The most valuable assets in any business are people and relationships.

I may have neglected to appreciate this at the time, when we were down in the fray. Now that I am a bit older and slowing down, just a little, I have realized that, all along, the most important element was who was involved, not what. The people whom I befriended, learned from, and fought against rather than the deals or the payoff gave me the most satisfaction. And the right people produced the highest upside giving my journey meaning and enriching my knowledge of the world. It has been enormously exciting and at the same time gratifying to play a role in the digital revolution. Our original intent was to deliver broadcast TV signals to far-flung rural valleys and mountainous terrain that antennas couldnt reach. That very same cable evolved into the backbone of the broadband network better known today as the internet, three decades after we at Tele-Communications began laying down lines.

I built this portfolio with one clear goal the same one that I believe anyone who is an active member of the management of a public company should share: to maximize the value of the shares of the company over a medium term. Because that is why you were hiredto maximize shareholder returns. The recent fad of stakeholder capitalism relegates shareholders to merely one of myriad groups a company is obligated to serve, and it is simply impractical to serve multiple masters and remain productive. You have to honor your obligations to your employees, yes, and you must honor your obligations to your lenders. But you must maximize the value for your shareholders.

I navigate by rational analysis of the hard data, but also by my sense of the people who are sitting at the table in front of me. I have come to appreciate those relationships more. As far back as I can remember, I have always perceived myself as different because I was such an introvert. And for much of my life, I thought of that as an impediment.

I regarded myself as mismatched to the world to some degree, handicapped by an absence of social skills or the drive to socialize, and envious of the people who felt at ease in crowds and parties.

Even the people I think I am close to sometimes see me as cold and aloof. I have come to realize later in life that, like other members of my family, I am a high-functioning autistic.

As a result, I have come to appreciate more and more the lasting connections I have still managed to make with others. I know now what I should have known all along: the people in my life are the most critical asset of all.

I joined Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI) in Denver on April Fools Day in 1973, spurning a top cable job on the East Coast in New York City. Bob Magness, a part-time cattle rancher up to his Stetson in debt, believed in me, and we built TCI into the largest cable operator in the U.S., Malone writes in memoir Born to Be Wired. Courtesy of Barco Library Often in business, and in life, I was able to apply the lessons I learned from these people, even as I have made my share of mistakes, including a couple of real whoppers.

To my chagrin, I was unable to convince Netflix founder Reed Hastings to merge his then-upstart company into DirecTV when I was chairman. Waiting for dinner to be served at a party hosted by Herb Allen at his annual Sun Valley retreat in 2011, Reed explained to me that he was betting the entire company on a rapid switch to distributing movies over the internet. I could see that he was close to cracking the code on streaming content ahead of cable TV, satellite companieseveryone. He passed. Sometimes its hard to catch lightning in a bottle.

I also have had the rare opportunity to help some gifted entrepreneurs with great ideas, like Bob Johnson, who came to me with a concept for a cable channel appealing to African Americans called Black Entertainment Television (BET). After a thirty-minute meeting, I loaned Bob $320,000 and gave him $180,000 for a 20 percent stake in BET. He later became one of the first Black billionaires in America. And John Hendricks, who called me in 1985 in a last-ditch play to help save his struggling but promising network called Discovery. TCI wired John $500,000 within forty-eight hours after I hung up the phone with him. Prior to its merger with Warner Bros., Discovery reached a market cap of $16 billion and could be seen in more than 220 countries and territories, in fifty languages.

I found a lifelong friend in Ted Turner, a funny and fearless maverick who created a new Superstation to compete with the Big Three broadcast networks, which had held a lock on over 90 percent of viewers since television was invented. It was Ted who taught me one of the most enduring lessons in my life: about the power of wealth to do good in society and the absolute necessity to save this planet, specifically the most beautiful open spaces in this country.

John Malone and Rupert Murdoch. Today I call him a friend, Malone says of Murdoch. Courtesy of Barco Library News Corp. Chairman Emeritus Rupert Murdoch, who at various times has been my competitoror my consigliere, gave me a master class in business strategy. I am still learning the black magic of programming from Barry Diller, who is a bona fide genius and a maestro of television and internet content. And I am reminded of my own ambition when I counsel Mike Fries, who is one of the hardest-working, team-building, risk-taking entrepreneurs I ever have seen, helping to build one of the biggest broadband companies in the world with Liberty Global.

All of these people, and the companies they drove, pushed the boundaries of modern communications and helped reshape our world. Woven together, their incredible stories help explain how we have arrived at this moment of disruption and the incredible velocity of change in how we communicate, educate, and entertain ourselves.

It is a rather astonishing business tale. One of the most sophisticated networks in the history of humankind was first laid out by a ragtag group of risk-takers, idealists, and cable cowboys. They strung wire across the country, driven by their own aspirations for a better life and fueled by vivid dreams of success in a free market.

Few of those cable cowboys stringing wire from the mountains could have imagined they were laying the infrastructure for the profound transformation in society that continues even today.

I know, because I was there in the beginning.

John Malones dealmaking days have been intertwined with the likes of empire builders such as Ted Turner. Courtesy of Barco Library Id like to think I played an important role in helping Ted Turner build a fledgling local TV station into a media juggernaut worth nearly $8 billion, but the fact is Ted played just as large a role in my own career and life. Of the hundreds of people I have done business with, Ted Turner stands out as one of the most driven, iconoclastic, irrepressible, hilarious, unrelenting, and visionary leaders I ever have encountered.

I have known the man well for the better part of fifty years. He turned to TCI in the 1970s, and we became the linchpin to his securing national cable coverage for his TV station in Atlanta, WTBS, which became the foundation of Turner Broadcasting System (TBS) and spawned CNN, TNT, TCM, the Cartoon Network, and other channels. Then in the 1980s, my cable allies and I bailed out Ted when his own bankers balked at lending him even more money.

My financial gamble on him paid off handsomely. He was also the first person to introduce me to the idea of ownership in something versus just drawing a paycheck. This advice helped inspire me to form Liberty Media, the holding company for many of the channel ownership stakes TCI was accumulating. Since I now had skin in the game, my wealth grew alongside the rising value of the company, benefitting thousands of our shareholders, as well; this is the way it is supposed to work, and for us, it has worked wonderfully.

While I dont socialize much with most business colleagues, Ted and I became fast friends, and over the years weve hiked, hunted, fished, and flown together. And heres the funny part: Ted Turner and I are as different as two people could possibly be. I am an introvert, and I am quietfor the most partat meetings. Public speaking for me can be a mild form of punishment. But Ted has the intensity of a revival preacher when he believes in something, pacing the room and occasionally quoting Shakespeare or Alexander the Great to annunciate his points.

Politically, Ted evolved into more of a progressive Democrat, while I am more of a libertarian. I have an engineers mentality that compels me to plan crucial details, fully calculating every possible outcome so that all risks are known ahead of time. Teds life seemed to be a string of risky bets, based on the instinct and impulse of a mad, creative genius.

In my voyage with Ted, there are key waypoints that led us where we are today: in the 1970s when he arrived at TCI seeking national distribution on our cable systems; in the late 1980s when he almost went bankrupt and was in danger of losing everything; in 2000 at the peak of the internet bubble, when Teds bosses at Time Warner decided to merge with America Online; and, more recently, around 2018, when Ted asked me privately to consider joining up with him to buy back his most beloved property of all, CNN.

Old habits die hard, right?

Each moment was classic Ted Turner: total transparency, not a single emotion or thought held back. This man shared everything in real time, and then some. And he did it regardless of whether you were looking to hear his thoughts. This made me admire Teds daring escapades even more. There was no stopping him

Malone with United Artists movie theater circuit chief Stewart Blair. Bill Wunsch/The Denver Post via Getty Images By the summer of 1995, the urge to merge was in the air. The Walt Disney Company announced a stunning $19 billion acquisition of Capital Cities/ABC Inc., and its coveted ESPN channel, and the very next day, Westinghouse announced plans to buy CBS for $5.4 billion in cash.

This raised the anxieties of Ted Turner and his team at TBS. Despite the fact that TBS was growing fast, with revenue nearing $3 billion, Ted told me he still felt vulnerable, concerned his company would one day become a takeover target.

He had exhausted even the financially elastic mind of Mike Milken to find another acquisition for TBS. With the takeover threats from Kirk Kerkorian and others still fresh in his mind, and consolidation and vertical integration going on around him, Ted felt it was time to think seriously about joining forces with somebody.

To this very day, thirty years later, I wish Ted Turner had let TCI or Liberty Media acquire Turner Broadcasting, as I had proposed to him. Ted could have stayed in place and run everything on the content side forever. He could have counted on us to support him, always, and he could have held voting control that ensured his financial independence.

But Ted, who had joined the TCI board a year earlier in 1994, told me when I mentioned the idea of a merger, I love you guys, but youre too far right-wing for me. I think if CNN is going to be controlled by anybody or fit with anybody, it needs to fit with somebody whos in the news businessand Time Inc. is probably the most logical choice. In truth, Im a libertarian, believing in minimal government intervention, free markets, and personal freedombut I could not argue the nuances to Ted. Few can.

Ted had several options he was considering, including a joint venture with Bill Gates and Microsoft for a version of CNN.com in which Gates was willing to invest $1 billion. But in each of these discussions with potential partners, Ted was held back by provisions in his agreement with powerful new cable-operator board members as a result of his bailout. He was chafing under the restrictions.

Ted was also talking to Jerry Levin, who was by this time CEO of Time Warner, the same Jerry Levin who had worked with Ted to put WTBS up on the same satellite with HBO back in 1976. Time Warners stock price was sagging, and Levin was looking to boost it by selling off assets or buying some new ones.

These were the days when Ted and I were spending time together at his ranch, and he would ask me from time to time how to play his cards. I was disappointed when he finally told me he was close to doing a deal with Time Warner.

The combination of the Warner Bros. studio, Times magazines (including Time, People, and Sports Illustrated ), HBO, and Teds networks, including CNN, TBS, and TNT, was an impressive medley of assets, but it offered little true synergy beyond financial machinations, in my opinion. Time had barely proven the validity of its merger with Warner Communications, five years earlier, in 1990. Jerry was scrambling to get the stock price up, even as he was trying to quash the internal infighting that would become a hallmark of Time Warners corporate structure.

Compared to TCI and its cable cowboys, though, Time Warner was a step up in respectability in Teds eyes. By aligning with them, Ted figured he could have a bigger impact on the causes he supported. The Time Inc. half of the company, with headquarters in midtown Manhattan, was at the center of the media world, steeped in the prestige and the legacy of founder Henry Luce, revered as one of the most influential publishers in American history.

Over the years, Ted had grown more passionate about liberal causes, such as the environment, global warming, and overpopulation. This was especially true during the decade he spent married to actress Jane Fonda (19912001), before they divorced. As his politics were swinging more to the left, I think Ted allowed CNN to drift to the left, which he regarded as key to the salvation of the planet. To Ted, the right was just a bunch of Neanderthals. That was his judgment, and he was entitled to it, just as CNN was his property to manage.

I felt like Ted would be okay, and if he was patient, he might even find a way to end up in the role of chairman of the combined company. How could he know he would be betrayed so many years later by one of his earliest partners?

In September 1995, Ted had made up his mind, and Time Warner agreed to pay $7.5 billion for Turner Broadcasting, creating the largest entertainment company in the world. When the deal finally closed, and the TBS shareholders exchanged each TBS share they owned for three-quarters of a Time Warner share, Ted, overnight, would become a billionaire, with his personal holdings in TBS stock worth north of $2 billion.

As part of the agreement, TCIs stake in Turner, now Time Warner shares, were placed into a voting trust controlled by Time Warner because of FCC restrictions at the time. Ted sold to Time Warner for a lot of reasons: his price, his legacy, and his political philosophy.

I also think that after thirty years of scrambling from crisis to crisis to save TBS, Ted was tired. From here on in, he could focus on the parts of the company he liked best, as he helped integrate the two entertainment giants.

I could guarantee only one thing: if Ted had joined Liberty Media, he might not have had the prestige of Time Inc., but he would have ended up being a hell of a lot richerand in control of what he built, rather than being sidelined by lesser executives later on.

I loved traveling with CableLabs CEO Dick Green to conventions like this one and on technology trips abroad, Malone notes in memoir Born to Be Wired. Courtesy of Barco Library; The Cable Center/courtesy of Simon and Schuster. My fondest memories are visiting Ted and Jane at the ranch in New Mexico, where we would go fly-fishing or quail hunting or simply walk the property.

As Ted and I would hike to his favorite vistas, I could see, literally, that this was a far bigger monument to a life than a statue or a building, and a far better gift to your fellow human. And if you do well, you can own that land to protect and preserve it for future generations.

The pinkish-coral horizon of the morning had given way to a bright cobalt sky, and as the chopper descended after the fun ride, Ted and I were ready for terra firma, eager to sit down for lunch.

We were almost ready to eat when Ted excused himself to check his fax machine.

Aaaaaaaaahhhhhh . . . , he began, as he always begins a sentence. Therere some press releases that theyre putting together for the AOL deal.

A minute later, Ted walked in with a fax in hand, a draft press release from AOL Time Warner, including details of the management roles. Here it is . . . , he said and read it aloud.

It started off by saying AOL chairman and CEO Steve Case would be chairman of the new AOL Time Warner. Time Warner chairman and CEO Gerald Levin would be the new CEO of the combined company. And AOLs chief operating officer, Bob Pittman, one of the founders of MTV, would be running the Turner businessesrather than the man who had created those businesses and still wanted to run them, Ted Turner.

Ted lost the color in his face. He would no longer run the companies he founded. John, how . . . how could they do this? Ive got a contract that says, for years, I get to run the businesses I merged in.

Well, Ted, I dont believe that you can force specific performance on that contract, not now, I said. Theyll simply pay out the salary they owe you. Then you can sue em . . . but what are your damages?

John, what do I do? he asked.

I told him he still was a very large shareholder of Time Warner, and now he would be vice chairman of the board. And if I were you, I would talk to their board members and at least get in a position where you can make some changes going the other way at some point in the future.

And then I cut to the hurtful truth. Honestly, Ted, I think youve been screwed.

He was crestfallen, genuinely hurt by the betrayal of a man hed known for decades. How could Jerry Levin do this? Hes my friend.

Apparently not, Ted, I observed. Apparently not. Turner protested in calls to both Levin and Case, but to no avail.

So I called Jerry Levin and asked him straight up, What are you doing to our friend Ted?

Well, it couldnt be avoided, he said. First, Case and Pittman insisted on this being a provision of the deal. Secondly, Ted is embarrassing us in the corporate office with his behavior. The Time Warner executive suite was not accustomed to Teds outbursts and blunt observations in meetings and to the press.

Ted was bitter, and rightfully so. He was learning a lesson that several leaders, like Craig McCaw and me, would learn the hard way: When you sell your company, cash out. Go away. Do not go on the board. Do not hang around. You will be trapped. You will see mistakes being made, and you will know how to fix them, and your ideas will be ignored. And you will be miserable.

I have been called to testify before Congress twice, and both times I felt like a piata at a kids birthday party, with everyone taking a swing, Malone writes in memoir Born to Be Wired. Courtesy of C-SPAN/courtesy of Simon and Schuster. Ted was never just about business. In 1990, he founded the Turner Foundation to support land conservation, wildlife protection, renewable energy, and efforts to curb population growth.

Perhaps his most famous conservation efforts involve the American bison, which once roamed from the Great Plains to Mexico before being hunted to near extinction by the late 1800s. Today, his ranches are home to the largest commercial bison herd in North Americamore than forty five thousand animals. He brought that mission to the public with Teds Montana Grill, serving bison sourced from his own herds.

Today, as chairman of Turner Enterprises, he is the third-largest individual landholder in North America, with approximately 2 million acres in eleven states and Argentina.

The number two spot is held by yours truly, and most all of the 2.2 million acres, in Colorado, Florida, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Maine, and Wyoming, is designated for what I call sustainable conservation, long after any of us are here.

There are a lot of people I respect in this industry for their energy and focus and drive. And there is a short list of people whom I feel at ease around, and an even shorter list of people I feel close to. Ted said once he would give his life for mine, and his loyalty to me and to the industry warms this old engineers heart. The feelings are mutualI really love the guy

The last really good meeting I had with Ted was in 2020, up in Montana at his place. And though he needs a little assistance, we were able to do some fly-fishing.

I saw him again at a bison conference in Denver, and that was the last time I saw him. He still sends me notes occasionally. I received one on CNN after ATT announced its acquisition of Time Warner, and the DOJ was suing to block the deal. Ted wanted to know whether we could put a group together and buy CNN out from under the whole deal.

Here is what Ted wrote to me, and the longing in it for a final crowning deal is redolent:

Dear John,

My good friend and former CNN president whom you know well, Tom Johnson, and I have been conferring with a trusted group of current and former associates about who might be most fit to lead CNN into this next chapter. I concur with a recommendation and hope you will not mind me forwarding it to you for consideration.

And so that you can get it into the hands of the leaders who will ultimately be making the decision. Please do not hesitate to follow up directly with Tom Johnson. Should you be interested in discussing it further on a personal note? Nothing would please me more than getting to see you and catching up in the near future.

Best personal regards,

Ted

After we talked at length, we concluded that CNN and the Turner networks on a standalone basis might falter financially, given the many ways the industry had changed.

We dropped it, but it was a reminder that my old friend still had the passion in him for one last big deal.

Copyright 2025 by John Malone. An edited excerpt from the forthcoming book BORN TO BE WIRED: Lessons from a Lifetime Transforming Television, Wiring America for the Internet, and Growing Formula One, Discovery, Sirius XM, and the Atlanta Braves by John Malone to be published by Simon Schuster, LLC. Printed by permission.

This story appeared in the Aug. 6 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.Click here to subscribe.