Ted Baxter

Ted Baxter anchors the six o'clock news at WJM-TV in Minneapolis, and he wants everyone to know it. Vain, thick-skinned, and blissfully unaware of his own incompetence, he mangles copy, flubs facts, and preens over his hairpiece and his baritone. He treats the newsroom like an audience owed his charm.

Ted Knight plays pomposity as pure, guileless joy rather than malice, which is what makes him funny instead of odious — he genuinely believes he's wonderful. The show lets the newsroom roll its eyes at him without ever quite hating him, and Knight's comic timing on sheer, cheerful obliviousness never runs dry.