said by Cobra11M:... tell that to the tax payers 40 years ago that paid for the cable in the first place ... government sold it to private ...
Looks like a guy named Bob Magness used borrowed money to build a CATV system from scratch. When it went public in 1972, it became, "Tele-Communications, Inc." (aka, "TCI"). Did I not dig deep enough? What will I find rooting around the Internet for the histories of the other MSOs?