HOT CORNER

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What: “The Headlines: Magic Johnson Announces He’s HIV Positive.”

Where: ESPN, today, 4 p.m.

Most who were in Southern California on Nov. 7, 1991, probably remember where they were when Magic Johnson announced he was HIV positive.

ESPN has deemed Johnson’s announcement fourth among the 25 biggest stories since the network first went on the air on Sept. 7, 1979. It will be examined today on “The Headlines,” a series that is part of ESPN’s 25th anniversary celebration.

Johnson’s HIV announcement was a big story not only in Southern California but throughout the country. On today’s show, the NBA’s Grant Hill says, “The Magic Johnson announcement of his HIV is kind of like our generation’s John F. Kennedy. Everybody, I think for the most part, remembers where they were. It was just complete silence, complete shock, disbelief.”

Says Johnson of that day, “Driving home to tell my wife, that was the toughest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life.”

Says Karl Malone, who took a lot of heat for saying he didn’t want to play against Johnson, “People made a big deal out of that. I said what people were thinking about saying. It wasn’t malicious; it’s just that’s what I felt.”

Of the story’s social significance, Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) says, “It was very helpful as part of the process of getting people to transition from seeing AIDS as a bad thing that happened to bad people to seeing it as a terrible illness that should be combated like any other illness. It was part of the mainstreaming of AIDS.”

-- Larry Stewart