The Year's Most

MOST REWARDING VIEWING: the Senate Watergate hearings, which combined public service, comedy, drama and some boredom in what, for this year, was the medium's finest hour--or rather 200 hours.

MOST GRIPPING SOAP OPERA: An American Family (PBS), about the Louds, which showed how the world turns in the upper-middle-class, California division.

MOST IRRITATING DEVELOPMENT: the spread of comedy "roasts"--rarely well done.

MOST IMPRESSIVE DEBUT: Katharine Hepburn, who poignantly played her first TV role in The Glass Menagerie, and gave an even more varied and captivating performance as herself on the Dick Cavett Show (both ABC). Runner-up: Senator Sam Ervin as that perennial favorite, the shrewd, aw-shucks folk hero.

MOST BALLYHOOED FIZZLE: ex-Washington Post Reporter Sally Quinn in CBS's pallid Morning News.

MOST LIVELY CULTURAL FARE: Alistair Cooke's America (NBC).

MOST WELCOME SURVIVORS: the PBS public affairs shows whose funding was threatened by Administration-inspired pressure, notably Bill Moyers' Journal Firing Line and Washington Week in Review.

MOST ENGAGING CHARACTERIZATION: Peter Falk's rumpled, resourceful Columbo (NBC), which freshened the overworked cop-and-crime formula.

MOST UNPROFESSIONAL SPORTS COVERAGE: the sexist sniping by Rosemary Casals, Gene Scott and Howard Cosell at the Bobby Riggs-Billie Jean King tennis match (ABC).

MOST NOURISHING DRAMA: Laurence Olivier and Britain's National Theater in Long Day's Journey into Night (ABC) and Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival production of Much Ado About Nothing (CBS)--a tie.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.