Until the advent of satellite competition in the mid-1990s, Malone saw no quantifiable benefit to improving his cable infrastructure unless it resulted in new revenues. To him, the math was undeniably clear: if capital expenditures were lower, cash flow would be higher. As a result, for years Malone steadfastly refused to upgrade his rural systems despite pleas from Wall Street. As he once said in a typically candid aside, “These [rural systems] are our dregs and we will not attempt to rebuild them.”11 This attitude was very different from that of the leaders of other cable companies who
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