Attended Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie-Mellon University) as a playwriting major. Barbara Bosson (his second wife), Michael Tucker, Bruce Weitz and Charles Haid were classmates; he and Tucker drove cross-country to Hollywood for full-time jobs at Universal, where Bochco would remain for 12 years. In 1978, he moved to MTM Enterprises, who after several attempts gave him carte Blanche to create a show similar to Fort Apache the Bronx (1981) (Hill Street