Jeff / Richard

Jeff Melvoin talks to Richard Peña about how his History and Lit thesis paid off in his career as a television writer. 

Jeff started out as a journalist, first with Fairchild Publications, then with Time Magazine.  But his heart wasn’t it.  He wanted a more creative life.  So when he turned 30, he called a friend at MTM Enterprises (The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Hill Street Blues) and said he wanted to write scripts.  “Movies or TV?” the friend said. What’s the difference? Jeff asked.  “The difference is nobody tells Paramount how many movies to make each year, but TV needs three hours a night.”

Jeff opted for television.  MTM had just launched a lighthearted detective show, Remington Steele.  As it happened, Jeff’s senior thesis had been on the role of the American detective in fiction; “I knew something about that subject.” He landed the job at Remington and never looked back. “That thesis has been a constant reminder of the value of a liberal arts education,” he says. 

Some fourteen series and countless scripts later, he’s worked in every platform—broadcast, basic cable, premium cable, and streaming—giving him a ringside seat on how the business has changed over the last fifty years. “When I began, television was still considered a vast wasteland.  Now, it’s the Promised Land.”