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 John GaltForward, MarchPremium
join:2004-09-30
Happy Camp
kudos:3 | reply to jdmatl
Re: Get ready for higher cable prices Insight Customers said by jdmatl:The Comcastic machine is absorbing all systems like the "Borg" did. How do you think Comcast got to be the way they are today?
»www.businessweek.com/1998/39/b3597046.htm
Did anyone ever doubt that [John] Malone, variously called the King of Cable and Darth Vader, would come back in glory? Certainly not L.J. Davis, author of The Billionaire Shell Game, a highly critical account of how the cable industry over-promised new technology in order to curry favor with Wall Street and, in Malone's case, to find a buyer for Tele-Communications. Davis, a contributing editor to Harper's magazine, figures that Malone has been angling for a billion- dollar payday almost since the moment he took the reins of TCI in 1973 as a 32-year-old engineer who had befriended founder Bob Magness. Unwilling to pay taxes, he leveraged the company to the hilt to buy up any available system even if it meant losing millions. As for the TV viewer, says Davis, Malone couldn't care less: Better service and more channels meant higher costs, and if he spent more on existing subscribers, he would have to slow his march to build America's largest cable empire. ''The trick,'' Davis writes, ''was to never give the public what it wanted.''
It is their corporate culture...
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cacoPremium
join:2005-03-10
Whittier, AK | said by John Galt:said by jdmatl:The Comcastic machine is absorbing all systems like the "Borg" did. How do you think Comcast got to be the way they are today? » www.businessweek.com/1998/39/b3597046.htmDid anyone ever doubt that [John] Malone, variously called the King of Cable and Darth Vader, would come back in glory? Certainly not L.J. Davis, author of The Billionaire Shell Game, a highly critical account of how the cable industry over-promised new technology in order to curry favor with Wall Street and, in Malone's case, to find a buyer for Tele-Communications. Davis, a contributing editor to Harper's magazine, figures that Malone has been angling for a billion- dollar payday almost since the moment he took the reins of TCI in 1973 as a 32-year-old engineer who had befriended founder Bob Magness. Unwilling to pay taxes, he leveraged the company to the hilt to buy up any available system even if it meant losing millions. As for the TV viewer, says Davis, Malone couldn't care less: Better service and more channels meant higher costs, and if he spent more on existing subscribers, he would have to slow his march to build America's largest cable empire. ''The trick,'' Davis writes, ''was to never give the public what it wanted.''It is their corporate culture... "A word of caution: Davis' only direct communication with Malone was in a 1990 interview, and Davis' recent other TCI contacts have been limited to two technology execs. Thus, TCI officials say, the book is flawed and inaccurate in parts."
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John GaltForward, MarchPremium
join:2004-09-30
Happy Camp
kudos:3 | said by caco:"A word of caution: Davis' only direct communication with Malone was in a 1990 interview, and Davis' recent other TCI contacts have been limited to two technology execs. Thus, TCI officials say, the book is flawed and inaccurate in parts." Perhaps...but I actually *lived it* so I can confirm for a fact first-hand that is the way they handled themselves and built the business.
I got to meet John Malone in person when he came to personally testify at my trial...my Federal trial. They brought federal charges because I gave company information to the local franchise authority on the exact thing that the commented portion of my post indicated.
The judge said WTF? and dismissed the charges and followed up with a nice lecture on the abuse of the courts to the plaintiff.
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