Friends, Colleagues Praise Dressler

400 Gather For Memorial Service For Late Time Warner Cable Exec

By Kent Gibbons -- Multichannel News, 1/17/2008 8:23:00 AM MT

Old Greenwich, Conn. -- Fred Dressler's love of friends, family, colleagues and Syracuse University shone through during a 90-minute memorial service here Thursday, attended by about 400 people who came to celebrate the life of the veteran Time Warner Cable executive, who died Dec. 24 of pancreatic cancer at age 66.

Time Warner Inc. chairman Dick Parsons recalled his longtime friend as someone who helped teach him the cable business and about negotiating, at which Dressler was “relentless.” Although Dressler “was tough as a nail and he could sit there and stonewall anybody, he was also fair,” Parsons said, and always left with a handshake for the person across the table.

Several speakers noted the large number of network executives who were in attendance at the ceremony at the Hyatt Regency, and also came to Dressler’s retirement parties, even though they no longer had to curry favor with the man who was called “The Godfather” because of his gatekeeper role as Time Warner’s executive vice president of programming.

Some of the network officials in attendance Thursday: Crown Media CEO Henry Schleiff, Showtime Networks CEO Matt Blank, MTV Networks CEO Judy McGrath, Discovery Communications CEO David Zaslav and Rainbow Media Holdings CEO Josh Sapan.

Top executives from other cable companies included Comcast president Steve Burke and Advance/Newhouse Communications chairman Robert Miron, who shared a Syracuse connection with Dressler. Many wore purple ribbons pinned to their lapels, for pancreatic cancer awareness.

Time Warner Cable chairman and CEO Glenn Britt was among the speakers, sharing a story about a confusing negotiation he sat in on with Dressler and another company's representative who'd waited months to get on Dressler's calendar, only to leave bewildered and with the prospect of meeting Dressler again in six months.

As Britt said, “Fred practically invented the relationship between cable programmers and cable companies.”

David Rubin, dean of the S. I Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, said Dressler was instrumental in helping raise the funds for a new building at Newhouse, which Dressler saw dedicated last September. For one thing, Dressler championed the tested technique in the cable industry of selling tables, something Newhouse wasn't used to and which some people at the school opposed. Rubin said the school was renaming a lifetime achievement award for media executives in Dressler's honor.

Rubin said academicians think of themselves as teachers, but “in this case, Fred taught us a lot. I wish I had had the foresight, just once, to call him to his face, Professor Dressler.”

Andy Heller, the Turner Broadcasting domestic distribution president and a Dressler friend and protege, said the thousands of e-mails, letters, prepared dinners and care packages Dressler received were deeply appreciated and helpful.

“You will never know how much they meant to him,” Heller said.

Dressler never complained about his illness, Heller said. “He made the very best of the cards he was dealt.”

About nine months ago, Dressler suffered a back injury that disabled one of his feet and kept him from playing tennis, something he was passionate about, Heller said. It was a depressing disability. But then Dressler watched the Paralympics on TV, and had a brace made that got him back on the court; Dressler invited his friend, tennis ace Jim Courier, over to play, and they did.

“His courage and his attitude is something I will never forget,” Heller said.

Dressler was diagnosed with cancer after his retirement, and his first retirement dinner – one of several – took place a year ago.

Parsons said that Dressler insisted his memorial celebrate his life, not mourn his passing.

“If I can mangle the words of Mark Antony, I come today to praise Fred, not to bury him,” Parsons said. “He was a truly remarkable man.”