I loved some of his Chesterfield adds that talked about accessory organs.

Last I knew, Hulu was still accepting requests to become a beta tester, not sure if they still are, or when the site will go live for the general public, but do keep checking, as the site has tons of good shows.

Thanks to mandc and catselbow on the alternative source info! I had forgotten that some of the TV eps were available online as well.

Plenty of the black-and-white TV episodes have fallen into the public domain and ARE available on DVD. Check the DVD bargain bins in Walmart, Walgreens, and similar places. The quality varies widely, depending on the source prints, and some come complete with the old cigarette commercials.

Lots of the radio series broadcasts are available free online at archive.org.

The first season of the color TV series was released on DVD, but went no further—disappointing. Have to fall back on those old Nick at Nite episodes recorded on VHS to view the later seasons.

7. I have a stack of EP VHS tapes with all of the color series recorded off TV – not a general purpose trivia fact, but important for establishing credentials. ;-) Oh, and they’re in broadcast order. That’s less impressive than it sounds, as Nick-at-Nite ran the series in broadcast order… all you had to do was watch for the Blue Boy episode, and you knew they were going around again.

8. A great book came out a few years back by Michael Hayde, called “My Name’s Friday.” It’s an awesome read (Hayde *really* did his homework), and Harry Morgan wrote the intro. It’s worth having around as a reference work, also, since it has descriptions, air dates, etc. for every episode from radio through TV.

9. Oh, radio. Anyone who’s only familiar with Dragnet from the Nick-at-Nite series is only getting a fraction of what’s out there. Check out http://www.otr.net/?p=drag for a sampling of the radio episodes. They’re as good (in some cases, I’d be willing to say better) as their TV counterparts. And many of the later TV episodes were adapted from the radio scripts, so it’s always fun to come across a radio episode that seems oddly familiar…

10. Sadly, there are many black-and-white TV episodes from the 50’s that aren’t available to the public. We should really get a letter writing campaign going! (Anyone? Hello? Bueller?)

11. In the radio shows, Webb endorses ‘extra mild’ Fatima cigarettes, so we’ll have to add that to his list of brands.

12. The original Dragnet movie (from 1954, with Ben Alexander/’Frank Smith’ as Friday’s partner) is available on Netflix. Worth a watch!

OK. That’s probably enough of that for now. ;-) Thanks for the great post!