Instead of accepting those cushy terms, Malone had chosen hardship-to take a pay cut and join TCI, an obscure cable company that had lurched from crisis to crisis for the preceding 20 years. Instead of hustling in the bustle of the Big Apple for the charismatic Steve Ross, Malone had elected to work in a western cow town for Bob Magness, a former cottonseed salesman and cattle rancher. Magness had used a wobbly foundation of brinkmanship, bald-faced gambles, and abundant debt to build TCI into the fourth largest cable provider in the United States-although it still reached fewer than 1 million
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