Ted Baxter

Ted Baxter is a fictional character on the sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970–1977). Portrayed by Ted Knight, the Baxter character is a broad parody of a vain, shallow, buffoonish TV newsman. Knight's comedic model was William Powell, and he also drew on various Los Angeles newscasters, including George Putnam, in helping shape the character. The role was originally conceived with Jack Cassidy in mind but Cassidy turned it down, although he did appear in an early episode as Ted's equally egocentric brother Hal. Ted Baxter has become a symbolic figure, and is often used when criticizing media figures, particularly news anchors hired for style and appearance rather than journalistic ability.

Character

Ted is the pompous nit-wit, narcissistic anchorman for fictitious station WJM-TV in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Satirizing the affectations of news anchormen, the character speaks in a vocal fry register parody of the narrator of the old Movietone News film strips that played in movie houses before the television era. While his narcissism fuels his delusions of grandeur, Ted's onscreen performance is buffoonish. A running joke of the show is Ted's incompetence, featuring a steady stream of mispronunciations, malapropisms, pratfalls, and miscues. Constantly in fear of being fired, Ted is, ironically, the show's only character to survive the final episode's massive layoffs at WJM.