How Cop Shows Survived the Cancel Mob—and Won 2024 | 3.8.25

Summary

Morning Wire Podcast Summary

Episode Title: How Cop Shows Survived the Cancel Mob—and Won 2024
Host/Author: The Daily Wire
Release Date: March 8, 2025
Duration: Approximately 14 minutes

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Introduction

In this compelling episode of Morning Wire, hosted by Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Jon Vickley alongside co-host Georgia Howe, the spotlight is on Dan Abrams, the renowned host and producer of On Patrol Live. The discussion delves into the enduring popularity of police reality shows, particularly focusing on how these shows have navigated and overcome the widespread backlash that surged following the tragic death of George Floyd in 2020.

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Dan Abrams’ Professional Background
Timestamp: [00:03 - 02:42]

Jon Vickley opens the conversation by highlighting Dan Abrams' extensive experience in the legal and law enforcement media space. Abrams shares his journey from being a lawyer to a prominent media figure, noting his pivotal role in covering high-profile cases like the O.J. Simpson trial. He founded Law and Crime, a legal news channel boasting 7 million YouTube subscribers, which set the stage for his current venture, On Patrol Live.

Notable Quote:
Dan Abrams emphasizes the unique approach of his show:
"Unlike shows like 'Cops', we're actually live in eight or nine departments at once. The audience joins the officers in that experience."
[00:56]

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The Success and Unique Appeal of On Patrol Live
Timestamp: [02:42 - 04:38]

Abrams attributes the success of On Patrol Live to its real-time portrayal of policing, combining elements of uncertainty and community interaction. The show’s ability to present live actions from diverse police departments across the country offers viewers an authentic and engaging experience. The recent 90-episode pickup underscores its widespread appeal and resonance with audiences.

Notable Quote:
Abrams on the show’s format:
"We'll see someone approaching a vehicle or responding to a call. The officer doesn't know who's in that car or what's happening."
[02:58]

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Navigating the Backlash Post-George Floyd
Timestamp: [04:20 - 08:38]

The conversation shifts to the intense backlash against police shows following George Floyd's death. Abrams expresses his view that the cancellation of shows like Live PD was an overreaction, emphasizing that such responses unfairly tarnish the entire profession. He advocates for nuanced discussions, distinguishing between the vast majority of dedicated officers and the few who engage in misconduct.

Notable Quotes:
Abrams on the overreaction:
"All cops are bad. That's not the reaction or shouldn't be the reaction to an incident where something happens with police."
[06:07]

On media portrayal of policing:
"Most of the time when people are talking about police, it's a police involved shooting... The majority of officers never fire their weapon in the line of duty."
[07:00]

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The Resilience and Revival of Cop Shows
Timestamp: [08:25 - 11:34]

Abrams discusses the revival of cop shows amid changing public perceptions. He notes that even though there was initial resistance, the necessity of police work has led to a reevaluation of movements like "defund the police." Abrams highlights how On Patrol Live fills a crucial gap by showcasing the day-to-day realities of law enforcement, fostering a better understanding among the public.

Notable Quote:
On public reevaluation:
"There has been a recognition... that defund the police movement was absurd and that it didn't work."
[09:50]

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Public Perception and Support for Law Enforcement
Timestamp: [11:43 - 13:04]

The discussion touches upon the shifting trends in public support for law enforcement, including the peculiar phenomenon of certain individuals supporting controversial figures like Luigi Mangione. Abrams critiques this support, arguing that it often stems from a misplaced belief in innocence despite accusations of misconduct.

Notable Quote:
Abrams on misplaced support:
"The thing that makes it ridiculous is the people who are supporting Luigi Mangione are not claiming he didn't do it. They're actually celebrating him because they think he did do it."
[12:10]

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Future Endeavors and Projects
Timestamp: [13:04 - 14:20]

In the final segment, Dan Abrams shares insights into his multifaceted career, mentioning his roles beyond On Patrol Live. He highlights his involvement with Sirius XM's POTUS channel, ABC News as a chief legal analyst, and entrepreneurial ventures like Law and Crime and Bottle Raiders. Abrams expresses his commitment to continuing his passion projects that bridge media and legal education.

Notable Quote:
On his diverse projects:
"I have my hand in a lot of projects, but this one, you know, is a passion project for me as well."
[13:37]

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Conclusion

Jon Vickley wraps up the episode by congratulating Dan Abrams on the success of On Patrol Live and thanking him for sharing his perspectives. The conversation underscores the resilience of cop shows in the face of societal challenges and highlights the importance of balanced media representation in shaping public understanding of law enforcement.

Notable Quote:
Abrams on the show's success:
"This show ought to still be on the air. I also think it was important for people to see what it's like to be a police officer."
[06:23]

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This episode of Morning Wire offers an in-depth look into the dynamics of police reality shows, the challenges they face, and their role in bridging the gap between law enforcement and the public. Dan Abrams provides valuable insights into maintaining authenticity and fostering a nuanced conversation around policing in America.

Transcript

[Jon Vickley]

Dan Abrams is one of the most prolific producers of law enforcement and legal content in the entertainment industry. His latest show, On Patrol Live, was the number one entertainment show of 2024 on Friday and Saturday nights, and it was just picked up for 90 more episodes. In this episode, we speak to Abrams about cop shows and their lasting popularity despite efforts to cancel them after the death of George Floyd. I'm Daily Wire editor in chief Jon Vickley with Georgia Howe. It's Saturday, March eight, and this is a weekend edition of Morning wire. Joining us now is Dan Abrams, the host and producer of On Patrol Live. Dan, thank you so much for joining us.

[Dan Abrams]

My pleasure. Nice to be here.

[Jon Vickley]

You've done so much in the legal and law enforcement space. For those in our audience who may not be as familiar with your background as we are, can you give us a brief overview of your professional career?

[Dan Abrams]

Yeah, I mean, I am a lawyer by training and I use that pretty quickly to pivot into media, where I ended up covering some of the highest profile criminal cases from the last, sad to say, because it exposes my age, the last three decades. I started really when I covered the O.J. simpson case. I was in court every day for that criminal trial and civil case. So that was certainly the the biggest case I'd covered up to that point. And then since then, I've covered all the biggest trials around the country. And then recently I've started a company called Law and Crime. We now have a 7 million YouTube subscribers and it's a massive legal and crime channel. But that background is, I think, why the producers came to me to host what is now On Patrol Live, which is a live police show where we follow police departments in real time. I think that they wanted someone who had a bit of a legal background to host the show. And this is a show that is different than any other police show out there because, you know, unlike let's say A Cops, where it's sort of a highlight reel of crazy moments, we're actually live in eight or nine departments at once. And so we'll go to a department and we'll see someone approaching a vehicle or responding to a call. And like the officers, the audience doesn't know what's going to happen next. The officer doesn't know what's going to happen next. The officer doesn't know who's in that car. The officer doesn't know exactly what's happening at a domestic call. And so the audience joins the officers in that experience. And I think that's part of what makes the show so compelling. Yeah.

[Jon Vickley]

And look, the numbers are really proving that it is a successful concept. Number one entertainment program on Friday and Saturday nights just got a 90 episode pickup. That's pretty much unheard of in the current TV landscape. What do you think makes this show so successful?

[Dan Abrams]

I think it's that people are interested in policing. I think there is an element of uncertainty throughout the show. And I also think that watching police engage with the community is something people have long been interested in. And I think that there's no other place where they can see it in real time. And as a result, I think that the concept, the kinds of departments that we follow, we try and follow a mix of departments around the country, make this a really compelling show year after year.

[Jon Vickley]

When you say mix of departments, what do you mean? Like different sizes of departments, different areas of the country.

[Dan Abrams]

Correct. So it'll be both geographical diversity and also diversity of types of departments, the size of the department. You know, we're in everything from Las Vegas, one of the top 10 biggest police departments in America, to Hazen, Arkansas, where we ride with the chief of the department and, you know, the two folks who work in his office. So it's a pretty diverse group of departments. And you know what's interesting is of course that the laws are different sometimes state to state too, particularly on kind of drug crime. So, you know, that's part of what makes this interesting is we can compare what's happening around the country with different police departments.

[Jon Vickley]

Well, obviously this show, as many other shows like it have proven, there's a very large dedicated audience for cop shows. Things change, though, in 2020. I wanted you to unpack that for us. What happened back in 2020 after the death of George Floyd and the backlash against police shows like Live PD and Cops.

[Dan Abrams]

Well, look, I think there was a backlash against police. You know, it wasn't just police shows, it was against police. And I said at the time when Live PD was canceled, which I hosted as well, I thought it was a vast overreaction. It's what I said when the show was canceled, and I maintain it to this day. I think that people overreacted. And the reason it's important to talk about this is there's going to be some other incident where a cop does something that the cop shouldn't have done and it might be really bad. And any good cop will tell you that the worst thing for good cops is a bad cop. And so there will be something else that will happen. And the reason we need to talk about it now is so that we don't again have the overreaction, which is all cops are bad. See? See? All cops are bad. That's not the reaction or shouldn't be the reaction, in my view, to an incident where something happens with police, where a police officer engages in some form of wrongdoing. Because no matter what career you're talking about, considering there are hundreds of thousands of police officers around the country, you are going to have some bad cops. That doesn't mean that the rest of the cops, the vast majority, overwhelming majority of cops who are doing really hard work every day aren't doing really good work.

[Jon Vickley]

Sure. I'm curious about the experience of Live PD being canceled from your perspective. I don't know how much of this you can reveal, but can you give us a glimpse behind the scenes about what that was like, the atmosphere then and what it's been like to try to come back from that and have another cop focused show?

[Dan Abrams]

Look, I was upset. I made it very clear I was upset. There was no secret in the fact that I was upset that the show was canceled because I liked the show, I liked working on the show and I thought that it was unfortunate that there was this national overreaction that ultimately led to this ridiculous defund the police movement. And so I was not happy about it and always wanted to do something like it again and believed that it wasn't just something that I liked. I also thought it was important. I think it's important for people to see what it's like to be a police officer. And by the way, there are people who watch on Patrol live who see a scene with an officer and police officers will be watching and they'll say, ah, that guy, that officer shouldn't have done that. Okay, fair enough. That's part of what the transparency involves. But the point is it's, I think, a good thing for people to be able to see what an ordinary copy has to do every day. The problem is in the media in general, most of the time, the vast majority of time when people are talking about police, it's a police involved shooting, right? It's a cop either who's been shot or more regularly, the media covers it when a police officer shoots a civilian. And that's the, the public's understanding of policing, unfortunately, in a lot of cases and in particular communities. And of course, the majority of officers never fire their weapon in the line of duty, ever. And so now we're focusing on what 98% of policing is, which is getting a call, someone saying there's a Problem. There's an issue. An officer arriving at a scene. Not know exactly who's who. Not knowing who the reporting party is. Not knowing was this person the victim. And wait, wait, we heard that there was someone breaking in from the back door.

[Jon Vickley]

What?

[Dan Abrams]

There's no. Oh, there was no back door break in. Okay. The uncertainty that police officers have arriving at a scene, if you don't understand that, you really can't understand what it's like to be a police officer.

[Jon Vickley]

That's such a good insight. I do think that's glossed over. We see the events after they've occurred and it seems like they're inevitable. And everyone knew what was happening at the time. No, don't know what's happening at the time.

[Dan Abrams]

Exactly. Exactly.

[Jon Vickley]

Real time. Have you seen attitudes toward law enforcement changing in recent years?

[Dan Abrams]

Well, look, I will tell you that when you watch these officers in action, there's still a lot of people who treat police officers terribly. I wouldn't say most people, but there's still way too many who the minute there is some interaction, remember, in most cases, the police have been called to that scene and then get attitude from people who arrive there or aren't treated well. Happens all the time. But more broadly, I think that there has been a recognition even among, let's call them police critics, that the defund the police movement was absurd and that it didn't work. And that's why liberal cities around the country that did engage in it are refunding the police and rehiring police officers because they realized that it made no sense. So from that perspective, yes, I think that there's been a something of a reevaluation, but again, there's going to be another incident. So you just. The more people know more broadly and more specifically about what police officers do, I think the better to not let fatal incidents defy policing as opposed to the broad spectrum of the work that they do.

[Jon Vickley]

When did On Patrol officially launch? I mean, when did you start working on this project?

[Dan Abrams]

2022.

[Jon Vickley]

Got it. So pretty quickly, and we did see the fallout from the defund. The police movement happened pretty fast. I think it took a lot of people by surprise how quickly we saw the negative results of that. So do you feel that the beginning of this project actually was aided by this maybe shift that began even back in 2022 about attitudes about police?

[Dan Abrams]

Maybe. But I'll tell you that as soon as Live PD was canceled, I was getting outreach from people asking me about the project. So from a sort of, you know, a show perspective, I think it was really just a question of. Of when. There's no doubt that in the immediate months after the show went off the air, to many, the show would have been too hot. Couldn't do it, can't risk it, don't want to risk the protests, don't want to risk the backlash, et cetera. I do think that that faded to some degree, but again, my perspective publicly never changed. Right. I mean, from the moment the show went off the air, I was complaining about it and saying that this show ought to still be on the air.

[Jon Vickley]

What about the trends of rooting for the bad guy like we've seen with Luigi Mangione and his popularity among some groups? Have you seen shifting trends on that front?

[Dan Abrams]

So I think that there's two things at play, Right. I do think you're going to have people who are simply looking to make the police the bad guys, right? So people who come into it hoping, looking for, rooting against the police, that's slightly separate than the people who will root specifically for someone who is accused of doing something horrible like Luigi Mangione. And my company just did a. Produced a big documentary on him that I'm in, where I make it clear that I think it's ridiculous that people are supporting Luigi Mangione. Because the thing that makes it ridiculous is the people who are supporting him are not claiming. Almost all are not claiming he didn't do it. They're actually celebrating him because they think he did do it. And that's what makes it so. So absurd. Meaning, you know, people who want to gather behind a particular defendant who they think was innocent and treated badly by the legal system. Okay. You know, we can debate the facts and the evidence in the Mangione case. It seems that the vast majority of people who are defending him are celebrating what he's accused of doing. And that's the part that is just astonishing to me.

[Jon Vickley]

Well, no matter what. I mean, no matter who you might be rooting for, the sort of equation of these shows that has proven to be a big success is people seek out drama, tension, the uncertainty, the suspense. It's always there. No matter what your political angle is. That's the appeal. That's the, you know, the secret sauce here. And clearly you guys are doing this right with the show. Final question for you. What's next on the horizon for you? Obviously, you have 90 episodes to produce of this show. Are there any other projects that you can speak about that you're working on?

[Dan Abrams]

Well, I work on a lot of things. I hosted daily radio show on Sirius XM on the POTUS channel. I'm still ABC News's chief legal analyst. I own a company called Mediaite. I started Law and Crime. As I mentioned, I've got a, a spirits company called Bottle Raiders, where we have an app that aggregates ratings of fine spirits and non al drinks. So I am I've got my hand in a in a lot of projects, but this one, you know, is a passion project for me as well.

[Jon Vickley]

That certainly comes through, and it's clearly helping this show be the success it is. Congratulations on that success, and thank you so much for talking with us.

[Dan Abrams]

My pleasure.

[Jon Vickley]

That was Dan Abrams, producer of On Patrol Live. And this has been a weekend edition of Morning Wire.