If you turned on your television to CBS at 9:30 p.m. on Saturday, September 19, 1970, you would have watched the first episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. The series centered around TV news producer Mary Richards and the staff at WJM-TV in Minneapolis.
The program ended in 1977, but there are probably thousands of people who can still sing the following theme song:
In 2009, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) awarded Mary Tyler Moore with their Distinguished Service Award.
“Perhaps best known for The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-1977), Moore starred as Mary Richards, a single thirty-something woman who worked as a news producer at WJM-TV in Minneapolis….’Mary Tyler Moore is a television icon who not only entertained millions of Americans week after week with her quick humor and amazing talent, but inspired many women of her generation to pursue careers in broadcasting, journalism and related fields,’ said NAB President and CEO David Rehr. ‘We are proud to honor her with our Distinguished Service Award for the tremendous impact she’s had on broadcasting and for her many years of public service.'”
— NAB press release
March 16, 2009
In February of 1974, Walter Cronkite was a guest on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. In this episode, Cronkite visits the WJM-TV newsroom to see his old friend Lou Grant. News anchor Ted Baxter thinks Cronkite has come to discuss Ted’s recent award and perhaps offer him a network job.
“The Mary Tyler Moore Show was also one of the first sitcoms to bring closure to its story. In its last episode in 1977, the entire WJM news staff, with the exception of the very expendable Ted Baxter, was fired. Mary’s neighbors, Rhoda and Phyllis, had departed previously for their own programs. Now the rest of her ‘family’ was being broken up. Ironically, television brought them together and now the vagaries of television were separating them — in the ‘real’ world as well as in their own fictional context. In the final moments Mary, Lou, Murray, Ted, his wife, Georgette, and Sue Ann mass together in a teary group hug and exit. Then Mary turns out the lights in the newsroom for the last time. It was a fitting conclusion to a program which had become very comfortable and very real in ways few other programs ever had.”
— “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”
The Museum of Broadcast Communications
