One of the creators of "Baywatch," a show about lifeguards, worked as a lifeguard himself. Greg Bonann patrolled the beaches of Los Angeles County throughout the 1970s and 1980s. One day he mentioned to fellow lifeguard Michael Newman that their job could make for a compelling TV show. "He goes, 'If that show CHiPs could make it, we could make a show about lifeguarding,'" Newman recalled on E! True Hollywood Story.
Bonann unsuccessfully pitched his show for 10 years. Then in the late '80s, while still lifeguarding, Bonann rescued the children of Stu Erwin, an executive at MTM Enterprises, a TV production company run by Mary Tyler Moore and her husband Grant Tinker. Bonann pitched Erwin his series, and while Erwin passed, he helped the lifeguard refine his pitch. He went on to make sports videos, but then his sister married TV writer Douglas Schwartz, who, along with his writing partner Michael Berk, were hired at GTG, a new production company founded by Tinker in 1987. That pair didn't care for the lifeguard series either, until Schwartz attended something called the Lifeguard Games at Bonann's behest. That convinced him that there was a show in there somewhere, and with Berk, he developed a show called Baywatch and pitched it to CBS. That network said no, but NBC approved a two-hour TV movie (which would also serve as a pilot) called "Baywatch: Panic at Malibu Pier."
