Thursday, Aug. 16, 2007
The TV Mogul with the Common Touch
By Richard Zoglin
If Johnny Carson was TV's aloof arbiter of taste, Merv Griffin, who died Aug. 12 at 82, was the welcoming show-biz uncle who seemed to want everyone he brought on his talk show to become a star--including Richard Pryor and George Carlin, whose careers he helped launch. He laughed at his guests' jokes, gushed at their stories, joined them in songs--perfecting an easygoing, unironic manner that was seemingly impervious to the winds of change. Far more than a TV personality, though, the former Big Band singer was also a creator and entrepreneur. In 1964 he came up with Jeopardy! (A jack of all trades, he wrote the theme music for the Final Jeopardy answer as well.) A decade later, he invented history's most successful game show, Wheel of Fortune. When he died, he was in the midst of creating a new game, Crosswords. Some called his shows lowest-common-denominator fluff, but Griffin drew those huge audiences with a real instinct for and rapport with television.