Hicklin was murdered in 1973 aboard a cruise ship as it was readying to sail, when a crazed listener apparently boarded the ship, found Hicklin's stateroom and killed him.

So it is that this hyper-candid 'slice of life' program both erupted onto the Radio scene, ran its course, then just as abruptly disappeared into relative obscurity. But not until proving that America, during times of great cultural, political or social stress, can become a fertile audience for popular schadenfreude programming. Witness American Idol, Survivor, The Apprentice, and 24 as vehicles for some of the more effective examples of pure schadenfreude escapism offered to a public starved for someone else to point to as worse off than themselves.

Series Derivatives:

Notes on Provenances:

All of the provenances vary wildly for this series. The most plausible, built as it was from actual transcription tapes, was the log of the RadioGOLDINdex. But the intended order of the various programs remains anyone's guess. Clearly, none of the programs aired in any defined chronological sequence. As the last table demonstrates, Dectective Unit 56, by tracking its mileage chronologically, was at wide varianace in the order in which the episodes it played a role in were involved.

The best we could resolve, by cross-referencing what we heard, what the RadioGOLDINdex cites as transcription information, and what the local, Southern California newspapers cited was the following amalgam of provenances.

As more verifiable provenances surface, we'll continue to update the following series log, as appropriate.

All rights reserved by their respective sources.

Night Watch Radio Program Log

Night Watch RadioGOLDINdex (Copyright 2009) J. David Goldin [Cross-Check Log ]

Night Watch Radio Program Car and Mileage Cross-Check Log: Detective Car(s) 56

Night Watch Radio Program Biographies

"Both Reed and Schumacher confess that after flying over the freeways for the past two months they are terrified to come down out of the air and brave automobile traffic. Both drive roundabout routes to get home rather than traverse the freeways."

Donn moved to Los Angeles' KMPC Radio in 1961. He soon after rejoined Capt 'Max' and his "infuriated palm tree", as famous local DJ, Dick Whittinghill used to refer to Schumacher's helicopter. Donn worked for KMPC for twenty years from 1961 to 1981, receiving several Golden Mike Awards in the process.

Twice widowed, Donn was an avid fisherman.