Emmy Award for tv producer with links to Newmarket

May 30, 2005
Limerick Leader

AN Irish American businessman and television producer with strong ties to Newmarket-on-Fergus has won an Emmy award.

David C. McCourt was awarded the Emmy at the 33rd Annual Daytime Emmy Award Ceremony for his role as Producer of the critically acclaimed Reading Rainbow children's series.

Mr McCourt is a regular visitor to the Clare village where he owns a holiday home.

One of 7 children, he was raised in Watertown, Massachusetts, and graduated from Georgetown University.  In 1982, he created his first company, McCourt Cable Systems, which quickly became the largest privately owned designer and builder of cable systems in the country.  In the meantime, his Corporate Communications Network eventually merged with MFS Communications which was later sold to Worldcom for $14.3 billion.

His business activities have been characterized by a number of “firsts.”  In Boston, he built Corporate Communications Network, the first communications company to bundle data, voice, and video over one network.

Today Mr McCourt also sits on the boards of numerous public and private bodies in the US and is also a member of the North American Board of the Smurfit School of Business, UCD.  In November 2004, the American Irish Historical Society awarded him its annual Gold Medal Award, an award previously bestowed on President Ronald Reagan, author Mary Higgins Clark, and entertainer and human rights advocate Bono.

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