Grant Tinker

Tinker was born in Stamford, Connecticut, the son of Margaret (née Hessin) and Arthur Almerin Tinker.[1][2] He had a younger sister, Joan.[3]

During World War II, Tinker served in the United States Army Air Forces Reserve. He graduated from Dartmouth College. His sons, Mark and John, are also television producers.

In 1961, Tinker rejoined NBC and was the head of West Coast programming, where he was involved in developing I Spy, Dr. Kildare, and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,[4] the original Star Trek, and Get Smart.

Tinker married Mary Tyler Moore in 1962. He left NBC in 1967 to join Universal Television,[5] only to quit after two years in order to join 20th Century Fox Television in early 1969.[6] In late 1969, they formed the television production company MTM Enterprises. Tinker hired Room 222 writers James L. Brooks and Allan Burns to create and produce the company's first television series, The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Due to conflicts with running MTM, he left Fox in 1971.[7] MTM produced such American sitcoms and drama television series as Rhoda, The Bob Newhart Show, WKRP in Cincinnati, Hill Street Blues, and St. Elsewhere. After his divorce from Moore in 1981, Tinker left MTM to become the chairman and CEO of NBC, then the perennial last-place American television network (in terms of Nielsen ratings and profits). During Tinker's tenure in NBC's top position, the network regained ratings and commissioned The Cosby Show, Family Ties, The Golden Girls, Cheers, Night Court, and Hill Street Blues. Tinker left the network in 1986, shortly after its parent company RCA was bought by General Electric.

After leaving NBC, Tinker tried to repeat his success with MTM by forming GTG (Grant Tinker-Gannett) Entertainment (formerly T/G Productions), but the business venture failed and the company closed in 1990. The company then partnered with CBS to create a long-term agreement to provide access to the output provided by GTG Entertainment, and it was an exclusive agreement handled between CBS and GTG.[8] The company had also set up subsidiaries like the syndicated television branch GTG Marketing, its East Coast production arm GTG East and the West Coast production arm GTG West, with the first production being produced by the GTG East branch was a syndicated version of the popular USA Today magazine, USA Today on TV, which was distributed to syndicated markets by the GTG Marketing division.[9]

Tinker was married three times. In 1950, he married Ruth Byerly, with whom he had three sons and a daughter: Mark (b. 1951), Mike (b. 1952), Jodie (b. 1954) and John (b. 1958).[10] Mark and John are successful producers. Tinker's marriage to Byerly ended in divorce in 1962.[10] Later that same year, Tinker married actress Mary Tyler Moore. This marriage also ended in divorce in 1981, though they had separated in 1979, following a 1973 breakup and patch-up. Tinker's third marriage was in 2004 to aviator Brooke Knapp, to whom he remained married until his death in 2016.

Tinker died at his Los Angeles home on November 28, 2016, at the age of 90.[4]

He is buried at Hillside Cemetery in North Adams, Massachusetts.

• Tinker was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame in 1997.
• In 2004, Tinker won a personal Peabody Award "for recognizing, protecting, and fostering creativity of the highest order."[11]

• Tinker, Grant; Rukeyser, Bud (1994). Tinker in Television: From General Sarnoff to General Electric. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-0671759407.

• Grant Tinker at IMDb
• Grant Tinker at The Interviews: An Oral History of Television
• Grant Tinker profile at the Museum of Broadcast Communications website
• Find A Grave