Fighting the Odds
Cable Positive Combats AIDS, Challenges
by George Winslow -- Multichannel News, 9/21/2008 8:00:00 PM EDT
When the U.S. government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) admitted this summer that HIV infection rates in the United States were actually about 40% higher than previously thought, it came as no surprise to Cable Positive president and CEO Steve Villano.
“Those of us who had been involved in this issue knew that the CDC had been undercounting HIV infections for a long time because they weren’t getting correct figures out of the Black and Latino communities,” Villano said. “The fact that new infections are about 40% higher than previously reported — at about 53,000 a year — is a huge difference. It highlights the fact that prevention efforts on the government’s part have failed because of politics and ideology and it shows once again the importance of an organization like Cable Positive.”
| The HIV/AIDS Epidemic | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Persons living with AIDS in the United States | ||||
| 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 |
| SOURCE: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 2006 data is the most recent available. |
||||
| 350,419 | 372,267 | 393,596 | 413,882 | 436,693 |
But, as the HIV/AIDS epidemic worsens, Cable Positive faces its own challenges including new demands on its relatively modest $2.5 million budget.
Beginning next year, Cable Positive will no longer hold its annual fund raising dinner, which raised about $1.6 million in 2007. As part of an industry-wide reorganization that consolidated all major events into two Cable Connection weeks in the spring and fall, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association and Cable Positive will hold a joint Chairman’s Reception at the Cable Show in April.
The reception will include no awards or speeches; Cable Positive will honor those who have made special contributions to the fight against HIV/AIDS during a separate invitation-only event.
While some board members have called that decision “shortsighted,” Villano and the Cable Positive board are clearly focused on finding new sources of funding and reshaping the organization so it can do an even better job of addressing the changing face of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
“We are on uneasy ground,” said Ray Gutierrez, executive vice president of human resources and administration at Showtime Networks and incoming chairman of Cable Positive’s board of directors. “But the good news is that the board and Steve [Villano] are not afraid of change. We are working to navigate that change and make the organization even more effective.”
Much of this will be built on Cable Positive’s long history of success — a unique example of how a specific industry can make a major difference in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
“In the whole world there isn’t an organization like Cable Positive where an entire industry has come together specifically to devote its resources and power to fight a disease like HIV/AIDS,” said Villano.
That effort began in 1991. Jeff Bernstein, then vice president of marketing at Warner Bros. Television, returned from the Video Software Dealers Association Convention, where he attended a party that raised money for HIV/AIDS. Convinced that cable should be involved in the fight against AIDS, which had just claimed one his friends, he began sending out letters to various people in the industry and met with Brad Wojcoski at HBO.
As they tossed around ideas, Wojcoski, who was already infected and would die of complications from AIDS in 1993, came up with the name, Cable Positive. The organization was formally founded in February 1992 by Bernstein, Wojcoski and June Winters.
Since then Cable Positive has expanded from a handful of volunteers to an organization with a budget of about $2.5 million and a staff of seven people.
“This is a disease where the only known prevention is awareness,” said Bernstein, who is now a board member of Cable Positive and the CEO of Chelsea Marketeers. “We discovered an amazing number of people who knew someone that had been affected and there was an amazing outpouring of support from the cable, which was extremely important because it was the only industry that was doing something. The broadcasters wouldn’t run condom ads or messages about practicing safe sex.”
Over the organization’s history, Villano estimates “very, very conservatively that the cable industry has donated over $1 billion in free air time.”
Equally important, Cable Positive has played a crucial role in helping local HIV/AIDS organizations form partnerships with local cable systems, said Bonnie Hathaway, vice president of public affairs for Time Warner Cable and outgoing chair of Cable Positive.
A key component of that effort has been the Tony Cox Fund, which was founded in 1996 and named after the former Showtime chairman and CEO. In the 2006 and 2007 fiscal years, the Fund provided about $300,000 in grants to local HIV/AIDS organizations to help them produce public service announcements and develop awareness campaigns to run on local cable systems.
“The Tony Cox fund allows groups that wouldn’t have the money to produce spots or programs to work with cable to get the spots produced and aired,” said Pam Euler Halling, board member and senior vice president at Insight Communications. “That has had a tremendous impact on the local level.”
To ensure that it can continue to fund those efforts and develop new programs that can address the growth of HIV/AIDS, Cable Positive is planning some major changes in its structure and governing boards.
One important initiative is to restructure the way money is raised from within the cable industry. Although certain details have not been finalized, the organization has asked for a minimum commitment of $25,000 for board members. By early September, companies that had agreed to contribute at least $25,000 to Cable Positive included Time Warner Cable, NBC Universal, Showtime Networks, Mediacom Communications, Cox Communications, Suddenlink Communications, Rainbow Media Services, Lifetime Networks and the NCTA.
“We remain very committed,” both for airtime and financial support, said Time Warner Cable’s Hathaway. Pointing to rising infection rates among youth, African-Americans and Latinos, she added, “Those are demos that are important for our business. It is very important for us to support those communities and supporting awareness of HIV and AIDS.”
Italia Commisso Weinand, senior vice president of programming and human resources at Mediacom Communications and Cable Positive board member, also stressed her MSO’s long-term commitment to Cable Positive.
“Our footprint is in Middle America, where HIV/AIDS is not an easy issue to talk about,” she said. “But we felt compelled to be involved and we remain involved because education is the answer. Cable can play such a tremendous role in that.”
Halling also stressed Insight’s longstanding commitment to the organization. “By working with Cable Positive we can reach millions of people and be very effective in building awareness and educating people about HIV AIDS,” she said.
Besides the large MSOs and national programmers, many smaller operators also remain very active. In recent years, GCI Cable in Alaska, SusCom in Pennsylvania, Bresnan Communications in the Mountain States and Buckeye Cable in Ohio have all forged innovative partnerships with local organizations on awareness campaigns.
Villano is also looking outside the MSOs and programmers to foundations and to companies tied to the cable industry. One example of those efforts is the $200,000 grant from the Motorola Foundation last December to start a Youth AIDS Media Institute to promote peer-to-peer education.
Still he would like to see more industry support during a time when HIV/AIDS remains at epidemic levels in some communities. “Our budget is 0.003% of the $80 billion the cable industry had last year in gross revenue,” he said. “If I had 0.005% and a budget of $4 million, we could do incredible things.”
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