Internet Week
BILL FREZZA
January 18, 1999
Rarely do I come across a business book so informative and entertaining, so
penetrating yet riotously funny, that I feel compelled to devote a column to
it. But "The Billionaire Shell Game," by veteran reporter L.J. Davis, is a
must-read for anyone who has been hoodwinked into believing the cable
industry has a serious role to play in the future of telecommunications.
Subtitled "How Cable Baron John Malone and Assorted Corporate Titans
Invented a Future Nobody Wanted," the book captures the essence of cable's
sorry track record developing interactive technologies.
Davis chronicles the spectacular rise of the entrepreneurs and companies
that wired television land, beginning with the industry's origins as a
Community Antenna Television service, piping broadcast TV stations to fringe
reception areas. He also describes in detail the industry's ongoing attempt
to use the promise of future technology as sucker bait to craft the ultimate
exit strategy.
Central to the story is TCI's brilliant chairman John Malone, known as the
"Darth Vader of the cable Cosa Nostra," who learned early on that it was
cheaper to pay interest than taxes, setting the pattern for cable's
"profitless" growth. With wicked anecdotes and stinging personal vignettes,
Davis lays bare the chicanery at the core of the cable culture. Exposed
along the way is a pantheon of media moguls such as Ted Turner, Jerry Levin,
Sumner Redstone, Barry Diller, Rupert Murdoch and the late Steve Ross, all
playing a colossal game of "Can You Top This" as they amass enormous
mountains of debt.
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