A breezy, anecdotal insider's memoir of network television, from a top producer (``The Mary Tyler Moore Show'') who also chaired NBC for five years in the early 1980s. Aided by former NBC executive Rukeyser, Tinker spins stories from 40 years in a colloquial, irreverent voice; he admits most of his important decisions were made haphazardly. In 1949, after failing to find a job in publishing, he joined NBC Radio, developing quiz shows, then crossing over to the network's fledgling TV section. After leaving for a stint in advertising, he returned to NBC's California division in time to further his relationship with Mary Tyler Moore of ``The Dick Van Dyke Show,'' who became his second wife. Eventually, Tinker decided to form a production company—MTM—when his wife was offered her own show. Tinker affectionately recalls the talents and trials involved in building unorthodox shows like ``Hill Street Blues,'' where network anxieties had to be assuaged, and ``Lou Grant,'' which lost sponsors in response to star Ed Asner's vocal leftist politics. Tinker's years at NBC were rewarding, but he laments the network's takeover by General Electric, with ``it's just another business'' approach. Tinker imparts some lessons learned along the way. Programmers should follow their instincts and recognize that new series, especially innovative ones, need time to find an audience. Flagship news programs represent the network at its best, so the current belt-tightening bodes ill for quality. Tinker takes pride in having booted shock-jock Howard Stern from NBC radio. But the high standards and public service approach he calls for will rely more on networks' noblesse oblige than on policy proposals. He also predicts, contrary to the view of many media observers, that some networks will continue to thrive in the expanding universe of cable. A late-summer beach read for TV folk and curious couch potatoes. (8 pages b&w photos—not seen)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-671-75940-X
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
