Ex-Cox Chief Harris Dies

Henry W. Harris, the former Cox Cable president and cofounder of cable operator Metrovision, died Saturday and will be the subject of a memorial in the Buckhead section of Atlanta Wednesday.

He was 68, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution death notice Monday, which did not provide a cause of death.

The memorial service will be at 11 a.m. (EST) at Peachtree Presbyterian Church on 3434 Roswell Road Northwest. There will also be visiting hours at H.M. Patterson & Son in Spring Hill, Ga., from 6 p.m.-8 p.m. Tuesday, according to the facility.

Harris headed Cox Cable in the mid-1970s up until the period when Cox was negotiating to sell out to General Electric, according to reports at the time and a Cable Center oral history. He left and, with backing from the Newhouse family, formed Metrovision in early 1980. His successor at Cox was Bob Wright, now chairman and CEO of NBC Universal and vice chairman of GE.

Metrovision got started with the acquisition of more than 100,000 customers from Daniels Properties, mostly in Texas and Nebraska, and it had about 500,000 subscribers when it was folded into Time Warner Cable and Advance/Newhouse’s cable joint venture in 1997, according to reports at the time and the oral history.