John J. O’Connor, a Times TV Critic in Years of Industry Upheaval, Dies at 76
John J. O’Connor, who as a television critic for The New York Times for more than 25 years covered the medium as it expanded from a business dominated by three networks to a universe of hundreds of diverse cable and broadcast channels, died on Friday at his home in Manhattan. He was 76.
The cause was lung cancer, which had been diagnosed only four weeks ago, said Seymour Barofsky, his partner of 47 years.
Mr. O’Connor joined The Times as a television critic in 1971 and retired in 1997. His tenure coincided with sweeping industry changes, beginning with the advent of the mini-series.
He found the 12-hour “Rich Man, Poor Man” (1976), the first mini-series produced for American television, “somewhat short of great art” and guilty of sentimentality but better than average television fare. In 1977 he criticized “Roots” for stereotypical portrayals and questioned its historical accuracy but concluded that with its premiere, “popular entertainment has, flaws and all, taken a significant step forward.”
No matter what his subject, he kept the industry in mind. When “Masterpiece Theater” imported the British series “Upstairs, Downstairs” in 1974, Mr. O’Connor praised it as “marvelous television.” But he also took the opportunity to compare the show with domestic productions, calling it “another contrast demonstration of the paucity of imagination on American television series.”
Over the years he reviewed both light and serious programming. He called David Frost’s 1977 series of paid interviews with former President Richard M. Nixon “a program with extraordinary impact” that nevertheless raised “serious questions about the contemporary crafts of marketing and communication.”...
Read entire article at NYT
The cause was lung cancer, which had been diagnosed only four weeks ago, said Seymour Barofsky, his partner of 47 years.
Mr. O’Connor joined The Times as a television critic in 1971 and retired in 1997. His tenure coincided with sweeping industry changes, beginning with the advent of the mini-series.
He found the 12-hour “Rich Man, Poor Man” (1976), the first mini-series produced for American television, “somewhat short of great art” and guilty of sentimentality but better than average television fare. In 1977 he criticized “Roots” for stereotypical portrayals and questioned its historical accuracy but concluded that with its premiere, “popular entertainment has, flaws and all, taken a significant step forward.”
No matter what his subject, he kept the industry in mind. When “Masterpiece Theater” imported the British series “Upstairs, Downstairs” in 1974, Mr. O’Connor praised it as “marvelous television.” But he also took the opportunity to compare the show with domestic productions, calling it “another contrast demonstration of the paucity of imagination on American television series.”
Over the years he reviewed both light and serious programming. He called David Frost’s 1977 series of paid interviews with former President Richard M. Nixon “a program with extraordinary impact” that nevertheless raised “serious questions about the contemporary crafts of marketing and communication.”...