TV’s Crusaders Are Motivated by Personal Experiences

Call them The Crusaders--producers for whom network TV is less a way to make a living than a forum for social activism.

Producers like Arnold Shapiro of the CBS series “Rescue 911,” Linda Otto of ABC’s upcoming docudrama “A Mother’s Right: The Elizabeth Morgan Story,” and even Oprah Winfrey, who’s now taken over production of ABC’s “Afterschool Specials”--they’re all motivated by a zeal to see their productions inspire, teach and right wrongs.

“I decided a long time ago to pick projects that were important to me,” says Shapiro, who has been in the business since 1963 and hit the crusader’s jackpot with the Oscar- and Emmy-winning prison rap “Scared Straight” in 1978. “I’ve never done what I do for the money.”

These Crusaders are serious folks. They’re so driven about what they do that an interview can turn into a lecture or a polemic. And when it comes to clarity about their purposes, they’re unyielding: Otto turned steely cool when reporters at one interview asked how she became so interested in the issue of children’s rights central to her new movie.

“I have been asked this many times, and I’ve always answered truthfully, and I’ve never seen it in print anywhere, so I always smile when I answer this question,” she responded with a grin--and an intimidating stare.

Like Winfrey, who has spoken about sexual abuse in her youth, Otto says her motivation came from personal experience: “The father of my best friend was a child molester, and he attacked several of us on different occasions,” when Otto was about 10 years old. “And nothing was done about it ... I learned at a very early age that children are not listened to when the subject matter is extremely difficult,” she says. “I made a vow that I would do something about it when I grew up.”

She studied psychology in college, “and then I decided that I wanted to reach more people and that I wanted to raise the consciousness in the biggest way I could.”

Which is why Otto has produced or directed fact-based network movies like 1983’s landmark missing-child drama “Adam,” 1989’s AIDS saga “The Ryan White Story” and 1990’s day-care abuse story “Unspeakable Acts.”

She spent almost three years producing and directing “A Mother’s Right” (airing on ABC Nov. 29), which focuses on the recent Washington case in which Dr. Elizabeth Morgan (played by Bonnie Bedelia) spent 25 months in jail rather than surrender her daughter Hilary to the ex-husband she said had abused her. A longtime child advocate, Otto speaks for the daughter who is “denied access to the justice system,” she says. “To me, the only voice that is important are the voices of the children.”

Shapiro’s current program is “Rescue 911,” which he hates to see lumped in with other “reality” show; he says his hour of actual and re-created emergency footage is designed to spotlight heroic acts rather than mysteries or tragedies. “We almost never do a story that doesn’t have a lesson to it.”

This producer credits his parents for infusing him with “an overactive conscience” that led to his documentaries like “Scared Straight” or last month’s “Scared Silent” child-abuse hour, hosted by Winfrey and simulcast on several networks. But he turned more toward the prime-time commercial market because that’s where the viewers are. “If you have the opportunity, as in the case of ‘Rescue,’ to get a 24 average--that’s 24% of the (time period’s TV) audience watching--why would you want to do something that gets a 2 share of the audience” on PBS or cable?”