COPS debuts on Fox
On this day in 1989 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 Circles 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 Sheriffs 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 Barbours 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 imitatorsincluding the John Langley-produced series Jail and Street Patroland has been parodied extensively most notably by the Comedy Central series Reno 911In February 2008 producers released a special two-disc DVD set to celebrate the 20th anniversary of COPS.
