ABC’s AIDS Charity Special Makes a Profit : Television: The surplus goes to Design Industries Foundation but network isn’t sure yet how much.

Thanks to a last-minute infusion of advertising, the ABC AIDS awareness special “In a New Light” turned enough of a profit last Saturday night to allow the network to contribute the proceeds to an AIDS charity, the network said Monday.

“There was a surplus from the advertisers who participated, but we don’t have information yet on how much,” said Phil Beuth, the president of early-morning and late-night programming for ABC, who spearheaded the effort to produce the program.

Beuth would not say how much revenue had been generated. Last week, network officials said that they had feared that the program, meant to be a benefit for the Design Industries Foundation for AIDS, would not raise enough money to pay for its costs.

The network had prepared a 50-second promotional spot to air in the event that ABC failed to sell enough advertising to fill the time allotted for commercials but did not have to use it, Beuth said.

The two-hour program, which aired in prime time Saturday and featured performances from Gloria Estefan, Nell Carter, Salt ‘n’ Peppa and other artists, was seen by about 10% of the households watching television at the time.

Beuth said that viewers, who were encouraged to call 800-numbers for information on AIDS or to offer their services as volunteers, jammed phone lines set up for the program. But he said the network and the Federal Centers for Disease Control, which monitored the lines, had not yet calculated the total number of calls.