A television writer and producer, Granet is best known for two shows. The first was The Untouchables in 1959, starring Robert Stack as real-life Treasury Agent Eliot Ness. Its gritty style became a model for later TV crime shows. But his biggest coup was rescuing a show that CBS had shelved — a quirky series called The Twilight Zone, also in 1959.
But in those days, advertisers had a lot of sway, and Westinghouse was the sponsor. Their ad agency, McCann-Erickson, which had script approval for the series, refused to back the show, saying the trademark TZ ending was too “ambiguous”.
“It’s questionable whether Twilight Zone would have ever existed if I hadn’t beat down McCann-Erickson,” Granet remembered later. Luckily he won that fight, because once it got on the air, it got incredible viewer reaction, making it one of early TV’s classic series. Granet died November 15 after a fall. He was 92.