Of the millions of podcasts that have been launched since British journalist Ben Hammersley coined the term in 2004, none of them may be as unique or focused on its subject matter as longtime Nashville emergency dispatcher Brandon Hall’s Music City 911 true crime streaming program.
For starters, his podcasts don’t always involve crime or murder. But nearly every episode – whether it’s about a true crime, an accident or a missing person – shines a spotlight on the real dispatchers handling real 911 calls.
“It just depends on the situation. I mean, I’ll do little bits of everything and I don’t always do crime on the show. Like the plane crash that happened in Nashville over in Bellevue, I did a show on that. If it’s 911-related, that’s the biggest thing,” says Hall, 45, producer and host of the podcast he launched in December 2019.
“I’ve done very, very few episodes that I didn’t have a 911 call. And usually with that, I’ll have an officer’s body-worn camera video that I can take the audio from. A lot of people say, oh, can you cover this case?’ I would love to if there was a 911 call there. There are certain states that it’s literally a state law they don’t release those calls.”
In listening to the chilling 911 tape from the early March plane crash that Hall mentions, the calm dispatcher extracts precise information from frantic callers about the situation and location of the fiery accident alongside Interstate 40 East that killed a Canadian family of five.
Showcasing fellow dispatchers and the stressful calls they handle is what sets Hall’s show apart from others because there’s so many true crime podcasts out there these days.
“A lot of other true crime shows will play 911 calls but it’s usually a very small segment of a call,” Hall says. “They won’t play the entire call. They’ll edit stuff out, you know, the bad language. If I have stuff like a really bad call, something that’s emotional and very hard to hear, I’m playing the whole thing because a lot of people don’t realize that dispatchers hear this stuff. We hear it a lot.”
And a lot of people are listening to Hall recount everything from his personal 911 experiences to discussing major Nashville crimes, including the 2020 Christmas Day bombing and 2023 Covenant School mass shootings, from the recent disappearance and recovery of drowning victim Riley Strain, a University of Missouri student who was visiting Nashville, as well as major national crimes that capture the attention of a vast true crime audience.
Data posted on Hall’s Music City 911 website indicates there have been more than 2 million downloads of the podcast and it’s been heard in more than 100 countries. Females make up 83% of his audience, which is spread out evenly over three age groups (18-34, 31%; 35-44, 40%; and 45-up, 29%).
In a crowded true-crime podcast arena, Hall clearly has found his audience.
“If you want to follow a case from the very beginning of when it first happens (and) that 911 call comes in, you’re going to want to follow Brandon and his Music City 911 podcast. It’s unbelievable,” says Bob Motta, a Chicago defense attorney who hosts the Defense Diaries podcast and, like Hall, was one of the featured speakers and content creators at the recent CrimeCon Nashville convention, which drew some 5,000 avid true-crime fans to Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center.
“The first time I actually listened (to Hall’s show), I was blown away because he covers every different type of call that comes in, from the worst of the worst murders to mass shootings – anything you can imagine. Hearing people in that moment of time when it’s the most real is breathtaking and Brandon does an amazing job as a guy who’s done it for 20-plus years in explaining the process and how they handle it emotionally from every angle.
“That’s the angle (and) what separates it (from others). There’s plenty of podcasts that play 911 calls. There’s one that I know of that is a 24-year dispatcher,” Motta says.
“This show is so unique. There’s not anything else out there like it,” says Chattanooga podcaster Kenzi Durbin, whose new true-crime show Inside the Case launched May 10.
“His show brings the aspect of the reality of what true crime really is. When you hear these stories so often (they) can get taken just as an entertainment aspect and not the reality that people are going through true horror and living an actual nightmare when their loved one is missing or murdered or something bad happens to them,” adds Durbin, who previously co-hosted a true crime podcast Crimeaholics in Knoxville and Gatlinburg.
“So I think what’s so unique about Brandon showing the fact that his show does bring their real true reality aspect back into true crime and what it really is.”
Amazing is the go-to word Hall uses to describe the podcast’s popularity.
“Thousands of people every week to listen to it. I’ve been listened to in somewhere around 130 countries around the world,” Hall says. “I mean, it’s pretty amazing coming to an event like (CrimeCon) and people just recognize you walking down the hallway. In normal life, I can walk around and nobody ever pays attention to me, which I kind of like that.”
Educational and entertaining
During the interview, Hall reveals his approach to telling horrific stories is by injecting a bit of humor to offset the podcast’s serious tone. That was the case during his hourlong CrimeCon session, which he wrapped up by inviting several attendees onstage to field 911 emergencies from frantic callers. The audience laughed when the “dispatchers” stumbled, but it showed just how stressful the job can be for seasoned professionals.
“Like I always say on my show, I hope that it’s both educational and entertaining,” Hall says. “I have people all the time tell me through messages and even (at CrimeCon) that listening to my show helped them out.
“They know the very first thing that you ever get on a 911 call is location. Know where you’re at all the time,” Hall advises. “If you go to Walmart, know which Walmart it is. If you’re at your place of business – say you work in a bakery or something like that – know what the address is there. You’d be amazed how many people will call in and don’t know the address. On the show I will say stuff like that.
“Situational awareness … it could prevent a lot, but a lot of things are people who let a multiple-year relationship sour and they want the dispatcher and officers to fix it in 15 minutes.”
Anyone can host a podcast …
Hall says he’s a self-taught podcaster, armed only with a dream when he decided to go down this road. With no formal media training, learning through trial and error, it’s an inspirational story for anyone who has a similar desire to start a podcast. All you need is a strong voice, a powerful message and a willingness to put in the work necessary to succeed.
“Basically, the closest I would say I’ve got as far as (experience) in media is I’m an audiophile. I love really good-sounding stuff … good speakers, headphones and, like, home theater stuff. So I knew about acoustic stuff, but not so much recording it,” says Hall, who writes, edits and produces a new half-hour to 45-minute podcast each week.
“For a 30-minute episode that I do, with the research and finding the calls and doing everything I have to do, at a minimum I’ll spend 10 hours. Most of the time, it’s more like 20 to 30 hours a week,” he says.
“I heard this is a while back, probably on another podcast or something – that they said you should look at your work from a year ago and be disgusted with it. So hopefully you’ve improved that much and you’re listening back to you’re like, ugh. At the time you’re probably thinking to yourself, ‘oh, this is great. It sounds great. The content’s good.’ And then the next year you should look back on this year and do the same. I’ve done that with my show and it’s absolutely true.”
Hall says he’s making some money with the podcast but adds it’s “not much, though. If you’re a fan of this music artist called Seasick Steve, he has the start of a song that says, ‘I started out with nothin’ and I still got most of it left.’ So that’s about where I’m at,” he laughs.
Not everyone’s dispatch material
As satisfying as he finds the emergency dispatch job, Hall says it takes “a certain personality” to pursue the occupation as a career path. The pay’s low (he started at $9 an hour), the stress is high and the turnover rate is huge. Plus, someone is required to be on duty 24/7 at the dispatch center so it means you’ll be working a lot of nights, weekends and holidays.
“To be a dispatcher, you really have to, as they say, have ice in your veins. It really can be difficult to learn. There’s a lot of training that goes into it,” Hall says.
“Somebody like me – I’ve been doing it for a long time – I can handle it no problem at all. But I’ve seen other dispatchers, especially newer dispatchers, they’re really gung-ho and ready to do the job. But after they hear a few calls and the really bad ones – a lot of times you might be the last person that someone ever talks to – so when they hear something like that, it really works on them emotionally.
“Turnover is a huge thing. I’ve seen probably 1,500-2,000 people – maybe more – start and stop working there for various reasons,” Hall says. “Sometimes the calls are too hard, sometimes there’s too many, sometimes it’s too fast-paced or. You know, just general, ‘I don’t want this stress for the terrible pay.’
“The pay’s gotten a little better over the years, but our emergency personnel are not paid enough – police, fire, medical and dispatch. For what we have to deal with every day, we’re not paid nearly enough.”
As the 45-minute CrimeCon interview wraps up, Hall is asked if he’s available later for follow-up questions. An affable grin crosses his face. “I could probably talk for hours.”
And that’s what makes him such a good podcaster.
“Brandon’s incredible because it’s really nice to hear from somebody who actually does it,” adds Heather Ashley, host of the Big Mad True Crime podcast in Richmond, Virginia.
“He does such a great job of explaining how you’re trying to bring calm to a chaotic situation and communicate with other people who the caller might not understand is being communicated to. It brings this kind of educational standpoint to listeners and advocates for how hard that job is.”