Word: tinkering
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...George Smiley exists in a similar limbo. Says the author: "We are simply not on terms at the moment. He's hung up his boots." One of the problems, paradoxically, between Le Carre and his character is the television exposure that Smiley received in adaptations of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley's People: "I loved Alec Guinness's performance, but he gave Smiley a very definite character, and it was in this form that the public thought of him, and, inevitably, he was not my chap any more." Still, the author, 51, adds an escape clause...
Enter NBC's second putative savior: Grant Tinker, former president of the MTM production shop (Mary Tyler Moore, Lou Grant, WKRP in Cincinnati, Hill Street Blues). Tinker had made his reputation at MTM as THE the velvet-gloved champion of creative personnel, but at NBC he was unable to stanch defections by Newsman David Brinkley (to ABC) and Sports Chief Don Ohlmeyer (to independent production). He did woo many of his old MTM employees to develop relatively sophisticated new series, like the sitcom Cheers and the hospital drama St. Elsewhere. With these shows NBC has asserted its image...
...Tinker has thought a lot about programming," notes Paul Klein, the curmudgeonly sage who was an NBC vice president before joining the Playboy Cable Network. "He's very good at that. He should be doing it at NBC. Instead he delegates it to a swami like Brandon Tartikoff [president of NBC Entertainment]." So why was Tinker hired? Says Klein: "His boss at RCA, Thornton Bradshaw, said Tinker has 'bearing.' I think the stockholders might be happier if he was a hunchback with a bad mole, and put them in No. 1. But even if NBC gets there...
...Longest Wait: For NBC, perennially last in the ratings, to turn itself around under its new board chairman, Grant Tinker, who has sought to succeed with something rarely seen on commercial TV, high-quality programming...
...Oklahoma's Tinker Air Force Base, watchdogs programmed their computers to detect increases of 300% or more in the cost of spare parts for aircraft engines charged by the Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Group of United Technologies in fiscal year 1982. The results, said an auditor, were "staggering." Robert S. Hancock, an official of the Air Logistics Center near Oklahoma City, said that in just the one year, Pratt & Whitney's "repricing" policy had cost the Government "something on the order of $140 million." He termed the findings "only the tip of the iceberg" and contended that Pratt & Whitney...