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This week on Night Water, we’ve got a special holiday treat: the first episode of Broadway Is My Beat Is My Beat, the only recap podcast dedicated to the old-time radio detective show Broadway Is My Beat.

A few years ago, I started listening to the Antioch Broadcasting Network (ABN), an internet radio station that plays old-time radio shows from the ’40s and ’50s, mostly to help me get to sleep. From 9 to 11 p.m. (central time), ABN plays police and detective stories. The episodes are usually pretty formulaic, making it easy to follow along even as you’re drifting off to sleep.

This is how I was introduced to Broadway Is My Beat, a detective show that ran from 1949 to 1954 on CBS. Larry Thor stars as Detective Danny Clover, a homicide detective working in Manhattan’s 16th Precinct (the same precinct as the cops in Law & Order: Special Victim Unit). “From Times Square to Columbus Circle,” Clover announces at the top of each episode, “the gaudiest, the most violent, the lonesomest mile in the world.” Broadway—his beat!

Cover art for Broadway Is My Beat Is My Beat.

And today, Broadway Is My Beat is our beat as we take a deep dive into “The Ben Justin Murder Case,” originally broadcast on December 8, 1950. Joining me is Drew Ackerman, the creator, writer, and host of the Sleep With Me podcast, the podcast that puts you to sleep. You may remember Drew from the Night Water crossover event on Sleep With Me earlier this year. He has recorded over 1000 episodes of bedtime stories for adults since 2013. If you, like me, have trouble falling asleep but don’t want to listen to crime dramas, try Sleep With Me wherever good podcasts are downloaded.

We’ll be playing clips from “The Ben Justin Murder Case” during our discussion, but if you want to hear the entirety of the episode, you can listen to it right here:

Or download the MP3 from the Internet Archive—it’s listed as file 61 in the Broadway Is My Beat single episodes collection.

Additional resources for the curious among us:

Broadway Is My Beat program log on Digital Deli
Full series download on archive.org
The Old-Time Radio Researchers who put this collection together

Night Water

Broadway Is My Beat Is My Beat: The Ben…