Time for an inaccuracy rant. History.com posted this item for today in History for February 13, celebrating the debut of “Jack Webb’s first crime drama” on February 13, 1949 when Pat Novak began airing. 

The problem?

Webb had been doing crime dramas for nearly 2 1/2 years. He’d done an undetermined number of Pat Novak episodes in San Francisco in 1946-47 and then did 20 weeks of Johnny Madero on Mutual and 23 weeks of Jeff Regan on CBS before Pat Novak’s national premier on ABC in 1949. 

It’s great that history.com remembered Jack Webb. It’d be nice if they got their facts straight. I’d ask for the just the facts, but Joe Friday never said that either.