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Selectivity has its rewards

By Jerry Krupnick

Newhouse news service

NEW YORK We are alternately annoyed and amused by those who continually complain, "There's nothing worth seeing on television."

They are missing the whole point of intelligent TV viewing. It shouldn't be watched on a regular basis, despite what the networks and the advertisers and Mr. Nielsen would have you believe.

Television supplies words and pictures and thoughts-around the clock in many cities. But where is it written that you have to see it all? The beauty of TV is that you have marvelous freedom of choice you watch what you want, or you turn it off.

We know all about the folks who supposedly are hypnotized by the tube, or who are anesthetized by what it offers, flopping into recliners right after dinner and not moving, changing the dial or changing their minds until the weatherman gives the forecast for tomorrow.

Maybe they are the majority of us. Maybe they are the mysterious 1,200 Nielsen families who dictate the ratings game? Or maybe they are a myth

In any case, we find quality on the tube all the time.

We also find a lot of junk. Sometimes we are in the mood for mindlessness, for what Aaron Spelling, the man who brings us "Charlie's Angels," calls "candy for the mind."

Garry Marshall, who is responsible for "Laverne and Shirley" and "Happy Days" and "Mork and Mindy,” says that if television "is supposed to educate you, then my shows are recess." And he's right. There is a place for recess. Just as there is a necessity for the most influential medium in the history of the world

Television and radio

to entertain us, inform us, even illuminate our lives.

This past season, television did exactly that. If you showed any kind of dial discrimination, if you tuned în not out of habit but because there was something you wanted to see, there were literally hundreds of magnificent hours on the tube.

Look at some of the specials and series we have seen this year. Not all of them pleased every taste. How could they? But there were so many, and they were so diverse, that they gave us a huge choice.

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There were all the big multi-dramas "Centennial," "Roots II," "Blind Ambition,' "Ike," "Backstairs at the White House" and "From Here to Eternity."

Kate Hepburn was marvelous in "The Corn Is Green." Bette Davis was superb in "Strangers," as was Gena Rowlands. Miss Rowlands was just as fine in "A Question of Love." Jane Alexander, who co-starred in that honest telling of homosexual love, was just as outstanding in "Lovey."

In series: The whole classy crowd of "The Paper Chase," Ron Liebman as "Kaz," Ken Howard as "The White Shadow," Judd Hirsch and Danny Devito in "Taxi.”

And of course there's public television and "Masterpiece Theatre."

We've saved the best for last. Carol Burnett and Ned Beatty were incredible in "Friendly Fire," a drama we felt was superior as an antiwar statement to "The Deer Hunter" or "Coming Home." "Friendly Fire" was this season's most brilliant of hours. All by itself, it made it a season to remember.