Ep. 132 | To Catch a Predator: Trials by Television

On the evening of November 5, 2006, an NBC camera crew sat parked outside a house in Terrell, Texas, waiting for a SWAT team to bring out 56-year-old assistant DA Louis "Bill" Conradt Jr. He never came out. Moments after officers entered, Conradt shot himself in a hallway and the cameras kept rolling. It was the most honest moment To Catch a Predator ever produced: the instant its premise stopped being television and became something that no one on set knew how to handle.

For three years, To Catch a Predator was one of the most-watched, most-memed, and most ethically contested shows on American television. From 2004 to 2007, the show’s staff worked alongside police and a volunteer group call Perverted Justice to lure adult men to sting houses by impersonating children in online chats and agreeing to sexual acts. But of course, waiting for them inside that house, was not a child, but none other than Chris Hansen himself.

The show pulled in over seven million viewers a week: a 13% lift over Dateline's usual audience. It exposed something real. But the format built to expose it wouldn’t survive its own methods for long.

So why don’t you have a seat right over there while I tell you the story of how a hit TV show designed to catch predators ended up on trial itself.

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