Cable and telecommunications industry AIDS-action organization Cable Positive said Monday that William McGorry, senior vice president of Multichannel News
parent Cahners Television Group, will be honored at the organization's annual benefit dinner in April.
"Absolutely Positively: An Evening to Benefit Cable Positive" will be held at New York's Marriott Marquis on Thursday, April 25, 2002.
Cable Positive's Joel A. Berger Award is presented at the benefit each year to an industry leader who has contributed significantly to the fight against HIV and AIDS. Lifetime Entertainment Services CEO Carole Black and Comedy Central CEO Larry Divney will co-chair the dinner.
McGorry — an honorary chair of Cable Positive since its inception in 1992 — was one of the key people who nurtured the organization early on, providing free ad space in Chilton Communications (later sold to Cahners) publications to boost its industry recognition.
"There could be no more fitting person to present the Joel Berger Award to in recognition of Cable Positive's good work over the past decade than Bill McGorry," Divney said in a news release.
McGorry was a close colleague of Berger, former publisher of Multichannel News
and Cablevision
and a leading voice in the industry's efforts to marshal its vast resources against HIV and AIDS. Berger died of AIDS in 1995.
Colleagues McGorry and Berger also helped to build Cable Positive as an organization. During the final stages of his friend's life, McGorry made sure Berger had ample health insurance, company benefits and the dignity of his work, right up until the end.
"It is particularly meaningful that Bill McGorry is the recipient of Cable Positive's 2002 Joel Berger Award," Black said in the release. "Bill is the individual who stood up and supported Joel — as employer, mentor and friend — in his battle against HIV and AIDS, and he embodies our industry's 10-year commitment to this important issue."
Since 1992, Cable Positive has worked with the cable industry to provide more than $2 million to AIDS service organizations across the country for outreach and education through direct grants and more than $1 million for HIV and AIDS research and clinical care.
Past Berger Award recipients are James L. Dolan (2001), Marc B. Nathanson (2000), Anne Sweeney (1999), Leo J. Hindery Jr. (1998), Dick Aurelio (1997), Winston H. "Tony" Cox (1996, posthumously) and Jeffrey Bewkes and Michael Fuchs (1995).
