I had to search for it, through a few battered old laptop hard drives, but I’m glad I didn’t give up. Above is a shot of Mike Duffy, one of the bright lights of the Television Critics Association press tours, in his natural setting — surrounded by adoring peers.
Look how happy everyone is in that photo! I believe it was taken in 2007, the year Mike bid farewell to the tour, having retired as the TV critic of the Detroit Free Press. It was a job he loved and unlike other reporters who wished they were in hard news or sports, he made no effort to hide that fact. His enthusiasm was contageous and reminded many of us back in the days when the newspaper business was more adversarial and competitive that we really had it pretty damn good.
Sadly, Mike passed away on December 16 in Grosse Pointe Woods, Michigan, a year after being diagnosed with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. He was 79.
The news reached me through a message from one of Mike’s long time friends and peers on the tour, Buffalo News TV critic Alan Pergament. Twenty years or so ago, I tagged along with these two on one of their annual hikes north of Santa Monica where they would momentarily dart away from the so-called “Battan death march with cocktails” that was the semi-annual network press tour. Mike and Alan used to make a beeline for their favourite haunt, an oceanfront fish house featuring a floor littered with peanut shells and sawdust. You cannot have a bad time in such a place, especially with those two.
I did not know Mike well, but he made you feel like you did. He was one of the first friendly faces I met when I attended my first TV critics tour in the mid-’80s. That was out in Arizona, where CBS and PBS set up sessions for a couple of years to keep critics from all across North America from sneaking off to fish houses.
Things were very competitive in those days. A lot of these guys were all about holding the network executives feet to the fire. They wanted to be the Woodward and Bernstein of the TV beat. Mike stood out due to his friendly and genuinely helpful demeanor, but he could shred a series with the best of them and because he was so enthusiastically invested in it, his reviews stuck. He knew what he was talking about, and when he told his readers to ignore those early ratings and watch Cheers, they did.
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That he was just as helpful to fellow critics was a nice bonus. Right from that first introduction, he gave me his phone number at the Free Press in case I ever needed any help back in Toronto.
Back then everybody had an answering machine — an actual tape recorder attached to your land-line — and Mike had the best message. “Hey kids! You’ve reached Captain VIdeo!” he would boom, and readers and publicists and fellow critics and anybody else who called all loved television again.
Mike also knew when to quit. I think he might have retired before he turned 65, after 37 years of daily deadlines at the Free Press. That newspaper did not even attempt to replace him, they just hung his jersey in the rafters and retired the beat.
I remember one of our last conversations, especially his enthusiasm about his adult son making a visit out to LA during that last tour — and then boom he was gone. He got out of Dodge before Netflix and streaming and FAST Channels and Fake News and COVID. Captain Video had blasted off.
Condolences to his wife Jane, his children Christopher and Elizabeth, his family, friends and many readers. For more on Mike, read the fine salute written by the Free Press’ pop culture critic Julie Hinds.
