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Pioneer TV Producer, Whose Career Spanned 7 (!) Decades, Dies at 90. Stars and Personalities He Worked With Range From Ernie Kovacs and Steve Allen to Arsenio Hall and Terry Bradshaw

Feb 22, 2013  •  Post A Comment

A pioneering producer who actively worked in TV from  the late 1940s until the early 2000s has died at age 90.

His name was Milt Hoffman, and he was born in Los Angeles in 1922.

The first producing credit we could find for Hoffman was for a show called "Hometown Jamboree" that was produced on KLAC-TV in Los Angeles in 1949. The call letters after the "K" stood  for Los  Angeles, Calif. The station was later bought by the Copley Press and that publishing  company changed the call letters of the station to KCOP, also known — then, as now — as Channel 13 in L.A.

The following comes from the press release Hoffman’s family released about him:

"Milt’s producing credits included, ‘Take A Good Look,’ ‘The Ernie Kovacs Show,’ ‘The Tennessee Ernie Ford Show,’ ‘Steve Allen’s Playhouse,’ ‘Groovy,’ ‘The Real Don Steele Show,’ ‘Carter Country,’ ‘What’s Happening!!,’ ‘After George,’ ‘Sanford Arms,’ ‘The Alan Thicke Show,’ ‘Fantasy!,’ ‘Solid Gold,’ ‘Disney’s Golden Anniversary Of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,’ ‘The Arsenio Hall Show,’ ‘Home Team with Terry Bradshaw’ and, in  2001, ‘The Entertainment Industry Council’s 5th Annual Prism Awards,’ to name just a few.

"Since 2006, Milt had been living at the Motion Picture & Television Fund’s Country Home in Woodland Hills, Calif., a retirement community for Hollywood’s former actors, cameramen, and executives.

"While there, Milt acted as a consultant to their closed-circuit senior television station, Channel 22, which provides MPTF residents with a unique opportunity to create original programing for their community. Shows are broadcast throughout the grounds, into cottages and rooms, as well as to a YouTube page for families of residents and for the public to enjoy. Milt also enjoyed attending poetry classes, led by the likes of comedian Shelley Berman, who plays Larry David’s father on HBO’s ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm.’

"Hoffman passed away, of natural causes, on Thursday, Feb. 21, 2013, at the age of 90. [He would have been 91 on April 25.]  

"He is survived by his two children, Candy and Craig."

There will be no public funeral. The family says a memorial/remembrance will be announced at a future time.

milthoffman.jpeg

[Thanks to Milt’s friend Kevin Gershan, a producer/director for "Entertainment Tonight" and "The Insider," for  this snapshot of Hoffman.]

2 Comments

  1. “Kovaks”? How quickly they forget.

  2. Hey Jon, actually not so quickly. Ernie died more than 50 years ago. Still, that’s no excuse. As Jon points out, it’s not Ernie Kovaks, but Kovacs. We’ve made the correction. For those of you too young to remember, Kovacs, perhaps more than any other comic of his time, used the then new medium of TV in ways no one else had thought to use it. Check him out on YouTube…

    Chuck Ross

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