The First 48
Encyclopedia
The First 48 is an American
documentary television series that airs on A&E
. Filmed in various cities in the United States
, the series offers an insider's look at the real-life world of homicide
investigators. While the cinema-verite series often follows the investigations to their end, it usually focuses on their first 48 hours, hence the title.
While most cases are solved within the first 48 hours, some go on days, weeks, or months after the first 48. The shortest investigation was led by Det. Brenda Wescott, who arrested a suspect, just 6 hours into the investigation.
In 2006, the series was nominated for a Distinguished Documentary Achievement Award, in the Continuing Series category, by the International Documentary Association
, eventually losing out to American Experience
.
Dion Graham is featured as the narrator
, and is the only member of the cast to be in every one of the episodes.
On March 3, 2009, it was renewed for its 9th season by A&E, and currently has 152 episodes. By season 6, The First 48 had become the highest rated non-fiction
justice series on American television, and had gained considerable critical acclaim along with controversy. The season 8 premiere on January 1, 2009 garnered a domestic audience of 2.3 million viewers making it the series' most watched episode, thus far.
Each episode picks one or more homicides in different cities, covering each alternately, showing how detectives use forensic evidence, witness
interviews
and other advanced detective
skills to identify suspects.
The series has aired several follow-up episodes entitled After the First 48, which detail the trials of those accused in previous episodes, and the aftermath of victims' survivors. There is also a new spin-off, The First 48: Missing Persons, which follows the same story format as the original series.
features the conceptual statement: "For homicide detectives, the clock starts ticking the moment they are called. Their chance of solving a case is cut in half if they don't get a lead within the first 48 hours." The original soundtrack
, composed
by both Chuck Hammer
(2004–2005) and Brian and Justin Deming (2006–2008), is a combination of dark ambient music
integrated with sound design
.
was shot and killed during a SWAT raid that was filmed by The First 48 cameras. Detroit SWAT unit raided the duplex while searching for a homicide suspect. On October 5th, 2011 prosecutors charged the Detroit police officer with involuntary manslaughter of Aiyana and Allison Howard, an A&E Television Network photographer, who was filming that night, with perjury and obstruction of justice after lying under oath.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
documentary television series that airs on A&E
A&E Network
The A&E Network is a United States-based cable and satellite television network with headquarters in New York City and offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, London, Los Angeles and Stamford. A&E also airs in Canada and Latin America. Initially named the Arts & Entertainment Network, A&E launched...
. Filmed in various cities in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, the series offers an insider's look at the real-life world of homicide
Homicide
Homicide refers to the act of a human killing another human. Murder, for example, is a type of homicide. It can also describe a person who has committed such an act, though this use is rare in modern English...
investigators. While the cinema-verite series often follows the investigations to their end, it usually focuses on their first 48 hours, hence the title.
While most cases are solved within the first 48 hours, some go on days, weeks, or months after the first 48. The shortest investigation was led by Det. Brenda Wescott, who arrested a suspect, just 6 hours into the investigation.
In 2006, the series was nominated for a Distinguished Documentary Achievement Award, in the Continuing Series category, by the International Documentary Association
International Documentary Association
International Documentary Association , founded in 1982, is a non-profit organization promoting documentary film, video and new media, to support the efforts of documentary filmmaking and video production makers around the world and to increase public appreciation and demand for the art of the...
, eventually losing out to American Experience
American Experience
American Experience is a television program airing on the Public Broadcasting Service Public television stations in the United States. The program airs documentaries, many of which have won awards, about important or interesting events and people in American history...
.
Dion Graham is featured as the narrator
Narrator
A narrator is, within any story , the fictional or non-fictional, personal or impersonal entity who tells the story to the audience. When the narrator is also a character within the story, he or she is sometimes known as the viewpoint character. The narrator is one of three entities responsible for...
, and is the only member of the cast to be in every one of the episodes.
On March 3, 2009, it was renewed for its 9th season by A&E, and currently has 152 episodes. By season 6, The First 48 had become the highest rated non-fiction
Non-fiction
Non-fiction is the form of any narrative, account, or other communicative work whose assertions and descriptions are understood to be fact...
justice series on American television, and had gained considerable critical acclaim along with controversy. The season 8 premiere on January 1, 2009 garnered a domestic audience of 2.3 million viewers making it the series' most watched episode, thus far.
Each episode picks one or more homicides in different cities, covering each alternately, showing how detectives use forensic evidence, witness
Witness
A witness is someone who has firsthand knowledge about an event, or in the criminal justice systems usually a crime, through his or her senses and can help certify important considerations about the crime or event. A witness who has seen the event first hand is known as an eyewitness...
interviews
Interviews
Interviews is:# the plural form of "interview"# a compilation album by Bob Marley & the Wailers, see Interviews # a C++ toolkit for the X Window System, see InterViews...
and other advanced detective
Detective
A detective is an investigator, either a member of a police agency or a private person. The latter may be known as private investigators or "private eyes"...
skills to identify suspects.
The series has aired several follow-up episodes entitled After the First 48, which detail the trials of those accused in previous episodes, and the aftermath of victims' survivors. There is also a new spin-off, The First 48: Missing Persons, which follows the same story format as the original series.
Title sequence
The First 48s opening title sequenceTitle sequence
A Title Sequence is the method by which cinematic films or television programs present their title, key production and cast members, or both, utilizing conceptual visuals and sound...
features the conceptual statement: "For homicide detectives, the clock starts ticking the moment they are called. Their chance of solving a case is cut in half if they don't get a lead within the first 48 hours." The original soundtrack
Soundtrack
A soundtrack can be recorded music accompanying and synchronized to the images of a motion picture, book, television program or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack of a film or TV show; or the physical area of a film that contains the...
, composed
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
by both Chuck Hammer
Chuck Hammer
Chuck Hammer is an American guitarist and Emmy nominated digital film composer, known for seminal guitar-synth with Lou Reed, David Bowie, and Guitarchitecture....
(2004–2005) and Brian and Justin Deming (2006–2008), is a combination of dark ambient music
Ambient music
Ambient music is a musical genre that focuses largely on the timbral characteristics of sounds, often organized or performed to evoke an "atmospheric", "visual" or "unobtrusive" quality.- History :...
integrated with sound design
Sound design
Sound design is the process of specifying, acquiring, manipulating or generating audio elements. It is employed in a variety of disciplines including filmmaking, television production, theatre, sound recording and reproduction, live performance, sound art, post-production and video game software...
.
Episodes
| Season | Number of episodes |
|---|---|
| 1 | 13 |
| 2 | 12 |
| 3 | 31 |
| 4 | 41 |
| 5,6,8,9 | 23 |
| 7 | 30 |
| 10 | 29 |
| 11 | TBD |
Controversy
On May 16, 2010, a 7-year-old Detroit girl named Aiyana JonesAiyana Jones
Aiyana Mo'Nay Stanley Jones was a seven-year-old girl from the East Side of Detroit, Michigan who was shot and killed during a raid conducted by the Detroit Police Department's Special Response Team on May 16, 2010. Her death drew national media attention and led U.S. Representative John Conyers...
was shot and killed during a SWAT raid that was filmed by The First 48 cameras. Detroit SWAT unit raided the duplex while searching for a homicide suspect. On October 5th, 2011 prosecutors charged the Detroit police officer with involuntary manslaughter of Aiyana and Allison Howard, an A&E Television Network photographer, who was filming that night, with perjury and obstruction of justice after lying under oath.
The show's unprecedented access to the police departments has generated some controversy because such access is not typically given to traditional local news mediaNews mediaThe news media are those elements of the mass media that focus on delivering news to the general public or a target public.These include print media , broadcast news , and more recently the Internet .-Etymology:A medium is a carrier of something...
.
Cities
The First 48 has featured or plans to feature detective units in the following U.S. cities:- New Haven, ConnecticutNew Haven, ConnecticutNew Haven is the second-largest city in Connecticut and the sixth-largest in New England. According to the 2010 Census, New Haven's population increased by 5.0% between 2000 and 2010, a rate higher than that of the State of Connecticut, and higher than that of the state's five largest cities, and...
- Birmingham, AlabamaBirmingham, AlabamaBirmingham is the largest city in Alabama. The city is the county seat of Jefferson County. According to the 2010 United States Census, Birmingham had a population of 212,237. The Birmingham-Hoover Metropolitan Area, in estimate by the U.S...
- Charlotte, North CarolinaCharlotte, North CarolinaCharlotte is the largest city in the U.S. state of North Carolina and the seat of Mecklenburg County. In 2010, Charlotte's population according to the US Census Bureau was 731,424, making it the 17th largest city in the United States based on population. The Charlotte metropolitan area had a 2009...
- Cincinnati, OhioCincinnati, OhioCincinnati is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio. Cincinnati is the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located to north of the Ohio River at the Ohio-Kentucky border, near Indiana. The population within city limits is 296,943 according to the 2010 census, making it Ohio's...
- Cleveland, OhioCleveland, OhioCleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...
- Dallas, TexasDallas, TexasDallas is the third-largest city in Texas and the ninth-largest in the United States. The Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex is the largest metropolitan area in the South and fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States...
- DeKalb County, GeorgiaDeKalb County, GeorgiaDeKalb County is a county located in the U.S. state of Georgia. The population of the county was 691,893 at the 2010 census. Its county seat is the city of Decatur. It is bordered to the west by Fulton County and contains roughly 10% of the city of Atlanta...
- Detroit, MichiganDetroit, MichiganDetroit is the major city among the primary cultural, financial, and transportation centers in the Metro Detroit area, a region of 5.2 million people. As the seat of Wayne County, the city of Detroit is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan and serves as a major port on the Detroit River...
- Houston, TexasHouston, TexasHouston is the fourth-largest city in the United States, and the largest city in the state of Texas. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the city had a population of 2.1 million people within an area of . Houston is the seat of Harris County and the economic center of , which is the ...
- Harris County, TexasHarris County, TexasAs of the 2010 Census, the population of the county was 4,092,459, White Americans made up 56.6% of Harris County's population; non-Hispanic whites represented 33.0% of the population. Black Americans made up 18.9% of the population. Native Americans made up 0.7% of Harris County's population...
- Kansas City, KansasKansas City, KansasKansas City is the third-largest city in the state of Kansas and is the county seat of Wyandotte County. It is a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri, and is the third largest city in the Kansas City Metropolitan Area. The city is part of a consolidated city-county government known as the "Unified...
- Kansas City, MissouriKansas City, MissouriKansas City, Missouri is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri and is the anchor city of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area, the second largest metropolitan area in Missouri. It encompasses in parts of Jackson, Clay, Cass, and Platte counties...
- Las Vegas, NevadaLas Vegas, NevadaLas Vegas is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Nevada and is also the county seat of Clark County, Nevada. Las Vegas is an internationally renowned major resort city for gambling, shopping, and fine dining. The city bills itself as The Entertainment Capital of the World, and is famous...
- Louisville, KentuckyLouisville, KentuckyLouisville is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kentucky, and the county seat of Jefferson County. Since 2003, the city's borders have been coterminous with those of the county because of a city-county merger. The city's population at the 2010 census was 741,096...
- Memphis, TennesseeMemphis, TennesseeMemphis is a city in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of Tennessee, and the county seat of Shelby County. The city is located on the 4th Chickasaw Bluff, south of the confluence of the Wolf and Mississippi rivers....
- Miami, FloridaMiami, FloridaMiami is a city located on the Atlantic coast in southeastern Florida and the county seat of Miami-Dade County, the most populous county in Florida and the eighth-most populous county in the United States with a population of 2,500,625...
- Minneapolis, MinnesotaMinneapolis, MinnesotaMinneapolis , nicknamed "City of Lakes" and the "Mill City," is the county seat of Hennepin County, the largest city in the U.S. state of Minnesota, and the 48th largest in the United States...
- Philadelphia, PennsylvaniaPhiladelphia, PennsylvaniaPhiladelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Philadelphia County, with which it is coterminous. The city is located in the Northeastern United States along the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers. It is the fifth-most-populous city in the United States,...
- Phoenix, ArizonaPhoenix, ArizonaPhoenix is the capital, and largest city, of the U.S. state of Arizona, as well as the sixth most populated city in the United States. Phoenix is home to 1,445,632 people according to the official 2010 U.S. Census Bureau data...
- Rochester, New YorkRochester, New YorkRochester is a city in Monroe County, New York, south of Lake Ontario in the United States. Known as The World's Image Centre, it was also once known as The Flour City, and more recently as The Flower City...
- San Antonio, TexasSan Antonio, TexasSan Antonio is the seventh-largest city in the United States of America and the second-largest city within the state of Texas, with a population of 1.33 million. Located in the American Southwest and the south–central part of Texas, the city serves as the seat of Bexar County. In 2011,...
- Tucson, ArizonaTucson, ArizonaTucson is a city in and the county seat of Pima County, Arizona, United States. The city is located 118 miles southeast of Phoenix and 60 miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border. The 2010 United States Census puts the city's population at 520,116 with a metropolitan area population at 1,020,200...