Univision, BET Top Of Cable Positive’s POPs

Spanish-Language Service Receives Network Of Year Laurel; BET Garners Three Awards

-- Multichannel News, 6/11/2008 11:18:00 AM

Univision Communications and BET were the big winners at Cable Positive’s POP Awards last night.

Spanish-language broadcast giant Univision was named the POP (Positively Outstanding Programming) network of the year, marking the first time in the event’s seven-year history that a non-English language service took home the top honor among the networks and programs recognized for creating television that carries educational value and promotes awareness/prevention in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

Moreover, Univision won the outstanding Spanish-language PSA award for Salud es Vida…Enterate!, while sister service Telefutura gained laurels for outstanding original Spanish-language programming for the “Asi es La Vida" installment of Com Dominio Total.

For its part, BET garnered a trio of POP awards: the fourth campaign of College Hill was the best original series; Reflections was the outstanding film/movie; and the “Scenarios Series--Rap It Up” was the outstanding PSA campaign. The Henry J. Kaiser Family shared the latter with BET.

Other winners at the ceremony, which was held at the Time Warner Center in New York on June 10 were: Showtime’s  Positive Voices: Women & HIV for outstanding documentary; Sundance Channel’s I Want to be a Pilot for outstanding special programming; CNN’s House Call with Sanjay Gupta “World AIDS Day: South Africa’s Story” for outstanding news coverage; and the third episode of MTVU’s Cause Effect: “National AIDS Fund/American Red Cross” for outstanding biographical programming; 

Additionally, HBO earned a POP for outstanding PSA with its “HIV Testing” spot, while the outstanding community partnership went to “Suddenlink/Covenant House AIDS Residential & Resource Program” for their “Lies PSA.”

Dan Moloney, executive vice president, Motorola, Inc. received the second ever HIV/AIDS Education Advocate of the Year Award, presented by TelevisionWeek. Under Moloney’s leadership, Motorola made the single largest grant in Cable Positive’s history for the creation of The Youth AIDS Media Institute through the Motorola Foundation.  The grant provided Cable Positive with $200,000 to launch the program, targeting youth across the U.S. and challenging them to create HIV/AIDS awareness messages in their own voices to educate their peers about the disease.