The Rub-Out

The scenario at New York City's Idlewild Airport last week was right out of The Untouchables. This guy gets off the plane from Hollywood and a messenger comes up to him and hands him this sealed envelope. He opens the envelope. The letter says something like this: "Dear Mr. Treyz: As of this date your services as network president will no longer be required by the American Broadcasting Co. SIGNED: Leonard Goldenson."

That's the way some people say it happened, although the principals now deny it. Another version has it that Treyz walked into Goldenson's office gay and joking, emerged grey-faced and shaken after getting the word.

Either scene is in the spirit of an industry where yesterday's genius is today's fall guy--and for the past five years, burr-topped Oliver Treyz, 43, has clearly been the leading candidate for both. Treyz is the man who became head of ABC's television operation in 1956 at a time when ABC was running a poor third to NBC and CBS. Treyz saw eye to eye with Goldenson, president of the parent company, American Broadcasting-Paramount Theatres, Inc., who viewed television as a sort of mammoth neighborhood movie house with seats for 165 million. Goldenson and Treyz set about to win a following among U.S. televiewers by feeding them very much the same sort of fare they used to see down at the Bijou.

Bullets & Combs. Oliver Treyz (rhymes with preys), a math major (Hamilton College), a statistical control officer in the Army, a network and ad-agency research man, was admittedly no creator.

But he knew how to find out--by the numbers--what people wanted to see.

Casting a statistical horoscope for the U.S., Treyz came up with the none-too-startling fact that the Great Mass Market lay in the "young postwar families who want excitement." Treyz's pioneer entry into the mass-excitement field was Maverick, an hour-long western. He flew to Hawaii personally to sell the show to Henry J. Kaiser, and soon bullets were ricocheting merrily off mantelpieces from coast to coast. Treyz's first great masterpiece of programming, however, came with 77 Sunset Strip--the series that gave Edd ("Kookie") Byrnes and his pomade-raking pocket comb to the world. Millions of acned teen-agers fell for Kookie's hackneyed charms, and the hot-rod set became ABC's own. The next Treyz triumph was The Untouchables, which set a new vogue for group slaughter, made Eliot Ness a household name among the postwar young marrieds. The cult of the lowest common denominator had found its high priest in Ollie Treyz, and with an almost evangelical zeal he went on to schedule such landmarks of mediocrity as Hawaiian Eye, Bourbon Street Beat, Surfside 6, The Roaring '20$, The Rifleman, The New Breed, Straightaway, My Three Sons, The Hathaways, Follow the Sun, Lawman, Adventures in Paradise and Bus Stop.

ABC's sales zoomed, sponsors were competing for programs, and by the fall of 1960, ABC was a contender for the title of the most popular U.S. network. Since imitation is the sincerest form of television, CBS and NBC hastened to adapt their programming to the ABC formula.

Promises & Formulas. Treyz had exploited only what comes naturally to television--the appeal to a mindless mass.

But whatever the practicalities, television prefers another image of itself as a high-minded public service. And slowly, the feeling got around that Ollie Treyz had become a poor front man. When FCC Chairman Newton Minow talked darkly about the TV wasteland, no one doubted that he viewed Treyz as the chief waster.

And within the industry, Salesman Treyz acquired a reputation for juggling time-slots to suit the biggest client (Variety has twice headlined stories on Treyz's broken promises with "But Ollie You Said ).

Things started to go downhill at ABC.

The Big Two began to outdo ABC at its own game. Ratings dropped. Sponsors began to look to the other networks. ABC time is still between 35% and 40% unsold for the coming fall season, and most of the buying is over.

Last week, returning from an ABC mission to California, Ollie got the word. Replacing him is Mississippi-born Thomas W. Moore, 44, onetime publicist for Hollywood's Forest Lawn cemetery, who for the past four years has been ABC vice president in charge of programming.

Treyz's services, said the official announcement from Goldenson, would be utilized "in other areas, aside from broadcasting."

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