Lou Grant is an American drama television series starring Ed Asner in the title role as a newspaper editor that aired on CBS from September 20, 1977, to September 13, 1982. The third spin-off (after Rhoda and Phyllis) of the sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Lou Grant was created by James L. Brooks, Allan Burns, and Gene Reynolds. Lou Grant won 13 Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Drama Series twice. Asner received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 1978 and 1980. In doing so, he became the first person to win an Emmy Award for both Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series and Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for portraying the same character. Lou Grant also won two Golden Globe Awards, a Peabody Award, an Eddie Award, three awards from the Directors Guild of America, and two Humanitas Prizes. Summary and setting Lou Grant works as city editor of the fictional Los Angeles Tribune daily newspaper, a job he takes after being fired from WJM-TV in Minneapolis at the end of the sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show. (Grant mentions several times on Mary Tyler Moore that he had begun his career as a print journalist.) Given the shift from comedy to drama in this show, Lou becomes a less eccentric character: more diplomatic, sober, and professional. The only other character from the earlier series is a single appearance by Flo Meredith, a veteran journalist (played in three episodes by Eileen Heckart) with whom Lou had a fling. The rest of the main cast includes: general-assignment reporters Joe Rossi (Robert Walden) and Billie Newman (Linda Kelsey); managing editor Charles Hume (Mason Adams), an old friend of Lou's who has convinced him to move from Minneapolis to Los Angeles; assistant city editor Art Donovan (Jack Bannon); photographer Dennis Price (Daryl Anderson), usually referred to as "Animal"; and widowed, patrician publisher Margaret Jones Pynchon (Nancy Marchand), a character loosely based on a composite of real-life newspaper executives Dorothy Chandler of the Los Angeles Times and Katharine Graham of The Washington Post. Recurring actors who play editors of various departments included Gordon Jump and Emilio Delgado; Peggy McCay has a recurring role as Charlie Hume's wife Marion. The episodes often have Grant assigning Rossi and Billie to cover news stories, with the plots revealing problems experienced by the people being covered as