Discovery

"TCI had a new worry: we’d be held hostage to ever-increasing fees from networks that attracted the biggest audiences. This changed the economic model in my mind, and in an instant I saw our big distribution company differently. We would have to become owners of content. Quality programming was critical for the industry, and I understood most content providers were price constrained, which is why we stepped up for Ted Turner and why we invested in BET, Discovery, and the Family Channel."

"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."