10-Time Emmy Winner Steven Bochco Dies at 74

Producer Steven Bochco arrives at the FX Screening of "Over There" at the Zanuck Theater on the Twentieth Century Fox lot in Los Angeles, California, on July 24, 2005. Amanda Edwards/Getty Images

Ten-time Emmy Award winner Steven Bochco, one of the most prominent television figures for decades, died at the age of 74 this week, according to reports.

Bochco died after a battle with cancer, according to Rolling Stone magazine.

“Steven fought cancer with strength, courage, grace and his unsurpassed sense of humor,” his spokesman said in a statement. “He died peacefully in his sleep [at home] with his family close by.”

He co-created “Hill Street Blues,” “NYPD Blue,” and “L.A. Law.” He also worked on shows like “The Twilight Zone” and “Colombo.”

“I’m a realist,” Bochco said of working in TV. “I know that I function in a medium that is not an art medium. It’s not even fundamentally an entertainment medium. It’s basically a selling medium.”

“Hill Street Blues” is widely considered one of the best TV shows of all time and established numerous tropes about television cops. “The idea of almost every other cop show was that the private lives of these folks was what happened the other 23 hours of the day that you weren’t watching them, and we turned that inside out,” Bochco told The New York Times about the creation of “Hill Street Blues.”

“Bochco is a genius,” his friend, David Milch, told Rolling Stone in 1988. “What’s been missed in all the Sturm und Drang involving Steven are the two gifts he has: an extraordinary sense of what works and what doesn’t, as well as a tremendous administrative ability. He is also an extraordinary discoverer of ability—once he’s discovered it, he enjoys seeing it develop independently.”

Recommended Video:

How Doctors in China Turn into Murderers