Television

"A genius at recognizing talent in others and nurturing it to the glory of all" is Newsweek's unrestrained assessment of Grant Tinker '47, president and owner with his wife of MTM Enterprises, "the hottest sitcom factory in Hollywood." Time calls him a "magisterial executive ... the lean-jawed New Englander who was lucky enough to marry Mary Tyler Moore" and "canny enough to surround her with the best talent in the business."

When "Rhoda," the wildly successful spin-off of the equally wildly successful "Mary Tyler Moore Show," hit the air in September, it became the only show in TV history to place first in the Neilson ratings at its debut. It also made the fourth Tinker production in the top 15: "Mary," "Rhoda," the established "Bob Newhart Show," and another first-season entry, "Paul Sands in Friends and Lovers," all appearing weekly on CBS.

"The Texas Wheelers," which Newsweek describes as "the flip side of the Waltons..., featuring a rotten, gleefully unregenerate father and four offspring who can't hardly wait to follow in his feckless footsteps," this fall carried the Tinker silks to ABC. With "Second Start" scheduled for a mid-season replacement on NBC, MTM will chalk up another first: regular programs on all three major networks. All bear the Tinker stamp of credible characters, fine scripting, and strong supporting casts.

Along with a team of four writer-producers (hyphens to the cognoscenti of the tube), Tinker has made television history by violating longheld shibboleths of the trade. Divorcees, New Yorkers, and Jews are supposedly anathema to TV viewers, so Rhoda Morgenstern abandons her cosy neighborliness with Mary Richards in Minneapolis to move back to the Bronx and an audience of 20 million could hardly wait to witness her marriage to a divorced house wrecker named Joe. And Pa, on "The Texas Wheelers," counsels his sons: "Don't ever underestimate the power of laziness. It may be the secret to all life."

"One secret of MTM's success" according to Newsweek, "is its willingness to give creative craftsmen almost limitless rein. Most of MTM's producers and writers have worked on all of its current five shows; actors suggest script changes and occasionally double as their own directors." Sand, a Tony-Award winner cast as a symphony bass violinist, says "It's like working with a repertory company."

Tinker's career was off to a fast start when he joined NBC in New York fresh out of college, becoming operations manager of the radio network within three years. Later he worked in program development with several New York advertising firms, where he pioneered the concept of agency ownership and control of television programs. He was vice president and program director of Benton and Bowles in 1961, when he rejoined NBC as vice president and general program executive. The following year he was promoted to the position of vice president for program operations on the West Coast. There, after a time with Universal and 20th Century Fox, he organized MTM enterprises.

Nurturing genius or magisterial executive, Tinker himself says "My career has been an inexorable march to get as close as I could to the creative product, working through people who made the shows."

MTM and Grant Tinker '47