Alex Gilady

Alex Gilady was born in 1942 in Tehran

Gilady was born Alexander Kleinberger in Tehran on 9 December 1942, to Polish Jewish parents who had fled there during the Second World War. He was one of the Tehran Children and came to the Land of Israel with his family in 1943. He grew up in Ramat HaSharon and studied at the Mevo'ot Yam naval school.

In 1964 he joined the sports desk of Yedioth Ahronoth. In 1968 he moved to the sports department of Israeli Television and became its head in 1975. As head of special events from 1977, he produced broadcasts such as the 1979 Eurovision in Israel and the visit of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat.

In 1981 he joined NBC Sports, where he became a vice president and negotiated the network's Olympic broadcast rights with the IOC. In 1993 he led the founding of Keshet to compete for the Channel 2 franchise and later served as its CEO until shareholders dismissed him in 1995. He returned in 2005 as president of the group.

He became a member of the International Olympic Committee in 1994 and sat on the organizing committees of several Games. In 2017 he stepped down temporarily from Keshet after a rape accusation, which he denied. He died in London on 13 April 2022 from lung cancer.