Dec 2023. Blues Vol 39 No. 12

And that’s how the idea for a newsletter/newspaper
was born. In the next few
weeks, we discussed a lot of things including
what the name should be. At the time,
the most popular police show on TV was
Hill Street Blues. Every cop in America was
watching that show on Thursday nights.
In fact, I was late to roll call on numerous
occasions, not leaving for work until the
show ended at 10pm, then racing to make
roll call at 10:30pm. (No I didn’t have a VCR
at the time. No one could afford one when
they first came out in the late 70’s as they
retailed for like $3000.)
One day at lunch, someone was talking
about the show and that’s when the idea hit
me. Let’s call the newspaper, The County
Blues. We even used the same type-style
as Hill Street Blues – Bookman Bold, for
the Logo. The very first issue was created
just before Christmas in 1984. It was crude,
had a million typos and was printed in blue
ink on a letter-sized paper we collected
from a defunct office supply my dad had
purchased. That first issue was the one
and only time the newspaper was printed
on anything other than newsprint. But
it was the beginning of something great.
We didn’t have any idea at the time that 40
years later, it would become the Largest
Police Magazine in the World.
Hill Street Blues was an American serial polic
to May 12, 1987, for 146 episodes. The sh
unnamed large c
84 The Blues 40th Anniversary Issue