TV Guide, Vol. 25, No. 12, March 19, 1977, Issue #1251

16, A-114, 17-34 pages. Illustrations. Includes advertisements. Front cover scuffed. So Long, Mary [Tyler Moore] cover. TV Guide is a bi-weekly American magazine that provides television program listings information as well as television-related news, celebrity interviews and gossip, film reviews, crossword puzzles, and, in some issues, horoscopes. The national TV Guide's first issue was released on April 3, 1953, accumulating a total circulation of 1,560,000 copies that were sold in the ten U.S. cities where it was distributed. The inaugural cover featured a photograph of Lucille Ball's newborn son Desi Arnaz, Jr., with a downscaled inset photo of Ball placed in the top corner under the issue's headline: "Lucy's $50,000,000 baby". The magazine was published in digest size, which remained its printed format for 52 years. The formation of TV Guide as a national publication resulted from Triangle Publications' purchase of numerous regional television listing publications such as TV Forecast, TV Digest, and the New York-based Television Guide. Each of the cities that had their own local TV listings magazine folded into TV Guide were among the initial cities where the magazine conducted its national launch. The launch as a national magazine with local listings in April 1953 became an almost instant success. The Mary Tyler Moore Show (also known simply as Mary Tyler Moore) is an American television sitcom created by James L. Brooks and Allan Burns and starring actress and namesake Mary Tyler Moore. The show originally aired on CBS from September 19, 1970, to March 19, 1977. Moore starred as Mary Richards, an unmarried, independent woman focused on her career as associate producer of the fictional WJM news program in Minneapolis. A central female character who was not married or dependent on a man was a rarity on American television in the 1970s, leading to numerous publications citing The Mary Tyler Moore Show as a groundbreaking series in the era of second-wave feminism. Ed Asner co-starred as Mary's boss Lou Grant, alongside Valerie Harper as friend and neighbor Rhoda Morgenstern and Cloris Leachman as landlady Phyllis Lindstrom. Other co-stars throughout the series' run included Gavin MacLeod, Ted Knight, Georgia Engel, and Betty White. The Mary Tyler Moore Show is remembered for its complex, realistic characters and storylines, in contrast to the simplistic plots and characterizations typically seen on broadcast television at that time. It was the recipient of consistent critical praise and high ratings during its original run, earning twenty-nine Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Comedy Series three years in a row (1975-1977); Moore received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series three times. The series also launched three spin-offs: Rhoda, Phyllis, and Lou Grant. In 2013, the Writers Guild of America ranked The Mary Tyler Moore Show No. 6 on its list of the "101 Best Written TV Series of All Time". This issue also has information/articles on Ann-Margaret, Maureen Stapleton, TV Critics, Don Rickles, Ellen Torgerson, Newsmen, Daniel Mannix, Basketball Players, and Catherine Shell. This issue also includes, in the Background section, an article entitled 'Microbes and Men' Blootletting and exorcism were fashionable--and then man discovered the germ theory of disease--by Isaac Asimov. This item is often overlooked in the pantheon of Asimov's oeuvre.…