Listen to me on TV CONFIDENTIAL:
As always, the further we go back in Hollywood history, the more that fact and legend become intertwined. It's hard to say where the truth really lies.
March 11, 1989
COPS debuts on Fox. The hit reality-based television show COPS premieres on the Fox television
network, and audiences hear the reggae beat of its distinctive theme song,
Inner Circle's "Bad Boys," for the very first time.
Created by the producing team of John Langley and
Malcolm Barbour, COPS placed cameras and production crews in the car
with real patrol officers around the country as they went on raids and did
whatever was necessary to catch the perpetrators of various drug-related
crimes. The pilot episode, like the rest of that debut season, was based in
Broward County, Florida, and followed members of the Broward County Sheriff's Office. The
actor Burt Lancaster provided the voice-over for the pilot episode, but the
rest of the show, shot documentary-style, was not accompanied by any narration.
At the time, Fox was only a fledgling television
network, having launched in October 1986. The network took a chance on COPS
after other major networks passed on it, leaping on Langley and Barbour's idea
in the middle of a five-month-long strike by the Writers Guild of America (WGA)
during the summer of 1988. A reality-based show was ideal for the network at
the time, as it would require no writers and was relatively inexpensive to produce.
COPS
surprised the industry by becoming a hit; it is now one of the longest-running
TV shows in history, with more than 700 episodes airing between 1989 and 2008.
Its success spawned an entire new genre of reality programming that would gain
traction during the 1990s and become a major cultural phenomenon by the next
decade. Like any touchstone of popular culture, COPS has inspired
numerous imitators--including the John Langley-produced series Jail and Street
Patrol--and has been parodied extensively, most notably by the Comedy
Central series Reno 911!
March 16, 1949
Henry Enrique
"Erik" Estrada is born.
Actor and reserve police officer, known for his co-starring lead role in the 1977–1983 United States police television series CHiPs.
He later became known for his work in Spanish language telenovelas, and in more recent years, his appearances in reality television shows and infomercials and as a regular voice on the Adult Swim series Sealab 2021.
Actor and reserve police officer, known for his co-starring lead role in the 1977–1983 United States police television series CHiPs.
He later became known for his work in Spanish language telenovelas, and in more recent years, his appearances in reality television shows and infomercials and as a regular voice on the Adult Swim series Sealab 2021.
To
quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
quote the Bicentennial Minute, "And that's the way it was".
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Tony Figueroa
