https://archive.org/details/OTRR_Calling_All_Cars_Singles  Episode 46- The Perfect Crime

What I found to be most interesting about this clip wasn’t the content, though I will get to that in a moment, but the advertising involved in the show. The show, a police detective drama called Calling All Cars, is sponsored by an oil company, Rio Grande Oil, which had fairly lengthy ads before and after the program itself. When the opening ad came on, it sounded like it was going to be the show itself, featuring police officers pulling over a suspected gas station robber who turned out to be someone looking for their brand of oil. The advertisement after the program went even further, featuring an induction into a Rio Grande Oil  youth police force for one of the actors. Yes, it was that ridiculous. I thought it all tied in nicely with today’s lecture regarding advertising.

Onto the content of the show. After the racism in the voices during the conversation between the German doctor/evil scientist and his Mexican companion, the program was interesting in showing the conversation of the crime itself followed by detectives attempting to solve the mystery. It was ultimately solved, though, not by detectives, but by the family who was inadvertently harboring the scientist during his escape. The overarching theme was clear (and stated outright): crime doesn’t pay. It seemed to be marketed towards children, oddly, despite the oil advertisements, but this may just be my perceptions of the program. It didn’t contain anything too intellectually stimulating or even particularly entertaining, I thought. It took conscious efforts to not multitask.