Thursday, January 26, 2017

Mary Tyler Moore & The Best TV Journalists of All Time



Mary Tyler Moore’s passing made me think of good times from my childhood.  Most of what I consumed of her TV show as a Minneapolis TV woman came from re-runs.  I was 10 when her hit-show went off the air.  She made an impression that’s lasted for four decades.  It got me thinking and wondering:  Who are the best fictional television journalists ever?

Television has had many depictions of characters who worked for the news media.  Lou Grant and Mary Richards were not the first or last ones to pose as the media. Here’s a fond look back at some true characters:

·         Clark Kent, Superman
·         Lois Lane, Adventures of Superman
·         Peter Parker, Spiderman
·         Kent Brockman, The Simpsons
·         Les Nessman, WKRP in Cincinnati
·         Jack McGee, The Hulk
·         Oscar Madison, The Odd Couple
·         Will McAvoy, The Newsroom
·         Murphy Brown, Murphy Brown
·         Kolchak, Kolchak:  The Night Stalker
·         Stephen Colbert, The Colbert Report
·         Fletcher Reade, The Guiding Light

Hey, fake news is in, so much so that we may find fictional TV characters, as more believable or trustworthy than what’s put out by today’s media.  Some of the best TV depictions of the media were funny, such as the sloppy Oscar Madison character in The Odd Couple.  Some were sarcastic spoofs of the media, such as anchor Kent Brockman of The Simpsons or the split-personality played by Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central.

Superheroes seem to be tied to the media.  In fact, two of them were working for newspapers – Superman and Spiderman.

Both funny but serious was Murphy Brown, an 80’s version of 70's Mary Tyler Moore.

I have a few obscure writers on my list, too.  One was Fletcher Reade, a reporter on the long-gone soap opera, The Guiding Light.  Another was a short lived show from four decades ago, a crime show called Kolchak.

Probably the best reporter in the bunch was Jack McGee, a tenacious guy who always managed to track down The Hulk but who could never capture him in the cat-and-mouse chase.

TV will always have media-based characters because TV likes writers, the media, and artists.  TV is the media, after all.  Probably more shows will start to feature bloggers and podcasters, but they’re still on the fringe of what the public views to be “the media.” Dog With A Blog is a cute family show, but it is no match for The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

We will miss you, Mary Tyler Moore.

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Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This is copyrighted by BookMarketingBuzzBlog 2017©. Born and raised in Brooklyn, now resides in Westchester. Named one of the best book marketing blogs by Book Baby http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/09/the-best-book-marketing-blogs 

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