Word: tinkerers
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...along comes iconoclast Grant Tinker, who has managed to neatly avoid both rules. His new USA Today: The Television Show, which began its nightly broadcasts last week, is an unmitigated mess. Unsubtly billed by Gannett as a "new journalism of hope," the show is neither hopeful nor journalistic. Its splashy graphics--borrowed of course from the show's paper parent--obscure a lineup that is drab and uninviting. Consider the Wednesday "spotlight": a snappy 10-second piece on the states with the highest population of pigs...
This is not to say the show was misconceived. The program was intended as a cheery supplement to the natural disasters and somber economic forecasts of the nightly newscast which it follows. Tinker, a proven NBC veteran, judged rightly that human interest is too often relegated to the last slot on the evening news...
...Dukakis and his staff thread that needle, his aides tinker with combinations of states that can produce the magic electoral-vote number of 270. Because most of the South, including Florida and Texas, looks tough for Dukakis, his tacticians are increasingly focusing on a Western strategy that starts with California, spreads up the coast to Oregon and Washington, and even reaches a few Republican bastions in the Rockies. Californians should be warned now: they will get plenty of attention even after next week's primary ballots have been counted...
...grapple with tough social issues, yet leap from scenes of intense drama to raucous comedy. They relentlessly push network standards of good taste, often with a schoolboy penchant for gross-out humor and sexual fetishes. "Steve has . always been one to break the rules," says former NBC Chairman Grant Tinker. "He does it more cleverly, even diabolically, than anyone else. He rocks the boat as a hobby...
Bochco broke into TV with a summer job at Universal studios and wound up spending twelve years there, turning out scripts for shows like Columbo and McMillan and Wife. In 1978 he moved to MTM Enterprises, the studio started by Grant Tinker and his then wife Mary Tyler Moore. After a couple of failed series, Bochco and another MTM writer, Michael Kozoll, were asked by NBC to develop a police series with a human touch. They came up with Hill Street Blues, which debuted in January 1981. Though ratings were low at first, NBC stuck with the show; it went...