Jack Webb’s Views on TV Crime Shows – July 1971

Jack Webb is one of my all-time TV favorites, with his long-running Dragnet series. That’s why I had to post this article from the July 5th, 1971 edition of the Journal.

In it, Webb theorizes about the growing popularity of law and order TV series coinciding with the rise in crime in the country at that time.

With 20 law and order TV series in the 1971-72 lineup, Webb notes that “viewers are finding some semblance of order in the shows that can’t be detected in the warped sociological scenes this country is enmeshed in today.”

Ironically, Webb had just pulled the plug on his Dragnet revival at that time after four seasons. Contrary to accounts that the show had been canceled, NBC had wanted to keep the popular show going. But Webb had run out of steam, choosing to produce TV shows rather than continuing to play Joe Friday.

Today, I don’t think there's any correlation between the popularity of TV shows with a law and order theme and the current attitudes towards crime in society. Crime shows just seem to be most popular type of entertainment with the public.

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Jack Webb has showed up on this blog before.