Handheld radios were not all that common in the mid 1970's. As the end of the decade drew near more and more departments were equipping their officers with them. You have to understand that they were out on the cutting edge at the time. The portables we had in the Forest Service when I began my career in the early 70's were called "packsets." Depending on who made them they came in various sizes and our did not have rechargeable batteries. They were 12-18" long, about 10-12" high and about 5-6" thick. They had a microphone and a short metal whip of 12-18" long that had a bright red, oblong shaped protector on the tip. When we finally got handhelds they came with a steel, telescoping antenna that worked far better than a rubber ducky, but we were always breaking them.
Two memories of Adam-12 the first time they were shown come to mind. First, LAPD officers were required to put on their hats and put the baton on their belt every time they got out of the car, no exceptions. Those hats really looked pretty dorky. One of the biggest debates in any uniformed service is what style hat to wear. With Adam-12 on the air we could always point to what we did not want.
Jack and the boys wanted Adam-12 to be as realistic as possible for TV. When the show first started you would hear the dispatcher tell them to switch to "Tac 2" for another unit and Kent McChord would just start talking as if the radio changed channels automatically. Someone complained and for a year or two after that the same footage was always used in that situation, which showed a hand reach down to the old classic Motorola tan control head and rotate a big black knob over to another channel. If you don't find Adam-12 accurate as to procedure, then you won't find another one that is.
I remember Emergency showing how early paramedics could not get through to the hospitals at times because of congestion on one channel when multiple units were working several hospitals at once. Webb brought this out for public consumption and the FCC allocated the original eight and then shortly after the 10 UHF med channels that form the core of this type of communications to this day.
Webb's programs did much to advance the emergency services, law enforcement, fire, and EMS. He was respected by those professions. There is one exception to this and that was the program called "Sierra", which was supposed to represent two Yosemite National Park rangers. He used the old formula of the older officer being single and the younger, less experienced officer being newly married. Since park rangers rarely double up, along with a whole list of other problems, and because Webb had overused the formula, it did not last very long. I was in college and didn't have time to watch it, plus reception in our dorm room was real bad on the NBC station. The whole mystique of being a "ranger" is pretty overblown anyway and not well represented in any media, so I was just as glad to see the series end with less than two full seasons. Jack was a city boy and just didn't know how to represent this particular job. On that account he was part of a very large group of movie and TV producers, that still exists today, and might be even worse.
I almost forgot, the LAPD dispatcher heard in Adam-12 was an actual dispatcher, I think in the old Van Nuys comm center. I used to hear her all the time in my early radio hobby days in L.A., well I was in high school anyway. I met her once on a tour and as I remember it, she was pretty attractive. When she spoke is was disconcerting to hear her voice coming out live from a person, instead of a TV set.
"1 Adam 12, 1 Adam 12, 459 ringer, see the man to the rear of 8986 Winnetka."
