Joel A. Berger Award
Join the Fight: Weapons of Mass Instruction, Cable Positive
By Staff -- Multichannel News, 3/18/2007 8:00:00 PM
The Joel A. Berger Award recognizes an outstanding public affairs initiative that creates AIDS awareness in local communities. The award is named after the former publisher of Cablevision magazine. Berger died from AIDS in 1995. CTPAA is proud to honor Cable Positive as the recipient of this year’s award for its initiative “Join the Fight: Weapons of Mass Instruction.”
Cable Positive’s Weapons of Mass Instruction national HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention campaign was the second phase of the award-winning Join the Fight HIV/AIDS national education campaign. Cable Positive is the cable industry’s HIV/AIDS action and education nonprofit organization.
The organization enlisted the support of acclaimed director Bart Freundlich (The Myth of Fingerprints) and celebrity activists Matthew Broderick (Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Producers), Billy Crudup (Almost Famous, Stage Beauty), Rosario Dawson (Rent, Sin City), Jerry Ferrara (HBO’s Entourage), Jimmy Fallon (former Saturday Night Live cast member), Allan Houston (recently retired New York Knick), Idina Menzel (Rent, Tony award winner for Wicked), S. Epatha Merkerson (Emmy award winner for HBO’s Lackawanna Blues, Law & Order) and Miss Universe 2005, Natalie Glebova to participate in phase two of the campaign: Weapons of Mass Instruction. Grammy award winning music artist India.Arie generously donated the song “Strength, Courage & Wisdom” from her album Acoustic Soul to score the spots. The new spots were produced in collaboration with Kismet Films.
Cable Positive’s HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention public-service campaign takes a positive and proactive stance on the fight against HIV/AIDS. By promoting ideas and actions, the campaign inspires people to get involved. Since its launch in November 2004, this award-winning campaign (PROMAX, TV Cares Ribbon of Hope Award presented by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences) has utilized cable television to raise AIDS awareness, promote HIV prevention and reduce stigma and fear surrounding the disease through compelling public service announcements and informative Web site.
In the Weapons of Mass Instruction campaign, celebrity activists are shot in black and white and discuss the weapons they use in the fight against HIV and AIDS: their “minds,” “hearts” and “voices.”
The yearlong campaign launched on cable television in support of World AIDS Day, Dec. 1, 2005, and ran in support of National Black AIDS Awareness Day, Feb. 7, and National HIV Testing Day, June 27. Cable Positive joined forces with the Latino Commission on AIDS to support National Latino AIDS Awareness Day, Oct. 15 by producing and distributing new spots, part of the Join the Fight campaign, produced in English and Spanish languages featuring Latina soap star Gabriela Spanic, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition’s Eduardo Xol and Efren Ramirez of Napoleon Dynamite fame.
During The Weapons of Mass Instruction campaign’s run on cable systems and networks across the country from World AIDS Day 2005 through World AIDS Day 2006, www.cablepositive.org recorded more than 3 million hits as a direct result of the PSAs — making it the most successful interactive public service campaign in Cable Positive’s history.
Cable Positive offers nationally tagged spots that direct viewers to www.cablepositive.org/jointhefight, a site dedicated to providing more information about HIV and AIDS including testing, transmission, and prevention, and local taggable spots for cable systems to partner with community-based AIDS service organizations.
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