Bearishly large, the 51-year-old Ohlmeyer has always been in touch with his anger. He called Disney’s Mike Ovitz ““the Antichrist.’’ Now he’s upset about O.J. In a NEWSWEEK interview at his Burbank office, he tears up recalling the meeting with NBC news directors. ““I never said O.J. was treated unfairly,’’ he says. ““I told them about my 12-year-old son, Kemper. I said, “You made him [Kemper] a cynic about news because you told him information he knew firsthand was inaccurate’.''

It seems Ohlmeyer and his son were having breakfast with O.J. and his daughter, Sydney. ““On the “Today’ show they were saying Sydney got home to the Browns’ at 2 in the morning and the Browns were furious that she’d been traumatized by her father,’’ Ohlmeyer says. ““But Kemper is sitting at the breakfast table looking at Sydney on O.J.’s lap feeding him fruit balls. He looked at the TV, at O.J., then at me and shook his head.’’ Ohlmeyer says he wasn’t lecturing, but the story clearly comes with a moral.

Ohlmeyer has run interference for his buddy before. When Simpson decided he should go on TV to clear his name after his criminal trial last fall, Ohlmeyer called NBC News chief Andrew Lack to set up an interview with Tom Brokaw. Simpson’s lawyers persuaded their client to cancel because, Ohlmeyer says, ““O.J. was going to be skewered.’’ Despite these acts on Simpson’s behalf, Ohlmeyer denies misusing his power at the network: ““Probably no show skewered O.J. more than “The Tonight Show’,’’ he says. Or CNBC hosts Geraldo Rivera and Charles Grodin. ““I made a point of telling them it didn’t matter what my personal feelings were.''

Those feelings go back a long way. Ohlmeyer was a producer at ABC Sports when he first bonded with the NFL superstar: they shared a taste for wine, women and golf. (Ohlmeyer created golf’s ““Skins Game,’’ as well as trash sports events like ““The Superstars of Television.’’) This was back in the ’70s, a decade neither of these two good-time guys seemed to fully outgrow. ““He’s oh-so-’70s,’’ says an NBC producer of his throwback boss. ““Part of a good-old-boy network of hanging out at Dan Tana’s,’’ a macho Hollywood watering hole. ““Yeah, I play cards with the guys on Thursday night,’’ Ohlmeyer says. ““Have I ever had too much to drink and said something I wish I hadn’t? Sure.''

In the outwardly genteel world of network TV, Ohlmeyer is loud, crass, a chain-smoking anomaly. In a town full of dissemblers, he’s refreshingly blunt. Before NBC recruited him in 1993, he ran Ohlmeyer Communications, a production company and ad agency. He made a fortune from his ground-floor involvement with ESPN. At NBC he’s credited with turning the network around with promotions like ““Must See TV’’ and shrewd picks like ““Third Rock From the Sun.’’ Rather than fire entertainment president Warren Littlefield, as everyone predicted, Ohlmeyer empowered him. ““Warren had lost confidence in his fast ball,’’ Ohlmeyer says. ““My job was to give it back.’’ Littlefield agrees: ““He made me believe in myself again.’’ Any more of this ““I love you, man!’’ sentimentality and these guys’ll being doing a Budweiser ad together.

Rich enough not to need the job, Ohlmeyer exudes the raw confidence of a self-made man. He handles his corporate bosses in New York–G.E. brass Bob Wright and Jack Welch–with an ease that Littlefield never felt. He’s defiantly downscale. In pitch meetings, he has been known to take off his shoes and rub his sweat-socked feet.

Ohlmeyer’s locker-room manners rub many the wrong way. When ABC lured programmer Jamie Tarses away from NBC earlier this year, a nasty feud erupted between Ohlmeyer and ABC-Disney honcho Ovitz. A story leaked that if Ohlmeyer didn’t let Tarses out of her contract, the specter of sexual harassment would be raised. Tarses, who refused to comment, has denied ever making such a charge, and Ohlmeyer calls it ““mischief-making’’ by his enemies. ““I’m not running for pope,’’ he says. Thank God.