The Year's Most

MOST BLATANT--AND LONGEST--COMMERCIAL INTERRUPTION: a 90-minute plug masquerading as live coverage of a celebrity jolly-up, which launched NBC's Big Event series. Besides hyping the series, the stars tediously promoted their upcoming films--all, by an odd coincidence, Paramount releases.

MOST HONEST FELLA: Dustin Hoffman, at the aforementioned blast. Asked why his Marathon Man costar, Laurence Olivier, was absent, Dusty gave the short answer, "He has too much class."

MOST APPEALING ARGUMENT FOR FEMINISM: Lindsay Wagner as the Bionic Woman.

MOST APPALLING ARGUMENT FOR FEMINISM: Barbara Walters, ABC's celebrated anchorperson, who in her first prime-time special led a tour of her own apartment, and then reduced Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter to the level of her other guests, Barbra Streisand and Jon Peters.

MOST NEWSWORTHY NEWS SHOW: The MacNeil-Lehrer Report (PBS), which every night does what commercial broadcasting cannot, or perhaps will not, do--dives intelligently behind the headlines for reflective reporting on the day's major story.

MOST ATTRACTIVE EXAMPLE OF A TRENDY TREND: The Moneychangers (NBC). It dealt with a subject--commercial banking--that is not exactly fraught with romance. Craftsman-like writing, direction and acting (notably by Christopher Plummer as a thoroughgoing heel, and by Susan Flannery, playing that television rarity, a genuinely mature woman) have turned it into the most amusingly melodramatic of the currently fashionable miniseries.

MOST GRATEFULY RECEIVED PROGRAMMING EUTHANASIA: tie between Holmes and Yo-Yo, Ball Four and Mr. T and Tina.

MOST LOGICAL CANDIDATE FOR SIMILAR TREATMENT: The Captain & Tennille.

MOST DEPLORABLE SUCCESS: Laverne & Shirley (ABC), a deliberate insult to some of our nation's most estimable citizens.

MOST DISTINGUISHED DOCUMENTARY. Michael Roemer's Dying (PBS). A sensitive exploration of the emotions of three people confronting the ultimate crisis, it is that least common of television phenomena--a program that continues to reverberate in the mind.

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