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Dick Tracy (TV series)

Comic Strip TV Series

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 20, 2026
Entity authorityQ56301037 ↗
Source-derived summary

Dick Tracy is an American TV police drama series based on the detective comic strip Dick Tracy. The show aired on ABC from September 11, 1950 to April 7, 1951. It starred Ralph Byrd. Byrd's death in 1952 ended the series at 26 episodes.

The series initially was broadcast on Wednesdays from 8:30 to 9 p.m. Eastern Time. In October 1950 it was moved to Mondays from 8:30 to 9 p.m. E. T., and in January 1951 it was moved to Tuesdays from 8 to 8:30 p.m. E. T.

Adaptation

An animated series, The Dick Tracy Show, aired in syndication in 1961.

In 1966, a Dick Tracy television pilot was produced for a new series but was not picked up.

Editorial summary

“Dick Tracy (TV series)” enters the record as comic Strip TV Series. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Dick, Tracy and series can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1950, 1951, 1952, 1961—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Dick, Tracy and series.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Dick Tracy (TV series)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Dick, Tracy and series provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q56301037. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1950, 1951, 1952 and 1961.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Dick Tracy (TV series)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Dick Tracy (TV series) primary sources, Dick Tracy (TV series) archive and Dick research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Dick Tracy (TV series)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.