$70,000 WORTH OF GOOD NEWS ABOUT HUMANITY

After immersing himself in this year’s entries for the Humanitas Prizes, the Rev. Ellwood E. Kieser, president of the organization that bestows the awards for “humanizing achievement in television,” found cause for optimism about the medium’s future.

“I like to think the television audience has grown up, that it hungers for stories that compress life and distill reality in order to reveal its meaning,” Kieser told the audience assembled to hear the winners announced. “I think it wants its bad news about the human situation balanced by good news.”

“If I am right,” Kieser drolly observed, “this may be one of the few times in history when virtue is lucrative, when the right thing is also the profitable thing, when those who write and air humanly enriching programming may be financially enriched as a result.”

It certainly was lucrative Tuesday for the winners of the 11th annual Humanitas Prizes. A total of $70,000 was handed out to the writers of network TV programs judged by the Pacific Palisades-based Human Family Educational and Cultural Institute to “most fully communicate values that enrich the viewing public.”

The top prize of $25,000 in the TV movie category went to Susan Cooper and Hume Cronyn for “The Dollmaker,” an ABC movie in which Jane Fonda portrayed a poor Kentucky woman struggling to

raise her five children during World War II. The judges commended it “for its lucid statement that it is loving relationships, not things, that make human beings happy; for its affirmation of the dignity and uniqueness of each individual, and for its moving depiction of the glories, the demands and the heroism involved in being a mother.”

In the hourlong category, the $15,000 prize was awarded to Tom Fontana and John Masius for an episode of NBC’s “St. Elsewhere” titled “Bye, George.” The medical drama was cited for its compassion, its stark dramatization of the power of death and its “gentle explorations of the immensity of hunger and poverty in the world, and its inspiring portrayal of what one individual can do about them.”

John Markus was given the $10,000 prize for half-hour programs for an episode of NBC’s “The Cosby Show” in which the Huxtables discover a marijuana cigarette in their son’s belongings. The judges praised the comedy “for its celebration of the dynamics of a healthy family, for its illumination of the honesty and trust that can mark the parent-child relationship and for its humorous, yet very clear delineation of the destructive effects of narcotics.”

For the first time, Humanitas Prizes were given this year for children’s programming. Both went to writers of CBS shows, which was a foregone conclusion--the network had garnered all five nominations.

Winning $10,000 in the animation category for an episode of the Saturday-morning series “Jim Henson’s Muppet Babies” was Jeffrey Scott. The judges praised his show for, among other things, its “fresh and imaginative assertion that people need people.”

Another $10,000, for live-action children’s programming, went to Charles Purpura for an hourlong special, “The Day the Senior Class Got Married,” which was cited “for its entertaining look at the courage necessary to be honest with oneself and one’s partner, and for its charming probe of the demands and delights in the decision to get married.”

A non-monetary Humanitas Prize was awarded in the documentary category to Anthony Potter, William Turque and Marvin Kalb for their “NBC White Paper” titled “Vietnam--Lessons of a Lost War.” It was honored “for its ringing assertion that we can and must learn from our mistakes, that in a democracy the people must be told the truth, that the effects of lying are lethal and that no country is omnipotent.”

Kieser, who was instrumental in launching the Humanitas Awards in 1975, said the overall quality of the 260 entries this year was “the best . . . we’ve ever had.”

“I’m not saying TV as a whole is better,” he added, “but I am saying we have a wider range of choices this year than ever before. Many other writers and producers are tackling subjects of significance. They are probing deeply and they are trying to say something.”

Trying to inject enriching values into programs designed for the commercial needs of the networks can be a struggle, acknowledged Kieser, himself a TV producer, but that is what the Humanitas Prize is all about: to give writers the support and encouragement they need to create shows that “give insight and perspective into what it means to be a human being.”

The prizes, funded by an endowment from major broadcasting companies, were established in the belief that only the human family rivals television’s power “to communicate values, form consciences and motivate human behavior,” Kieser said.