SHORT TAKES : TV Pioneer Says Magic Is Gone

Former NBC-TV chief Grant Tinker says television has lost its magic and most people simply regard it as furniture.

“There is nothing wrong with (television) particularly. There is too much of it. Maybe that is part of what’s wrong with it,” Tinker said in an interview for today’s syndicated show “Personalities.”

“There are so many viewing alternatives that there just aren’t enough creative people to supply the software just to feed the hardware,” Tinker said. “I also think we are now living among people who mostly have never been without television and for whom it is furniture.

“When I was a kid and television arrived, it was magic.”

Tinker, a TV producer whose company gave viewers “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” “Lou Grant” and “St. Elsewhere,” is working on a CBS-TV dramatic series called “WIOU.” He was the NBC programming chief from 1981 to 1986.