Tina McGee

Tina McGee was a current character when the series was being developed. That tends to be the norm in these things. Vickie Vale hadn't been used in years in the Batman comics, but they wanted a love interest. However, the template was actually Silver St. Cloud, who was recent when they first started developing a script; but, it took ten years to get a movie out. By then, the closest the comics had to a love interest was Catwoman, and they already had the Joker. So, they went with Vickie Vale, who was Batman's Lois Lane.

This series had far more inspiration from Mike Baron's revamp with Wally West. The relationship with his father is on display with the series, plus the need to calorie load after using his speed. I suspect they only went with Barry Allen since they thought the name was better knwon, it wasn't alliterative, and the police connection worked better for episodice tv. Iris did appear as Barry's girlfriend, but the character was rather weakly written and performed. Amanda Pays as Tina quickly pushed her aside.

They decided to combine the different incarnations of the Flash, I guess. I thought that Amanda Pays looked like Iris, at least in the hairstyle and hair color.

Iris was in the Pilot, but quickly written out

I think it was a case of Needing Tina as his "Power coach' more than they needed a girlfriend to keep in the dark

so Much like they mixed and matched the other traits of Barry and wally, they likely spliced a good deal of Iris into their Tina