TV pioneer Grant Tinker is remembered with a touching tribute

By: H&I Staff     Posted: December 7, 2016, 4:01PM   

Image: The Everett Collection

Grant Tinker, best known as the famous television executive who founded MTM Enterprises with Mary Tyler Moore, passed away on November 28 at the age of 90. Tinker started his career in television in the 1950s as an operations manager at NBC. In the 1960s, he moved up as a vice president at the network, then jumped to Universal and 20th Century Fox by the end of the decade.

Tinker's career reached new heights with the creation of MTM Enterprises in 1969. He co-founded the independent production company with Moore, who was also his wife at the time.

His impact on television was so large that "it's hard to overestimate the impact he [Grant] had on television," according to The Hollywood Reporter

Fellow television legend Steven Bochco remembers Tinker:

He brought forth a generation of writers...whom he empowered to become showrunners, and he nurtured and protected our creative freedom.

Bochco credits Tinker with "pulling television kicking and screaming into the last decades of the 20th century."

He was generous of heart, he was never envious of the success we achieved under his tutelage, and he never took credit for any of it. And so it falls to us who loved him and learned from him to credit him now. I know that I never would have achieved the success I had were it not for him.

Steven Bochco is an Emmy-Award winning producer of Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue, amongst many others, which can both be seen here on H&I.