Cable Cowboy: John Malone and the Rise of the Modern Cable Business - Hardcover

Robichaux, Mark

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 047123639X ISBN 13: 9780471236399

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, 2002

Synopsis

An inside look at a cable titan and his industry John Malone, hailed as one of the great unsung heroes of our age by some and reviled by others as a ruthless robber baron, is revealed as a bit of both in Cable Cowboy. For more than twenty-five years, Malone has dominated the cable television industry, shaping the world of entertainment and communications, first with his cable company TCI and later with Liberty Media. Written with Malone's unprecedented cooperation, the engaging narrative brings this controversial capitalist and businessman to life. Cable Cowboy is at once a penetrating portrait of Malone's complex persona, and a captivating history of the cable TV industry. Told in a lively style with exclusive details, the book shows how an unassuming copper strand started as a backwoods antenna service and became the digital nervous system of the U.S., an evolution that gave U.S. consumers the fastest route to the Internet. Cable Cowboy reveals the forces that propelled this pioneer to such great heights, and captures the immovable conviction and quicksilver mind that have defined John Malone throughout his career.

About this title

About the Author

Mark Robichaux Currently an editor at The Wall Street Journal, Mark Robichaux has been a reporter with the paper from 1989 to 2001. For six years, he covered the cable television industry. A former fellow with the Media Studies Center, Mark Robichaux lives in Brooklyn, New York.

From the Back Cover

Praise for Cable Cowboy

"Cable Cowboy is a first-rate work by a first-rate reporter-excellent, original research on a topic that deserves it."
-Bryan Burrough
author of Barbarians at the Gate, and Dragonfly: NASA and the Crisis Aboard MIR

"With skill and precision, author Mark Robichaux paints a portrait of a man who is both fox and lamb, cunningly ruthless and surprisingly genuine. . . . We get to watch a man who plays chess against opponents who merely play checkers. And we get a really good read."
-Ken Auletta
author of World War 3.0: Microsoft Vs. the U.S. Government, and the Battle to Rule the Digital Age and Three Blind Mice: How the TV Networks Lost Their Way

"John Malone's remarkable climb [is] a tale worthy of a great cinematic Western. For the first time, we get a sharp picture of the man behind the mogul, an unflinching portrait of one of the business world's sharpest dealmakers. I dare you to put it down."
-Tom King
author of The Operator: David Geffen Builds, Buys, and Sells the New Hollywood

"Robichaux has provided a smart assessment of the cable industry through the wild narrative of John Malone. . . . and turned it into a tale that manages to be both colorful and informative."
-Walter Isaacson
Chairman, CNN, and author of Kissinger: A Biography

"A terrific saga of American enterprise-how lonely wires on windswept hillsides were stretched and spun into the Information Superhighway-as seen through the remarkable career of cable television's greatest entrepreneur."
-David Von Drehle
author of Among the Lowest of the Dead: Inside Death Row

From the Inside Flap

John Malone's rise to power within cable television was wild and improbable, and it mirrors how the nation's network of high-speed cable wires-the most sophisticated in the world-came to be.

Recognized now as one of the great unsung business titans of the information age and vilified as the "Darth Vader" of the cable-TV industry, John Malone cut the deals and created the companies that have defined modern entertainment and communications in our lives.

In Cable Cowboy: John Malone and the Rise of the Modern Cable Business, author Mark Robichaux paints a riveting portrait of Malone and details the competitive struggles of the industry through the eyes of the man who would come to dominate it.

Vivid detail and a colorful narrative bring Malone's story to life as the intelligent and opinionated thirty-one-year old passes on the opportunity of a lifetime in New York City to take control of a tiny debt-ridden cable-TV company in Denver known as Tele-Communications Inc. As Malone transforms his beloved TCI into a media colossus over three decades, he, too, is transformed, from an East Coast, Ivy League student and sailor, into a cunning and commanding cable cowboy. Malone and TCI jump into a ruthless corporate battle to control the world's living rooms amid an onslaught of new technology and government rules.

You'll see Malone navigate an uncharted industry, relying on deal-making savvy, a brotherhood of cable entrepreneurs, and a passion to create wealth that bordered on pure instinct. Malone develops TCI into a force in the young industry, which evolves from a low-cost antennae service into a high-speed electronic pipeline known as broadband. Everything changes with the biggest deal of his life, when he convinces the oldest and biggest telephone company in America, AT&T, to purchase the company for $48 billion in stock and debt.

Cable Cowboy follows Malone as he battles the court of public opinion, local and federal governments, and business leaders such as News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch, Microsoft's Bill Gates, and Viacom's Sumner Redstone in his pursuit of a more lucrative cable company and more powerful cable industry.

Today, Malone continues the cable crusade here and abroad with his Liberty Media Corp. Read Cable Cowboy and find out how the vision of one man and one industry sparked a revolution felt around the world.

Edition details

• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 047123639X
• ISBN 13: 9780471236399
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320