NEW YORK (March 18, 2026) --- Bruce Beck, the award-winning lead sports anchor for the NBC television network’s New York flagship station, WNBC-4, will introduce and present college basketball TV analyst Bill Raftery in April with the Peter Carlesimo/Jack Powers Distinguished Service Award on behalf of the Metropolitan Basketball Writers Association.
The DSA presentation will be made at the 93rd MBWA All-Met Haggerty Awards Dinner scheduled Thursday, April 23, at the Sleepy Hollow Hotel & Conference Center in Tarrytown, NY.
Raftery is a hugely popular and accomplished TV personality, and a former college coach.
Beck, who hosts WNBC’s Sports Final show on Sunday nights in addition to his weeknight duties, has covered a multitude of major championship events for News 4 New York, including the NCAA Final Four. He has won nine Sports Emmys, three national Cable Ace Awards, been named New York State Sportscaster of the Year nine times and, in 2021, was honored by
Broadcasting & Cable as the top local sports anchor in the United States.
In 2010, Beck was presented with the MBWA’s Mike Cohen “Good Guy” Award.
A 1978 graduate of Ithaca (NY) College, Beck also has worked for MSG Network, NBA-TV, CN8, Comcast and CBS Sports. Along with sportscaster Ian Eagle, he ran a sports broadcasting camp from 2002-2016 at the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center in Montclair, NJ, and since 2017 has conducted the Bruce Beck Sports Broadcasting Camp at Iona University in New Rochelle, NY.
The co-namesakes of the MBWA Distinguished Service Award, Peter Carlesimo and Jack Powers, were both former Met area athletic directors who became the first and second --- and only --- fulltime executive directors of the National Invitation Tournament, which was established by the Met Writers in 1938. The NIT is now owned and operated by the NCAA.
Click here for a list of the MBWA’s previous DSA honorees: Distinguished Service Awards (year-by-year).