TELEVISION : HOW THE CRUSADES BECAME PRIME FOR TV : Well-connected advocacy groups have won over the networks with campaigns to inject messages on social issues into entertainment programs. Their latest success will be evident this week with a trumpeting of the benefits of education.

What do Roseanne Barr, Paddington Bear and Burt Reynolds have in common?

Besides starring in their own TV shows, each will soon trumpet the benefits of education as part of a carefully orchestrated media blitz spearheaded by some of the best-connected wives in Hollywood.

“We want people to feel that there is hope,” explains Lynda Guber, the spouse of Columbia Pictures co-chairman Peter Guber and co-founder of Education 1st!, the nonprofit group that’s planting pro-school messages across the TV dial this week.

Segments will range from an “America’s Most Wanted” episode on Fox that takes a sobering look at the high dropout rate (80%) among prison inmates, to a segment of ABC’s “Roseanne” in which Roseanne Barr crashes an all-male Career Night at her child’s school to stress education’s positive impact on the lives of homemakers.

“Every year the U.S. education system graduates 700,000 high school students who can’t read their own diplomas,” laments Education 1st! co-founder Carole Isenberg, wife of TV producer Jerry Isenberg and, like Lynda Guber, an independent producer in her own right.

The two women, armed with an A-list Rolodex that includes home numbers for the distaff partners of such industry heavyweights as NBC Entertainment Group Chairman Brandon Tartikoff and Disney Chairman Michael Eisner, have turned Madison Avenue marketers green with envy. The Education 1st! team has secured berths for 29 network, 22 cable and 14 PBS shows that will deliver a pro-education message during more than 75 hours of regular and special programming.

“The scale of the Education 1st! Week campaign rivals something General Motors or McDonald’s would do,” says one New York ad agency analyst. “Almost anybody who watches TV during that week will hear from pro-education advocates at least once, and probably several times.”

Education 1st! Week is only the latest example of how an aggressive coterie of producers, writers, directors and executive power brokers are injecting material into entertainment programming that is deliberately calculated to mold public opinion around such topics as AIDS, drunk-driving, human rights, capital punishment, alcohol abuse, world hunger and the environment.

Traditionally uneasy about the discussion of social issues within escapist fare, the networks have become enthusiastic participants in some of these advocacy campaigns. In an unprecedented move last September, for example, they joined forces to air simultaneously a Saturday morning anti-drug special on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and numerous other TV outlets, the half-hour “Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue.”

“There’s definitely much more of this kind of activity going on,” says Kathryn Montgomery, author of “Target: Prime Time,” a 1989 book about the impact of advocacy groups on programming. “Television has during the last couple of years been quick to embrace pro-social issues that will help legitimize its activities and improve its image.”

Montgomery, currently a guest scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center in Washington, notes with some irony that the trend occupies an era in which the number of public-affairs shows has sharply declined.

“Where 10 years ago you would have seen a documentary on an issue,” says Montgomery, “you now see a TV movie or special episode of a series.”

The integration of media-supported advocacy messages into programming comes at a time when many members of the TV production industry are expressing great frustration at the content-related demands of conservative “pressure groups” and the wary response of advertisers to sensitive program themes. Meanwhile, some of the same network policy-makers lauding Education 1st! Week still defend their strict limits on paid announcements that deal with controversial social issues on the grounds of balance and fairness.

When organizers of a boycott against Folger’s Coffee recently tried to buy advertising time to talk about the alleged human rights violations of coffee-growers in El Salvador, only a handful of TV outlets dared accept the group’s 60-second messages. Yet when Amnesty International wanted to increase awareness of the plight of Salvadoran political prisoners, it made a deal with the producers of Fox’s “21 Jump Street” to help get Amnesty’s concerns before millions of viewers.

“We believe you can entertain, inform and enlighten people at the same time,” says Roger Rathman, Amnesty International’s Los Angeles media director. “The viewing public really wants to see this kind of programming.”

Amnesty International’s influence has cropped up in several story lines over the last two years. There was Bart Simpson arrested in front of the Turkish embassy on behalf of political prisoners and J.R. Ewing ordering his South African investments withdrawn. “I thought housework was torture,” muttered Roseanne Barr while doing the dishes in her Amnesty T-shirt. “But then I heard about being a peasant in Guatemala.”

More recently, Robert Greenwald Productions agreed to pay the organization about $50,000 for its assistance on “Forgotten Prisoners: The Amnesty Files,” a movie for the Turner Network Television cable service. (Many advocacy groups receive generous consulting fees or donations from the production companies they’re asked to advise.)

“The support groups we work with pretty much know that we’re on their side,” says Greenwald vice president and executive producer Carla Singer. “We are very socially aware.”

Robert Greenwald and dozens of other independent production companies now rely heavily on advocacy groups for fact-checking, story lines, script reviewing and even casting assistance.

“We’re begging to get Tom Cruise for ‘Dead Heat,’ ” confesses Singer, referring to an upcoming ABC-TV movie about how the world ecosystem may be altered over the next 30 years. “The Environmental Media Assn. has been a wonderful resource.”

Unlike well-established activist organizations such as Amnesty International and Greenpeace, which has contributed to episodes of “Family Ties” and “thirtysomething,” the Environmental Media Assn. is one of a new breed of advocacy groups specifically created to further the social goals of show-biz insiders. Two years after its founding by producer Norman Lear, super-agent Michael Ovitz and studio executive Alan Horn and their wives at one of Lear’s dinner parties, the Environmental Media Assn. already claims to have had direct involvement in at least 40 prime-time programs, from “The Golden Girls” to “Knots Landing.”

When “thirtysomething” co-executive producer Marshall Herskovitz developed a story line last season about a character protesting construction of a solid-waste incinerator, for example, he asked the Environmental Media Assn. for advice. The group had already briefed the show’s writers and producers on such issues as ozone depletion and global warming, with an eye toward reaching “thirtysomething’s” influential urban/professional audience.

Despite his continuing contacts with the Environmental Media Assn., Herskovitz is one of the few producers to openly express qualms about prime time’s expanding pro-social agenda.

“I fear anyone using (TV) to (further) their own ends,” Herskovitz told The Times just before the incinerator episode’s broadcast in 1989. “Propaganda is propaganda, whether it’s right wing, left wing or middle-of-the-road.”

Environmental Media Assn. president Andy Spahn, former finance chairman for Gary Hart’s presidential campaign, begs to disagree.

“We live in a culture of visual images and sound bites,” he says. “Given the power of TV in our society, there’s certainly good reason to believe that we can make an impact on human attitudes and behavior.”

Spahn has taken an approach common among virtually all of today’s successful advocacy groups, soft-peddling his organization’s service as “an information resource” instead of making overt demands.

“I’ve heard about writers and producers who flat out refuse to deal with organizations like ours,” Spahn says, “but so far we haven’t run into them.”

One prominent critic of advocate involvement in entertainment programming is Steven Bochco, the creative mastermind behind “Hill Street Blues,” “L.A. Law” and “Doogie Howser, M.D.”

“It is by virtue of my constant battle (with networks censors and pressure groups) that I’ve been able to do the kinds of things I’ve done on TV,” Bochco has said. “I think the only legitimate standard is excellence, to be as good as you can be.”

This hands-off attitude is a rare commodity in today’s Hollywood.

“I’ve only heard that kind of bull from four producers, and Bochco by far is the noisiest of the bunch,” says writer/producer/director Larry Stewart, a board member of the activist Entertainment Industries Council. “It’s as if they’re saying, ‘If it ain’t my idea, it didn’t happen.’ ”

Among his professional peers, Stewart detects a growing acceptance of the conclusion that “TV might have been sending out the wrong messages” about what constitutes acceptable behavior. He remembers directing an episode of “Hunter” a while back in which the lead character was scripted to knock off work and have a couple of drinks.

“The producer pulled the line before I could ask him,” Stewart says. “That’s when I knew we were beginning to have an impact.”

One liquor industry survey estimated prime-time depictions of alcohol use dropped 22% in one recent 18-month period.

“Out of the nearly 200 TV producers and writers I’ve had one-on-one meetings with, perhaps a handful have expressed any degree of reservation about using entertainment programming to discourage drinking and drug use, encourage seat-belt use or any other social aim,” says Jay Winsten, director of the Harvard Alcohol Project, which claims to have placed “designated driver” messages within the story-lines of 95 prime-time shows in the last four years. “Even among these who expressed reservations, almost all said they’d try to find ways of helping our cause.”

Producer Michelle Ashford, who worked with Winsten on a segment of “WIOU,” cautions the creative community against overreacting to past criticism about prime-time froth.

“Recently I saw an episode of (the CBS sitcom) ‘Major Dad’ which was absolutely a poster for the ‘don’t drink and drive’ campaign,” she says. “Doing heavyhanded public-service announcements for particular causes is not my idea of good drama.”

And doing shows about the most controversial causes is still not the networks’ idea of good business, reminds Ashford.

“When you do anything that’s politically charged,” she advises, “the networks still get very uncomfortable. I would never do another show on abortion, for example. Whenever there are two strongly held sides to an issue, the networks are afraid of dealing with it because they don’t want to alienate half of their audience. Date rape seems to be an acceptable topic with them, but then, there’s nobody out there saying rape is a good thing.”

A Massachusetts public health official trained in molecular biology, Winsten attributes much of his success within the creative community to the nonpartisan nature of his “designated driver” campaign and the many introductions made on his behalf by former NBC chairman and longtime independent producer Grant Tinker. Without them, says Winsten, he’d never have secured even a fraction of the estimated $100-million worth of free air time the Harvard Alcohol Project now enjoys each year.

But Winsten’s acceptance by Hollywood’s cozy inner circle is an exception to the rule. Indeed, the close ties between TV big shots and industry-based advocates have created problems for the many activists who aren’t so well-connected.

“There’s a fear now that these ‘inside’ groups have an edge,” says Marlene Goland, ticking off the names of half a dozen recently formed advocacy organizations now competing with her foundation-funded Center for Population Options for air time. “There’s some resentment, especially when it comes to raising money and getting attention. People (in the TV industry) have only so much time and money to give, and they want to give it to those they already know and like.”

While the Center for Population Options has an impressive 10-year track record in broadening TV’s coverage of the AIDS epidemic and responsible sexual behavior, Goland says she’s become “very concerned” about the possibility that such richly endowed and high-profile newcomers as Education 1st! will dominate TV’s pro-social agenda.

“It’s been a real struggle to keep our program going,” Goland says, “and this just makes it that much more difficult.”

Is it unfair for the networks to explicitly endorse pro-social campaigns that its executives and producers have a personal stake in, while simultaneously giving the cold shoulder to issues raised by outsiders?

“I don’t see anything wrong with people having causes and aims that better society,” responds John Agoglia, the NBC Entertainment executive vice president coordinating much of the medium’s anti-drug programming. “But if you try to force-feed (members of the TV industry) or tell them they have to include a certain number of messages, it will all implode. People will rebel against it.”

Asked why the networks haven’t united to reduce televised violence, long the goal of several non-industry advocacy groups, Agoglia insists that this is “a separate issue” where no consensus of expert opinion exists.

“I don’t know that we’ll every agree as to whether seeing something on TV causes certain actions and behavior patterns, or whether TV is only reflective of what goes on in society. That’s a discussion that has no end.”

Such comments are typical “inside the bubble” thinking, counters Brent Bozell, chairman of the nonprofit Media Research Center and publisher of “TV Etc.,” a conservative newsletter that monitors Hollywood activism.

“There is such political manipulation going on in the creative community that what they’re producing is no longer entertainment,” Bozell says in a telephone interview from his suburban Washington headquarters. While some of Hollywood’s professed goals may be worthy, he maintains, “all too often the umbrella of a good cause is used to shield left-wing messages, such as ‘all business is evil.’ ”

Robert Lichter, a political scientist studying television at the Washington-based Center for Media and Public Affairs, isn’t surprised by today’s prime-time activists, given the results of a survey he conducted several years ago among members of the Hollywood production industry.

“Two out of three of those interviewed agreed with the contention that ‘TV entertainment should be a major force for social reform,’ ” recalls Lichter.

Producers and writers, he says, “have figured out that nothing terrible will happen to them if they do more socially significant shows. They managed to fight off the religious fundamentalists and their threats of boycotts, so now there’s really no competing institution to halt the infusion of competing social and political material. The standards and practices people are out of the game, and traditional groups fighting from the outside have been shown to not have much power, so now Hollywood can serve its social consciousness up to America as entertainment.”

Bozell claims that a double standard exists, in which advocacy organizations representing outsiders are labeled “pressure groups” and those from within the industry are dubbed “pro-social.”

“Whenever a conservative wants to champion a conservative position (in entertainment programming),” he says, “he’s attacked for abridging freedom of expression. Yet when the left wants to do it, it becomes educational.”

The executive charged with overseeing many of producer Norman Lear’s political activities agrees that some causes may be given short shrift for lack of a Hollywood connection.

“There’s no doubt that you get access (to air time) through contacts,” says Betsy Kenny, vice president of public affairs for Lear’s Act III Communications and a media liaison for the Show Coalition and People for the American Way, two organizations that promote social change through television.

Kenny notes that People for the American Way, based in Washington and now only peripherally connected to Hollywood, “still has a horrible time buying time for advocacy advertising on TV. If anything, it’s gotten more difficult because the networks are very worried about (non-industry) pressure groups attacking them for running certain types of advocacy advertisements.”

Lynda Guber readily admits there are considerable advantages in being part of the power elite.

“Our board has some of the most influential people in the media on it,” she allows, among them Jon Peters, her husband’s partner in running Columbia Pictures; and such heavyweight couples as the Jonathan Dolgens, Brandon Tartikoffs, Sid Ganises and Gary Lieberthals. “We don’t have to call and introduce ourselves; we can approach (these decision-makers) as friends.”

Is it possible, Guber is asked, that the audience may be turned off by the well-intentioned messages that she, her friends and TV’s other advocates are inserting into their prime-time entertainment?

“If (members of the viewing) public think they’re being preached to,” Guber concludes, “they must ask themselves how they created the situation of having to be preached to. The reason we have to tell them what is happening is because they created the problems themselves in the first place.”