YouSaid · the spoken record

John Malone

lines on the record: 57
first: 2025-09-04
most recent: 2025-09-04
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Is right at the very edge of presidential power, trying to define the extent of it. I hope he doesn't go against the courts, but I do hope that the courts constrain themselves and don't think they're now the ultimate power in the universe. Congress should be the ultimate power in the universe, but Congress is so divided its dysfunctional.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, but I believe we live in a rational world with a lot of bad actors, and we need to be strong as a country and think about our survivability, our sustainability, which we don't do nearly enough. I mean, our political system is built around a You know, a three part federal government in which the Congress was supposed to be the most important and the most active. And unfortunately, they in recent years have been the least active. As a result, the executive has and the bureaucracy has been filling in for the vacuum created by Congress not being explicit. There hasn't been a budget coming out of Congress in years. They can't agree on anything. So they just kicked the ball down the road. And what that really means is they're transferring power to the executive branch. It scares me to death that Trump.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, look, all I say about myself is I'm really an engineer. You show me a problem and I'll try to figure out an approach to solving it. So I'm very much problem solution, problem solution kind of a person, no matter what comes my way, and I'm pragmatic about it. I am not politically biased in one way or another. I would call myself a fiscal conservative and a social liberal I think government needs to stay out of people's lives as much as possible. And I think the financing of government should be as painless to a market economy as it can be and is little disruptive to a market economy as it can be.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Scared to death about our grandchildren, scared to death, going through dramatic changes. Already having all kinds of psychological psychiatric problems, suicide rates, people feeling isolated, young men, couch potatoes connected to the rest of the world only through a digital platform. That's manipulating their brain chemistry. I think it's very scary. And I'm not sure I can predict. In any meaningful way where it's going to go, I think I'm a huge believer in education. the educated citizen being able to end up keeping a political system functional. And I just don't see it. And there are going to be plenty of people that are really well educated and really understand a lot more than I do. The average, the mass population is currently subject to great manipulation by Entrepreneurs who really should be brain chemistry scientists.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm not here to defend Fox as a journalism organization. I think Brett Baer comes the closest On air, uh, But he's going to be pushed to the right just by the fact that he's so surrounded by people who are have been selected because They may not even believe it personally. I mean, I don't know what. What Greg Gottfell really believes. But I know he's found an audience for his comedy by approaching it from the right. When I criticize it, I'm just saying, look. If you want to have a successful global news service, it should really be, the effort should be to make it very factual, unless partisan political. And more in-depth coverage. So people actually have who are interested actually have the facts in some level of depth.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, there is a rise in group because there is a rising economic structure that's willing to support it. I want a new service that not only serves the public, but makes us money.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Look, the trouble with bias is it's almost invisible. And the person who, look, these are good people. These are people who believe they're not bias. Okay. They really believe that. It's just like an awful lot of us white folks say we're not biased about blacks. Okay. But it's embedded. You grew up in a family that didn't see blacks. As we would like to see blacks today. So you have to go through a little mental exercise to understand where they're coming from. So you get somebody, a journalist, an anchor, a promoter, a producer who's really behind what you cover and what you don't cover. And that kind of point of view is difficult to suppress. I mean, If you look at the political affiliations of the journalism industry, who they contribute to, who they regard to vote with, okay, you'll find damn few.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the various, let's call them quasi-celebrities that have their hour here and the hour there. I mean, let's face it, when you have a comedian, Greg Gutfeld, right, is getting a big audience and his. Personal political position is very right wing, okay? You know, is it entertainment or is it news? Well, I think it's entertainment. They don't try to be overwhelmingly factual. They try to be controversial and funny and keep an audience.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but they don't hold themselves to be all journalism. They hold themselves to be sometimes journalism, but a Sean Hannity openly admits he's very biased, which he is.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Fairly heavily political. Whereas Ted's approach was zero celebrity, just journalism, just the news. What happened, of course, was then MSNBC got launched as NBC felt like they needed a flanker brand for the broadcast news to fill the 24-7. In order to compete and gain, share against each other, they started becoming increasingly political news because that was something that could really differentiate one from the other. CNN, in my opinion, had terrific journalists, still does, very talented people, and spread all around the world. Now, I also believe that they've been drawn into way too much political focus in their broad coverage. In order to compete with the other two guys who are almost entirely political.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I thought, yes, because Rush Limbaugh had demonstrated on his radio side that there was a very large and underserved audience on the right of center. And so Rupert launched Fox News. And the deal, Rupert explained to me was he was going to have a true news organization inside Fox News that was going to be really neutral politically and focused on factual news that would be represented today by Brett Baer, previously by Brett Yum. And the rest of the day was going to be entertainment focused on whatever's going on.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I go back, my standard would be Walter Franke and Huntley Brinkley. where they had massive audiences pretty much their coverage of the news was very similar And probably I haven't done the arithmetic, but probably less than five to ten percent of the news of the night had anything to do with politics. When Ted Turner decided to start CNN, Ted's theory was that news should be journalism. It shouldn't come out in New York or Washington, D.C. It could come out of Atlanta. And over time, we saw CNN starting to become a little to the left. And when Rupert Murdoch called me up and said, is there room in America for another television news service”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think that's really where he's coming from. I do believe that his close call with the assassination attempt really did make him think through his life, what his legacy can be, and how much time he has to achieve it, and the little comment he made on the side a few days ago about, I want to go to heaven. And I'm not sure I'm doing well. You know, it's a pretty strong kind of statement.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I worry in a couple of ways. One is he tries to fix everything quick And his tactics are pretty brutal. You know, it would be nice if he could have more finesse in approaching these things and do a better job really of explaining. But when you try and use a tariff for 27 different political reasons, like to help Bolsonaro in Brazil or to batter India into not buying Russian oil, you kind of lose your perspective. So I worry about Trump taking on too much too fast. Do I think he really is going to attempt to stay in power and put Don Jr. into the White House after him? I don't think so.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Said goodbye to American industrial production, and it's been consistent ever ever since. We've shifted more and more industrial production out of the country to the point where we have very little ability to build anything in America, anything fundamental in America.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I don't like that solution. My solution would be much more subtle. It would be reforming Social Security. It would be reforming 401k. You know, I look at these government problems as requiring long-term strategy. The problem in our culture, the problem in our political system is we have politicians that are elected for two or six years in Congress. Congress is the most important part of our governmental system. It's very difficult for them to take long-term strategic views. But to fix these kind of problems, you must, whether it's national security, you know, when George W. Bush, who I admired personally, but when he brought China into the World Trade Organization as a developing country,”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the jury's out on this National Guard and cities. You know, I'd rather see the federal government fund a surge of cops rather than the National Guard.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's silly in its politics, they're going to have to do what they have to do, you know, to produce results or they lose their jobs. So, you know, calling on people to be nice guys, you know, it's good public relations, but it's not necessarily effective. And I think if you do things, if you single people out or companies out for bad behavior, that's probably okay. If it's not politically motivated.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I much prefer us either loaning it to the companies if we have to to get them to do what we want them to do or taking an equity stake if their balance sheets won't support them borrowing the money And being able to truly pay it back. So I'm not opposed to on national defense grounds. I just think as a general matter, but if he needs to get a big injection of capital into Lockheed Martin so they can build drones fast enough if that's an important thing to national security. I don't mind him buying preferred and equity stake or loaning him the money to make that happen rather than just giving them the money.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I would not support Him going out and buying at 10 stake in Intel. But the Biden administration, they had already given Intel the capital.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I like a lot of what he's doing. I don't necessarily care for his style, but I do like what he's trying. And improving the economic life of the lower middle class, what's called the working middle class.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Congress is not going to pass a consumption tax. But the VAT tax gives foreign manufacturers a real edge over U.S. manufacturers. You know, in Ireland there's a 21-22% tax on imports, which is waived for Irish manufacturers on their exports. So American stuff going into Ireland has a tax stuff going from America into the US does not. That's not fair. And so to equalize from at least a competitive manufacturing perspective, I think a tariff roughly equivalent to VAT tax is appropriate. I think it's also appropriate for Trump to use it as a lever to get foreign companies that have particularly strong positions in technology or manufacturing, like semiconductors, to come to the US and supply the U.S. from U.S. production. It's going to take a long while. It's not going to be easy.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And technology, I think, is important. I don't know that you need to make shoes in America again, but I do think in areas that are critical long-term, rare earths, places where we have allowed our supply chain to become extremely vulnerable as a nation. Because I don't think it's a peaceful world out there yet. And so I agree with those kind of things. I believe that What Trump's even doing on tariffs is a rational response to the VAT tax.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I broadly agree with the Trump Republican agenda. Okay. I have to say that. Controlling the borders, trying to improve the quality of life for people, for the working poor, let's call them, by limiting illegal labor competition. I think we should shift the tax code a little bit away from rewarding capital relative to labor. I think it's had a skew to it for way too long. So there are some of those agenda items. Reindustrializing America, at least in areas of national security and”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It really can. And so I think the government really, I don't know if the government has the ability to attract people who are smart enough. In fact, I don't know if the people exist who are smart enough to keep an eye on this stuff and call a halt if it starts to get out of control. And I think I agree with some of the spokesmen in the industry who say the industry needs to do this.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because the ability to manipulate through these technologies is pretty severe. And I don't think our system of government can survive too much dominance of that capability, that ability to understand brain chemistry and, you know, I mean, look, these guys with their social networks are all brain chemists now. You know, how do we stimulate certain brain chemicals and make them last? And, you know, how do we make these things addictive? And those skill levels are aided by AI now where they can sort of individualize everybody's brain and see how every individual reacts to certain stimuli. I mean, this thing. Can be a real sci-fi nightmare pretty quickly.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think there is a national security element to this. I think you got to cut the Chinese off from control the TikTok. You really have to do it. You can't just look the other way because you're playing games with it. You really have to do it. There has to be a national security element to all of this stuff if we're going to continue to have a world that doesn't get along with everybody.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At great capital costs without any connection to the revenue stream. And this is particular onerous to me from a network configuration point of view when it comes to big tech using sports, streaming sports, because it takes one channel to cover the country with high quality sports. A football game. You don't need 50 million simultaneous streams to do it. But network neutrality has made it possible for big tech to create an advertising vehicle, right, by turning what could be done with one channel into 50 million streams so that they can maximize the ad revenue that they can generate out of the information they had on the consumer.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And no way to collect. So you disconnected the capital requirements on the cable companies from the revenue source that would normally drive, the volume relationship that would normally drive it. And so cable companies are running around rebuilding their networks to handle this rapidly growing demand.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because it's handier, it seems to work better. So, you know, I think innovation is really ultimately the answer that the regulators have to look to. Now, when government intervenes like they did with network neutrality, They created a disaster for the cable industry because all of a sudden the cable industry had rapidly growing demand for its capacity.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, first of all, I'm on the side of the consumer. The consumer should be given choice as much as possible, and regulations should set up to allow the consumer to have choice. And in older, more established businesses, they do, and the regulators have probably done a pretty good job of making sure there's multiplicity of choices in connectivity in various other areas. Right now, you have a concentration of fire products. Take, for instance, Google's dominance of search. How long will that dominance of search last, the AI investments that the other guys are making? Because I notice even personally, I'm using AI search rather than Google search.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sorted out, yes, and if government has to intervene, it's probably going to be more on a national security basis than it will be on trying to pick winners and losers.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, for the same amount of money, they end up with about 10 times the firepower as we will because we're going to divide it amongst competitors. On the other hand, our competitors will drive innovation much faster against the Chinese. For Jeff's question, You have to say these things are moving so fast into areas that we have no experience at that I don't see how regulators can possibly keep up with the rate of change. Almost in America, you almost have to count on competition.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not sure technology won't fix that though. I think they can probably figure out over time to lower power consumption. But that said, you have the big tech companies now desperately looking to compete with each other, and you have companies or countries, China, the US, looking at it the same way. It's the whole future is dependent on who can implement these new technologies the quickest and the most efficiently against each other. And I looked at it and I said, well, the Chinese have an easier challenge. In America, we're going to have four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten people trying to do this. And China, they'll just have one.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's a big, broad regulatory question You know, I'd have to say. Don't roll out competition. Look at how much money is being spent on data centers now by these big tech guys. They're competing with each other. There's a race on driven by this technology, which may or may not live up to its promise. So technology is going to continue drive this and it will create global competition. We're already seeing a pitched battle between the Chinese and America. And Trump defines that as who can produce the most electric power because you can't have a super giant set of data centers if you don't have enormous amounts of electrical power to drive it.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. That was the goal. Anyway, that was the asset ATT bought when they got TCI. And it was very much my thought that it would include the full content package. If you interview guys like the guy running Time Warner, Habukus, he'll tell you the struggle they had in getting the cable industry to cooperate with each other through that period.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We sold the business to ATT, the principal asset that AT&T got from us was control of a startup business called at home, which was the first high-speed internet delivery over cable. And I had been able to unite basically all the major operators in North America other than Time Warner. They were blocked by a contractual deal they had with US West. The goal was to offer this high-speed internet connectivity and to allocate 20% of the revenue to the creation of content to be played on this new”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Keep in mind the cable industry was heavily embedded in the linear contractual relationships. That was their meat and potatoes. That was really the only business until internet came along. And they had tied up the big media companies in exclusive agreements. That precluded the media companies for the most part from exploring these new phenomenon. So I would say the industry was kind of tied in a knot. The industry came up with various versions. They had a thing called TV Everywhere.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was insanity the way it was contracted. It should have been limited. But the reality was I saw it. I wanted to buy it and they were unwilling to sell it.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Keep in mind by then the guy you're interviewing here was the chairman of DirecTV. So I was no longer in the US cable business at that time. I was internationally, but not US. And I tried to buy Netflix at that point in time when Reid was having a little bit of financial difficulty. But, I mean, there's no question that they saw the future and they drove hard toward it. Reid's comment to me at Sun Valley when I tried to buy it was If I ever sell the company, it's going to be to a big tech guy. It's not going to be to an old media guy.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's always awkward. And now that you have global companies, the technology is now very much global, the economics of it. And I don't think our regulators are going to be that good at cooperating with the other guys, regulators. So I don't know how they're going to do it, how they're going to continue to protect innovation and the consumer from excessive market power. But it's a legitimate tug of war. And far from being critical of these guys with their big tech companies, I really admire them. I mean, I don't know how I missed some of the opportunities I've missed, but it is incredible what's been built and the entrepreneurship that's driven it.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, most of the regulations, unfortunately, the regulators are always looking backwards. Now, admittedly, they're not clairvoyant, and it's very difficult to predict the rapidity of change in the technology industry. And if you combine technological change with regulation Quite a challenge. So I respect the fact that regulation is there to protect the consumer, not competition and not any particular competitor. And my take on it is really that the regulators should focus more on innovation and making sure that people who have too much market power, not necessarily monopolies, just people with Overwhelming market power are not using it to stifle innovation.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would say not negative. I would say they have their job to do to protect the consumer. Think ultimately. And if you're a manager of a company, you have your job of creating as much wealth as you can for your shareholders. And so clearly running into regulation was just part of the job and then figuring out how far you could go around the regulations, what to do, so you're not stonewalled completely, became part of the management job, part of the strategy.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So they limited us in terms of the percent of the country we could service. They then limited us also in the number of programming channels that we could have a financial interest in. And they then essentially passed some legislation as well as regulations. Retransmission consent represented the broadcast industry fighting back against the cable industry. It really delivered the content business back into the hands of the large broadcast network owning enterprises.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it seems absurd these days. When I got TCI up to 2022, Of the nation in terms of our footprint, the government decided to change the law and literally block us, specifically us, specifically me, from continuing to grow the core cable business in the U.S. So obviously they perceived us as having developed a somewhat monopoly position, not just me, but the cable industry general.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which allowed Bob to take out his two co-founders without losing control of the company and allowed the co-founders to monetize.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that was a lesson learned through struggling. I probably spent half of my time traveling in those first years at TCI. Just negotiating loan extensions with the bankers because everything was tied together. That was all at the parent. Everything was cross-guaranteed. And so then you get the banks fighting with each other. It's miserable. So it was a lesson that I learned the hard way. By the early 80s, there were technology opportunities and there were content opportunities. Because we did have synergy with those opportunities. I had also to some degree mastered the financials of taxes. How to advantage yourself with the utilization of efficient taxation, let's call it. And in order to protect Bob Magnus from losing control of his company, I had come up with the alphabet stock concept.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That way the parent can come to the rescue if necessary. I used to joke about it. That way the bankers buy you lunch. You don't have to buy the banker's lunch when something gets in trouble.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To get that last fraction of a data point in terms of cheaper interest will tend to cross guarantee, will tend to cross collateralize. And you really do as an entrepreneurial manager in a risky enterprise. You really do have to fight that and say, no, I'm willing to pay a little more for the protection I get. I also have a philosophy of always having dry powder. So, pretty typical companies that I've been involved in building. Have no debt at the parent. And will be, in fact, we'll be quite liquid at the parent, but we'll have leverage at the operating subsidiaries.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, can you recover? How do you lay off some of the risk? How do you turn failure into success? Think it through before you act. And so I became very driven by that kind of a concept of building a business that no single or multiple torpedoes could take down. And it was a hell of a fight with a syndicate of banks who thought they were totally upside down for the first six years.”
2025-09-04 · On with Kara Swisher · Liberal Media Bias, Trump & Taming Big Tech with Cable Impresario John Malone · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT