Tehran: Despite the US and Iran’s ongoing tensions, there is at least one American on condition television in Tehran that its millions of viewers are invited to hear on the air each week. He’s only a hypothetical insurance fraud detective who has been working on the case since 1949, to be precise. The radio program” Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar,” which was produced by CBS and afterwards received engaged Egyptian listening for a Farsi-language type under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in the 1960s, has since returned to Persian stereo.
It’s unclear why specifically the network led by anti-religious extremists has re-elected the “man with the action-packed cost accounts,” but his reappearance brings back memories of a time when Iran and the US enjoyed very near ties.
And the newest episodes introduce a personality that many older Iranians have a long-standing love for. ” It is wonderful, it reminds me of the ‘ 60s and ‘ 70s, when I listened to it with my kids through a vacuum tube radio”, said Masoud Kouchaki, 73. ” We only had to speculate as to how Johnny Dollar may find the murderer,” said the statement.” We did not have any problems.”
The initial CBS television show ran from 1949 until 1962 and focused on the circumstances of Johnny Dollar, an inspector from Hartford, Connecticut. To advance the story, Dollar interviewed witnesses and suspects in the transatlantic voice typical of detective stories of the time, and the serial relied on the detective’s expenses account entries like”$ 10 payment on the vehicle I rented” or “one money, one beverage for me.”
Iran’s type of” Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar “dropped the charge accounts format but kept the noir-light feeling, serious song and US area. Instead, Iranian state radio would invite the public to write in to explain the clue that had given the guilty party, with those who got it right having a chance to win a prize.
After Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, the state radio and TV broadcaster found itself controlled by hardliners. Any program that celebrated America was taken out of the air. Johnny Dollar does appear to have passed the test, despite the state-run Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcast having not explained why it should be allowed on its radio channel. Ayoub Aghakhani, the director of the newly produced episodes, said it was to” attract more audiences” to radio broadcasts. State radio has so far aired nine episodes and intends to continue with the series.
