Warner Bros.

"The combination of the Warner Bros. studio, Time’s magazines (including *Time, People*, and *Sports Illustrated*), HBO, and Ted’s 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 Warner’s corporate structure."

"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."