Control Hardwired or Walk Away

“I’d told Ralph and Brian that I’d promised myself to never again sign an employment agreement and that I’d report to a board, but not to an individual. QVC was a public company, and the other major owner was John Malone’s Liberty Media. Malone had become the overlord of cable media. He controlled the largest cable network, and with Liberty, he owned most of the programming. He was known both as the Cable Cowboy and, in a swipe from then–vice president Al Gore, as the Darth Vader of media. He was and always has been the smartest person in media, with an extraordinarily subtle and ingenious mind in the body of an outdoorsman conservationist libertarian who’s never met a tax he wanted to pay. I didn’t want to ever be stuck between them and would only agree to a three-way partnership where any two members could decide an issue, as long as I was one of the two. This made them more than uncomfortable, but I was adamant—I’d never do anything again where I wasn’t in some position of control.”

“The prerequisite for my agreeing was that John Malone would give me a bulletproof lifetime proxy on Liberty’s controlling interest in Silver King as well as a large ownership stake in it and eventually HSN. Control, my hard-ass mantra, would be hardwired, but it sure was small beer.”