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, the nature of Grant's interactions with others is toned down. References to Grant's oftentimes excessive drinking, which had been an ongoing comic theme on "Mary Tyler Moore", were deemphasized on the new show.