September 20, 2007

Good Times & Timing at Kaitz

On the Circuit with CableWorld editor Seth Arenstein

NEW YORK — Timing isn’t everything in life, but it’s a lot, especially when you’re hosting a few thousand people for dinner, and they’ve donated $1.7 million for diversity.

Kaitz’s Michelle Ray and staff, with an assist from NCTA’s Barbara York and crew, had it last night, overcoming a late start to the Kaitz dinner festivities and ending just 8 minutes late, at 9:23pm, for the clock watchers.

While the cocktail hour was cut off promptly (curtly, too) by Hilton staff, cablers inexplicably were left to stand in the hallway for more than a few minutes (more schmooze time—hey, isn’t it great to reconnect with people you used to work with or may be working with 20 minutes from now?). When the ballroom opened and attendees had barely sat down by 8 pm, 30 minutes behind the printed schedule, it appeared a long night was ahead.

But the dinner (an uneventful chicken breast and white fish, plus a good dessert of poached pear) was served in a New York minute, allowing the program of teleprompter reading to start quickly. Kaitz managed this even while handling a considerable bit of diva factor, surprising the crowd with tennis star Serena Williams, who, looking alternatively gorgeous and imposing in an impossibly tight blue dress and heels, presented one of the night’s two diversity awards to fellow sport ESPN.
 
ESPN chief George Bodenheimer did well with his speech—noting that while ESPN’s numbers are up since Bristol began to reexamine its diversity strategy, “that’s not the point…our company is a better company, unequivocally.”

The night’s best and funniest remarks were to come. The night’s other celeb, Martin Luther King III, was brought in to introduce award winner No. 2, Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-NY). King managed to awkwardly inject a commercial message into his intro of Towns, plugging an upcoming special on AmericanLife TV about poverty in America. But that was forgotten once Towns told the crowd he’d be brief. With a gravelly voice, Towns, without notes, said someone once said she had heard him speak and he was a good speaker.

“What did I speak about?” Towns asked the woman.

“I don’t remember, but you were brief.”

True to his word, he was very brief, making the case for diversity into a story. “If I fall into a ditch and you stand over me with your foot on my neck, I know two things. I might not be able to get up, but you won’t be able to move either.” Towns’ exhortation: Get your foot off my neck so we can move ahead together.

Speaking of moving, that’s what ESPN Deportes chief Lino Garcia was doing quite well on the dance floor with Scripps’ Lenore Washington-Graham and, earlier, Horowitz’s Adriana Waterston as a 7-piece salsa band greeted Kaitz-goers at the post-dinner reception. A great and diverse treat to end the formal part of the evening.

The most interesting post-Kaitz moment took place across the street at the new London hotel. In the bar-eatery run by celeb chef Gordon Ramsay, before the crowds piled in, observers spied Hallmark’s Henry Schleiff in what appeared to be an intense conversation with Turner brass Mark Lazarus, Phil Kent and Andy Heller. Now what, pray tell, could they have been talking about? The relative merits of Atlanta’s Braves and New York’s Mets or Yankees no doubt. 

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