Lone Ranger's Anniversary Part 2

Lone Ranger’s Anniversary Part 2. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.

I was one of those kids that grew up in the 50’s and 60’s who watched the Lone Ranger and Tonto on our old Zenith black and white television set. This year marks the 80th anniversary of the creation of the Lone Ranger for radio and the 75th anniversary of the Ranger’s appearance in the movies and TV. David Rothel is the author of the book, “Who Was That Masked Man; The Story of the Lone Ranger” and says a 1981 movie of the Lone Ranger was a major flop.

ROTHEL: And so the Lone Ranger for many, many years up until the last couple of years when Johnny Depp decided he wanted to bring the Lone Ranger back, it was sort of a dormant character. But many of us still love to hear the old radio programs and in reruns the television series was popular.

Did you know that the Lone Ranger is older than Superman? But what about the future of the Lone Ranger?

ROTHEL: Oh I would love to be totally optimistic about that but it’s a very different time now from when the Lone Ranger came along. I think the new movie is a comic western for today’s teenagers, 20-somethings and 30-somethings. I don’t know. We say we have those values that the Lone Ranger exemplified but we don’t seem to wear them on our coat sleeves as we did many, many years back.

That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.