Dragnet's obscurity is so bizarre
It is unusual (and I believe unprecedented in television) that a show as popular as the B&W Dragnet has for the most part been erased from history, surviving only in sporadic, mostly poor quality bootleg syndication prints and grey-market DVDs.
The B&W show was a ratings monster in the early to mid 50s, and debuted only 2 months after "I Love Lucy." The show came in #2 in the overall ratings for the 1953-54 season!
And the show's theme song and style are still ingrained in the pop culture consciousness nearly 70 years after its debut. For example, my local FM station still uses the Dragnet theme song to introduce the traffic report.
No other television show that achieved the successful heights of Dragnet is anywhere near as obscure today. "The Honeymooners", "I Love Lucy" and "Leave it to Beaver" have been re-run in their entirety in syndication ever since leaving the air, and are widely available on DVD. Other 1950s era shows like "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and "Donna Reed" were re-run widely in the late 80s on Nick at Nite. None of these shows had anywhere near the ratings of Dragnet.
Yet the B & W Dragnets never made it to Nick at Nite. Only the greatly inferior late 60s color version was rerun. Why?
According to what I've read, the B & W Dragnet was widely seen in syndicated reruns on local stations in the early to mid 60s. When the color Dragnet debuted in 1967, the B & W episodes were pulled and for the most part never seen again. (Sadly there were no VCRs or home recording devices when the B & W episodes were in active syndication).
There appears to be some doubt if the original prints for the B & W show even exist anymore? Given how widely the B&W show was syndicated prior to 1967, it seems many more syndicated "Badge 714" prints should be out there. But they aren't. There are about 55 B&W episodes floating around on YouTube and other sources, which is a pathetic percentage of the full run. The 1955 to 1959 episodes are especially rare.
Jack Webb lived until December 1982. I wonder why he never shopped the B & W syndication package in the 1970s after the color Dragnet was finished? After all, 1950s nostalgia was big in the 70s (Happy Days, American Graffiti etc). Seems like smaller local stations would have gladly run the original Dragnets in syndication just as they ran other 50s shows like I Love Lucy, Honeymooners, Twlight Zone, etc. Had the B & W episodes been syndicated in the 70s, enough VCRs would have been running to capture it.
Sadly, it appears that we'll never see most of the B & W episodes, which is a shame since the show was very unique and essentially an entirely different show than the color episodes. They have a unique "noir" style and also some great exterior shots of 1950s LA. Jack Webb was a lot more easygoing and relaxed in the 1950s, whereas in the 60s version he was robotic and grouchy, a dyspeptic civil servant whom time had already passed by.
At least the radio version is almost completely preserved. Still, the disappearance of this show leaves a huge hole in 1950s TV history. I'd go as far as saying it's like Seinfeld disappearing from the record of the 1990s. There are so many episodes I'd love to see, such as "The Big Rat" and others which sound so interesting. Is there any way to track down these prints and get them posted online?