Humanitas Prize

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The Humanitas Prize is an award for film and TV writing deemed to promote human dignity, meaning, and freedom. It began in the 1970s with Father Ellwood Kieser, but is generally not seen as specific religious cinema or TV. In 1975 Ray Bradbury, Father Bud, and Robert Abernathy announced the first winners on the Today Show.

It began as primarily a television award. The award is currently broken up into Feature Film, Prime Time TV 90 minute, Prime Time TV 60 minute, Prime Time TV 30 minute, Children's Live Action, Children's Animation, Sundance Feature Film, and The Angell Comedy Fellowship. The fellowship was started after David Angell and Lynn Angell were killed in Flight #11 in the September 11, 2001 attacks.

In 2005 Humanitas winners included Hotel Rwanda (feature film) and The West Wing (television).

In 2006, the documentary film An Inconvenient Truth about global warming starring Al Gore was given a "Special Award" for "mak[ing] a significant contribution to the human family by communicating values, forming consciences and motivating human behavior".[1]

[edit] Trivia

The most wins, four, was by the TV series M*A*S*H.[2]
Several shows won three times including The West Wing, The Wonder Years, I'll Fly Away (in two different categories), Family, Thirtysomething, and Hill Street Blues. Life with Louie was the only show to win three times in the children's animation category.
The short lived Clerks: The Animated Series parodied the award in its first episode. Main character Dante Hicks mentioned that it was "an award for shows that don't use words like 'retarded,'" to which friend Randal Graves replied "That's retarded. And queer."