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Technology Stocks : AUTOHOME, Inc -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jay Lowe who wrote (4669)	1/22/1999 1:43:00 PM
From: Jay Lowe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 29970

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. For the complete article, point your browser to: internetwk.com