State Trooper spent three seasons in syndication (winter 1957-June 1959) after NBC passed on the series. The pilot had aired on Campbell Star Stage in 1956.
Rod Cameron top-lined as Lt. Rod Blake, and introduced & closed each episode, while providing narration in-between, the latter marking the series as a knockoff of Dragnet. It was a standard crime drama of the era, but that genre was growing toward the end of the 50's, and that might explain why NBC, as well as CBS & ABC, passed on the series, leaving it open for the fertile ground of syndication.
Let's take a look at a sample episode:
Rating: B.
2 comments:
Actually Cameron would not have done a network series. All three of Cameron's series were done for syndication. Cameron was a canny businessman, and knew that his residuals would be greater without one of the major networks claiming a percentage of the action. Cameron was drawing over $200,000 annually by the early 1960's with CITY DETECTIVE, STATE TROOPER and CORONADO 9 all in reruns.
And all of them were produced by Revue, right? I've seen Coronado 9 on YouTube, and that will be reviewed down the line, but never City Detective.
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