Public Prosecutor (TV series)

Public Prosecutor
Genre	Crime/Panel show
Directed by	Lew Landers
Presented by	Warren Hull (panel-show version)
Starring	John Howard Anne Gwynne Walter Sande
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	26
Production
Producer	Jerry Fairbanks
Cinematography	Allen G. Siegler
Camera setup	Multi-camera
Running time	15 (later 30) minutes
Production company	Jerry Fairbanks Productions
Original release
Network	NBC
Release	February 1951 (February 1951) – February 28, 1952 (February 28, 1952)

Public Prosecutor is an American television series produced in 1947–1948, which first aired in 1951.

YouTube Encyclopedic

1/1
Views:
2 214 860

Transcription

Do not attempt to adjust YouTube, this isn't a bug, top5unknowns has been taken over by us, (clear throat) just kidding, welcome to 5 bizarre tv broadcast hijackings. Channel 7 Mayday This happened In Australia on January 3rd 2007, during a broadcast of an episode of the Canadian television series Mayday on the 7 network, an audio loop started to randomly play, the audio was of an american man saying Jesus Christ, Help us all, Lord. the audio repeated itself for a total of six minutes. A spokesman for Seven later denied that the transmission was a prank or a security breach and claimed that the repeated line was actually part of the original broadcast but clearly it wasn't. There was an investigation and it was found out that the audio was taken from a news broadcast of a civilian truck being ambushed in Iraq in which three people died, its not known whether it was just a technical glitch or an intentional hijacking of the channel. Although viewers that had seen it believe it was a high jacking purely because of the strangeness of it, many viewers phoned in, one viewer said they believed it might of been a subliminal message or that someone must have hacked in. Here is the recording of it, ive only included a short clip as it repeats itself but its still quite bizarre. Zombie Apocalypse KRTV On February 11th 2013, KRTV which is a CBS affiliate located in great falls, montana, was hijacked, they had their emergency alert system hijacked, its used to enable the president to speak to the united states within 10 minutes and also alert the public of local weather warnings. Hackers managed to hack into it and during a showing of the steve wilkos show they put out an audio message saying "dead bodies are rising from their graves". later on in the day 2 other news stations were hijacked and the same message was played. Clearly people knew it was a joke but you never know there might of been some clueless son of a gun who is now taking refuge in an underground bunker thinking all hell is breaking loose above An investigation was done, and the hacker was arrested on several counts of hacking, this is what the broadcast sounded like Captain Midnight on HBO This one isn't really bizarre, on April 27th 1986 at 12:32am, HBO had its satellite signal feed interrupted by a man calling himself Captain Midnight, it occurred during a showing of the falcon and the snowman, it lasted about 4 minutes, it was a message that read, good evening HBO from captain midnight 12.95 a month no way! showtime/movie channel beware! it was in response to HBO charging 12.95 a month to receive their channel. HBO contacted the federal communications commission and announced that the hijacker would face prosecution, the F.B.I then launched an investigation and they traced it back to a man called John MacDougall He managed to interrupt the broadcast while he was working at an earth station, He stated that he did it because he was frustrated with HBO's service rates, and that it was hurting his business selling satellite dishes. He was charged with transmitting without a radio license and pled guilty, he was fined 5 thousand dollars and served a year probation here is the interruption. Vrillon This hijacking occurred on November 26th 1977 in the UK during an ITN news bulletin on southern television. During the hijacking the audio was replaced with a voice, it claimed to be a representative of an Intergalactic Association it said its name was vrillon of the ashtar galactic command, the voice was distorted, it said things such as All your weapons of evil must be removed and You have but a short time to learn to live together in peace. Clearly it was a hoax as the person speaking had a british accent and why on earth would an alien speak with a british accent, although its believed to be a hoax the culprit was never found. the recording is 6 minutes long but here is a segment of it. The Max Headroom Incident This broadcast occurred on November 22nd 1987 during a showing of doctor who on PBS station WTTW, The stations signal was hijacked by an unknown person, they was dressed to resemble max headroom. Max headroom is a fictional artificial intelligence character, which appeared on the max headroom show during the 80s. In the broadcast the persons voice is distorted, they start to talk about various things such as, they say new cokes slogan "Catch the Wave" while holding a Pepsi can, they also start to hum the theme song to clutch cargo. By the end of the broadcast the person begins to get spanked by a women then it cuts to black. The broadcast was investigated but the person behind the mask was never caught, The incident made national headlines and was reported on the CBS Evening News the next day, several viewers phoned in to the station as they was wondering what the broadcast was. Here is the broadcast. We are having a livestream Q&A to celebrate 100 thousand subscribers, it will be here on our channel on thursday the 9th of july at 6:30pm Eastern time your all invited so come along and join us.

Broadcast history

Public Prosecutor was the first dramatic series to be shot on film (in this case, 16 mm film to save production costs), instead of being performed and broadcast live.^[1]^[2]^[3]

John Howard starred in the title role of public prosecutor Stephen Allen, along with Anne Gwynne as his secretary Patricia Kelly and Walter Sande as his assistant Evans. Each story began with the cast members addressing the camera (representing the TV viewers) directly, welcoming them to the office and bringing them up to date on the current case. The supporting casts were familiar from theatrical B movies and serials of the day.

The format was patterned after daytime radio dramas, which ran in 15-minute installments. Jerry Fairbanks Productions filmed the pilot episode in Hollywood^[4] in 1947. After the NBC Television Network picked up the series, Fairbanks filmed 26 episodes for a planned network premiere in September 1948.^[5]^[6] The completed films ran about 17-1/2 minutes each, like MGM's theatrical Crime Does Not Pay short subjects. Producer Fairbanks, who had made shorts for theaters since the late 1930s, may have foreseen Public Prosecutor having a second life as a theatrical series; the two-reel length was ideal for movie theaters, but too long for a 15-minute TV show and too short for a half-hour show.

Public Prosecutor was pulled from the network schedule when NBC decided it preferred 30-minute episodes.^[7]^[8]

Production of the still-unseen series was suspended in October 1948 due to high costs and the lack of a national sponsor.^[9] Instead, the NBC anthology series Your Show Time became American television's first filmed dramatic series to be broadcast, in January 1949.^[10] The earliest syndicated airings of Public Prosecutor were in February 1951.^[11]

The DuMont Television Network broadcast the series as Crawford Mystery Theatre (named after sponsor Crawford Clothes) September 6–27, 1951, and continuing locally until February 28, 1952. The producers turned it into a panel show to fill out the program to 30 minutes. Each week, three guest panelists watched an episode, which was halted just before the climax. Each panelist then tried to guess the identity of the guilty party. Veteran radio announcer and future game-show host Warren Hull presided over the half-hour version of Public Prosecutor.

When Public Prosecutor was syndicated in the 1950s, the episodes had been re-edited to fit a 15-minute time slot.^[12]^[13] Film historian Thomas Schatz writes,

Narrated by Howard, who addresses the camera throughout much of the story, the bare-bones mystery plots are condensed to fit into fifteen-minute segments modeled after the format of radio episodes. The verbal exposition is so insistent that the images begin to seem redundant; the episodes truly resemble radio with pictures. Sets are undecorated. Actors appear distracted, if not anguished, as they try to hit their marks consistently in the first take. In spite of the opportunities for shot selection offered by the Multicam system, the camera work consists mainly of single-take medium shots or simple over-the-shoulder dialogue sequences.^[14]

Episode status

One episode of Public Prosecutor is in the collection of the Museum of Broadcast Communications. Currently there are at least 10 episodes posted on YouTube.^[15] Alpha Video has released eight episodes of the series in a two-volume DVD set.

Episodes

No.	Title	Directed by	Written by
1	"The Case of the Missing Bullets"	No director listed in credits	TBA
A patrolman is murdered after interrupting a burglary, and public prosecutor Allen must find the killer.
2	"The Case of the Bandaged Hand"	TBA	TBA
3	"The Case of the Mayan Dagger"	TBA	TBA
4	"The Case of the Body Beautiful"	TBA	TBA
5	"The Case of the Strange Suicide"	Lew Landers	TBA
A woman died in an auto accident, but then a suicide note is found. Allen believes the woman was murdered.
6	"The Case of the Eye Witness"	TBA	TBA
7	"The Case of the Yellow Ticket"	TBA	TBA
8	"The Case of the Family Affair"	TBA	TBA
9	"The Case of the Missing Hour"	Lew Landers	TBA
A publisher is murdered and Allen learns many people were on bad terms with the man.
10	"The Case of the Double Clue"	TBA	TBA
11	"The Case of the Swarthy Man"	TBA	TBA
12	"The Case of the Man Who Wasn’t There"	Lew Landers	TBA
The man Allen believes to be a thief always has an airtight alibi. DeForest Kelley played the man’s assistant, Danny Watson.
13	"The Case of the Talking Horseshoe"	TBA	TBA
14	"The Case of the Comic Strip Murder"	Lew Landers	TBA
15	"The Case of the Dead Man’s Voice"	Lew Landers	TBA
A murdered novelist leaves a recording in which he taunts the police, challenging them to find his killer.
16	"The Case of the Fabulous Liars"	TBA	TBA
17	"The Case of the Shattered Mirror"	Lew Landers	TBA
A bullet that missed its mark helps Allen find the murderer of a songwriter.
18	"The Case of the Surprised Corpse"	TBA	TBA
19	"The Case of the Time Stood Still"	TBA	TBA
20	"The Case of the Devil’s Heart"	Lew Landers	TBA
The young heir to a fortune is killed, perhaps in an accident. His sister, said to be mentally incompetent, keeps quoting nursery rhymes. Is she giving clues?
21	"The Case of the Glamour Girls"	Lew Landers	TBA
A neighbor and a scrubwoman are both suspects in the murder of a glamour photographer.
22	"The Case of the Crepe for Suzette"	Lew Landers	TBA
Suzette, Pat’s favorite singer, is murdered, and Suzette’s ex-husband, a fired cleaning lady, and a song plugger are suspects.
23	"The Case of the Thousand Terrors"	Lew Landers	TBA
A woman claims her family is trying to kill her. Allen suspects her husband’s first wife was murdered.
24	"The Case of the Innocent Lion"	Lew Landers	TBA
An animal trainer is mauled by a lion, but Allen learns the man died of a stab wound.
25	"The Case of the Murder Melody"	TBA	TBA
Allen questions a private detective found in the home of a murdered songwriter.
26	"The Case of the Jade Flute"	TBA	TBA

References

^ "Half Hour Video Films Shot in 2 Days, Cost $10,000", The Washington Post, May 1, 1949, p. T1.
^ Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, 1948, v. 51, no. 6, p. 592.
^ "NBC Mulls Video Pix Distrib", Billboard, Nov. 6, 1948, p. 11.
^ Thomas Schatz, Boom and Bust: American Cinema in the 1940s, University of California Press, 1999, p. 436. ISBN 9780520221307.
^ "The News of Radio", The New York Times, March 17, 1948, p. 50.
^ "The News of Radio", The New York Times, April 6, 1948, p. 46.
^ "Bristol-Myers Mulls 'Prosecutor' Series", Billboard, August 27, 1949, p. 10.
^ Stanley Rubin, "A (Very) Personal History of the First Sponsored Film Series on National Television", E-Media Studies, vol. 1, issue 1 (2008).
^ "News of TV and Radio", The New York Times, Oct. 24, 1948, p. X11.
^ Rubin, ibid. Although Rubin writes that Your Show Time went on the air in September 1948 on the East Coast, no evidence has been found for this. The New York Times published an article on January 17, 1949, about the debut of the series on network television.
^ "Brewers Ogle TV As Spring Nears", Billboard, February 24, 1951, p. 6.
^ "Official Loses Distribution of Fairbanks Film", Billboard, Jan. 19, 1952, p. 8.
^ "Consolidated TV, Fairbanks in Deal", Billboard, August 9, 1952, p. 10.
^ Thomas Schatz, Boom and Bust: American Cinema in the 1940s, University of California Press, 1999, p. 438. ISBN 9780520221307.
^ Public Prosecutor episodes on YouTube

Bibliography

David Weinstein, The Forgotten Network: DuMont and the Birth of American Television (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004) ISBN 1-59213-245-6
Alex McNeil, Total Television, Fourth edition (New York: Penguin Books, 1980) ISBN 0-14-024916-8
Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network TV Shows, Third edition (New York: Ballantine Books, 1985) ISBN 0-345-31864-1

External links

This page was last edited on 6 April 2024, at 17:04

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia