Betty White was hero of the news business too

The Saturday night crew wheeled it in for “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” a program about people in the news business.

TV and movies hardly ever get the news business right. MTM did and made us laugh. Great scripts. The odd ball characters, the flubs, the occasion ethical dilemma. It’s why we love the business so full of tragedy and emotion we need laughs to break the tensions.

I loved Betty White’s Sue Ann Nivens (from Savannah) who hosted the cooking show, “The Happy Homemaker.” She had her annual “Salute to Broccoli” and “What’s all this fuss about famine?” Under her syrupy persona there was a competitive, aggressive man-hungry put-down artist. We’ve all known people like that.

She was always after Lou Grant (Ed Asner) and had an affair with Lars, husband of Phyllis (Cloris Leachman). Phyllis got suspicious when Lars kept coming home with clean clothes.

Sue Ann was friends (she said “very close”) with the station childrens’ show host, Chuckles the Clown. The episode of his funeral may be the best sitcom every produced. See it.

In the last episode almost all were fired but incompetent anchor Ted Baxter (Ted Knight). Sue Ann went on to be traveling companion and “sort of a practical nurse” to a wealthy, elderly gentleman.

She won two Emmies and we all loved Sue Ann, including Betty White who said, “Of course, I loved Sue Ann. She was so rotten. You can’t get much more rotten than the neighborhood nymphomaniac.”

I, and treasured AP colleagues, watched the final show (March 19, 1977) on that old TV in Seattle. When they group-hugged across the set I was misty-eyed. When Mary Richards (Mary Tyler Moore) turned off the newsroom lights after one last look I felt an enormous loss.

The AP bureau was moved to another location and the last person on duty in the old place was Kate McCarthy who had seen that final episode on the black and white with us.

By then I was elsewhere but reminded Kate to look around one last time before turning off the lights.