Dragnet radio free download

Black Friday deals. Windows Windows. Most Popular. New Releases. Desktop Enhancements. Networking Software. Trending from CNET. Developer's Description By Taha Maddam. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent. Dragnet, the brainchild of Jack Webb, may very well be the most highly remembered and the best radio police drama series. From September through February , Dragnet's 30 minute shows brought to the radio, true police stories in a low-key, documentary style.

This is truly the classic Old time Radio show that every mystery and suspense lover must listen to. We have done something amazing in terms of the quantity and the quality of the content available in this app.

The app is divided into seven main sections. Thanks to Webb's unwillingness to 'dumb it down', the public soon learned what an APB was and what a hot-shot call meant, how police ten-codes worked, and even which room housed the homicide division at LAPD headquarters Room Educating the listener on these aural short-cuts, via 'cop-talk immersion', meant that the show could move at a faster pace without giving up any of the story.

The pursuit of realism occasionally bordered on the obsessive. While most shows used one, possibly two, sound effects technicians, Dragnet regularly used five.

As cited on Wikipedia's Dragnet page, in the episode 'The Big. While this may seem extreme, the result was a program about the LAPD that even Los Angeles police officers themselves saw as surprisingly authentic. Webb often paid homage to these officers by using the real names of LAPD personnel in his stories whenever possible. Another reality check in Dragnet is that all of the characters, both major and minor, have their own lives that exist outside the confines of the program.

Jack Webb's character, Sgt. Joe Friday, is a confirmed bachelor whose mother worries about his eating habits as much as his on-the-job safety, and whose partners are regularly trying to get him married, missing the irony that these efforts are often followed by their own sad stories of the life of a family man. When witnesses are interviewed by police, the problems of their own lives may take precedence over the crime at hand.

In the murder tale The Big Thank You, for instance, an elderly neighbour interviewed by Friday and Romero is hopeful that the officers might be able to repair her sewing machine. These quirks of human nature never become intrusive plot points; they merely serve to define and flesh out the characters. Of course, Dragnet's best-known commitment to authenticity is that the story is true, as stated in the show's opening narration.

This is yet another connection to He Walked By Night; that film's preamble opens with the statement "This is a true story" and closes with the familiar "Only the names are changed to protect the innocent. The Big Partner: Friday's partner in the first shows was played by a man with more than two decades of radio acting under his belt, Barton Yarborough.

Yarborough plays the Mexican-American detective, Sgt. Ben Romero. While the ethnic background of the police sergeant may seem irrelevant to us today, it was a noteworthy point in , when relations between the LAPD and the Latino community were at their all-time low. The reality of Dragnet even extended to Yarborough's death in real life. Barton Yarborough suffered a fatal heart attack on December 19th, ; in the December 27th episode of Dragnet, the death of Sergeant Romero was written into the story, in the heartfelt episode 'The Big Sorrow'.

After the death of Yarborough, Friday's partners were Sgt. Alexander played Ofc. Smith from September until the end of the radio series.

Ben Alexander also portrayed Frank Smith in the Dragnet movie, and in fifty-two episodes of the television series. DRAGNET continues to be an all-time classic, and, is the drama that set the standard of all police dramas that followed it, have tried to emulate.

None have been able to do so since. Reviewer: mnpd - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - June 29, Subject: How times have changed! I'm a retired metropolitan police commander, and knew the business had changed.

I just didn't realize how much until I listened to an episode of radio Dragnet. Friday hauls in an entire load of bar customers because they might have seen a shooting. Then, an overnight "dragnet" produces over more suspects who are promptly taken downtown for interrogation.

Effective yes You can't take anyone "in for questioning. Well, there are suspects, but you can't do a thing about it unless you have enough evidence to arrest them. The only people the cops take in these days are those which have been arrested for an articulable crime, and evidence exists to prosecute them. Worse, his department would side with the plaintiffs by claiming that they told him NOT to conduct himself in that manner.

So, Friday would find himself working in the Tow-in-Lot or answering the phones down in Warrants until the Department figured out a way to get rid of him. Joe Friday is incapable of understanding the change in times. In his day his job as a cop was to catch criminals. Today, a cop's first priority is to not get sued.

Forget the criminals, because no cop agency ever got sued for NOT catching a criminal. No one sues you for being lazy, and being lazy pays just as much as being vigilant.

But never fear because Joe Friday types don't even apply for the job anymore. The business has been changed for so long that even the applicants have evolved. Before I retired, I couldn't believe the numbers of one-year rookies with the attitudes of year veterans. You couldn't get them to work on-time, or devote their time on-duty to catching crooks. They were just as likely to be found reading the newspaper in some remote alley as their gray-haired co-workers.

I absolutely love this series! Reviewer: mally-one - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - November 18, Subject: Who Knew? Who knew good detective work was powered by "Fatima Brand" cigarettes? Reviewer: Trekbikefan - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - June 2, Subject: Thoughtful and engaging I remember watching old re-runs of the Dragnet TV show with my dad when I was a kid, then recently I watched a few episodes from the original 's TV series after finding some cheaply produced DVD versions of a few of them.

Then I found these old radio programs on the internet recently. I must say that these are as good as, if not better than, either of the TV series although the cigarette advertisements are somewhat laughable today. I enjoy listening to these while riding my bicycle or mowing the lawn, they definitely help to pass the time. The action sequences are a bit hard to follow with canned gunfire soundbytes interspersed with the protagonists' talking to each other, leaving what is actually happening a little ambiguous until the end.

The dry documentary style of the shows is what sets them apart from most police dramas, both past and present. I actually enjoy the fact that an episode will devote a 2 minute sequence to SGT Friday waiting on hold for an operator to transfer his call, or another similar sequence to SGT Friday and Romero talking to each other from the inside of a car trunk where they are awaiting some unsuspecting criminals Indeed, most of us will admit, even those of us with the most exciting jobs will have a large part of our day that is fairly mundane.

The Dragnet shows capture the mundane aspects of life that most dramatizations miss. I think that these shows are a throwback to a different era; although many have criticized our ancestors and rightly, at times for such wrongs as racism and ethnocentrism, listening to these shows has shown me the better side of 's and 50's U. The episodes show a keen awareness of the darker side of life tackling such crimes as pedophilia, pornography production and distribution, serial killings, and cop shootings , yet they deal with these topics in a sensitive and tasteful way that stands in sharp contradistinction to the tasteless dramatizations that one often sees of such crimes on TV today.

Criminals and lowlifes are not glorified with quasi-voyeuristic depictions and descriptions of their vile work, as is so often the case today in law enforcement television programs. I think I have learned a lot about 's America just by listening to these episodes, because you pick up on the little subtleties that you're not necessarily going to find in a history book and the subtleties are just as much in what the characters do say as in what they don't say The show also makes vague occasional references to the social stigmas associated with being a police officer One can hear the resigned frustration in the voice of SGT Friday, when, at the end of one program, he simply reflects back at her a lady's accusation: "You're right; I wouldn't understand I'm a cop.

Reviewer: bippy - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - March 27, Subject: Well done series, esp. The best show I heard was the chilling 'Claude Jimmerson Child Killer', where the cops meet in the house of a neighbor of a missing child to organize a search party and it turns out it's the killer's house, as Sgt Friday somewhat embarrassed, realizes he missed some clues right under his own nose.

Reviewer: Rayme - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - January 20, Subject: Love the old days and this show I remember as a boy my grandma got me into talk radio, then thru osmosis, I found an L. I remember the time cause I played in a Rock band at the time and what no one in the audience knew was that I couldn't wait for the show to be over cause it was about a 45 min drive home and I would turn on the old time radio show and think of my grandma.

That was the early 90s. Growing up I watched the tv version of dragnet and liked it and now that I"m in my 40s, to find all the episodes of it here if a gift. It was a better time, simpler, more innocent and I wish alot that I grew up back then in the 40s and 50s. Nowdays noone has the morals or honesty of back then. To whoever made and maintains this site I miss you, thank you for sharing your love of radio with me, it never left. Reviewer: feekie - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - November 3, Subject: Love the Early Shows Best!

I love the early Dragnet shows the best. Ed Backstrand's intensity and Joe Friday's partner, Romero, made the early shows really fun to listen to. I liked the later shows too and the tv shows, but the early ones are really classics. Reviewer: ohsnapiam56 - favorite favorite favorite favorite favorite - August 19, Subject: A Great Time Capsule I love these episodes.

Not only are they high class entertainment, but they are a window to the past Men wore hats and took them off when talking to a woman; woman wore dresses and heels; people dressed up to go to the movies, etc. All of these versions ran on NBC. There were two Dragnet feature films, a straight adaptation starring Jack Webb in , and a comedy spoof in There were also television revivals, without Webb, in and MP3 files hosted by archive.