Abstract
"Night Watch" was radio's first "reality show", a program that brought live and authentic police drama to the airwaves. Each week, Don Reed accompanied Officer Ron Perkins on the night watch in Culver City, California. Traveling in an unmarked car, Reed used a heavy battery-powered tape recorder, complete with a microphone cleverly concealed inside the casing of a flashlight, to participate in and record real police calls. These were authentic, unscripted, and unrehearsed adventures, with no actors, no expectations, and nothing planned in advance.