US television network manager Grant Tinker, age 90

Grant Tinker, who brought new polish to the TV world and beloved shows including Hill Street Blues to the audience as both a producer and a network boss, has died.

Mr Tinker, 90, died at his Los Angeles home, his son, producer Mark Tinker, said.

Though he had three tours of duty with NBC, the last as its chairman, Mr Tinker was perhaps best known as the nurturing hand at MTM Enterprises, the production company he founded in 1970 and ran for a decade.

Nothing less than a creative salon, MTM scored with some of TV’s most respected and best-loved programmes, including Lou Grant, Rhoda, The Bob Newhart Show – and the series that starred his business partner and then-wife, actress Mary Tyler Moore.

“I am deeply saddened to learn that my former husband and professional mentor Grant Tinker has passed away,” Moore said in a statement.

“Grant was a brilliant, driven executive who uniquely understood that the secret to great TV content was freedom for its creators and performing artists. This was manifest in his ‘first be best and then be first’ approach.”

Mr Tinker summed it up with typical self-effacement in a 1994 interview, saying: “I just had the good luck to be around people who did the kind of work that the audience appreciates. The success just rubbed off on me.”

In 1981 he flourished with that low-key approach in a last-ditch effort to save NBC, which was scraping bottom with its earnings, ratings, programmes and morale. Five years later, when Mr Tinker left to return to independent production, the network was flush thanks to hits such as The Cosby Show and Hill Street Blues.

Mr Tinker, who had come to NBC as a management trainee in 1949 with legendary founder David Sarnoff still in charge, left the company for the last time at the end of an era, as NBC, along with its parent RCA, was about to be swallowed by General Electric.

In 2005, he won a prestigious Peabody Award honouring his overall career.

Born in 1926, the son of a lumber supplier, Mr Tinker had grown up in Stamford, Connecticut, and graduated from Dartmouth College.

He is survived by his wife Brooke Knapp, sons Michael, Mark, writer-producer John and daughter Jodie DiLella.

Mr Tinker brought polish to the television world.