Westinghouse

"When it came my time to speak, I conceded that after the Cable Act of 1984, cable companies had raised their rates, but instead of generating large profits, the increased cash flow was reinvested into the business, funding upgrades to cable systems and new programming. Based on our cash-flow metrics, the cable-TV industry had the lowest return on invested capital of any media or communications industry. “Years ago, we had some of the largest industrial companies in America in the business—General Electric, Westinghouse, American Express, Capital Cities—they all exited the industry over the last five or six years, and all of them cited low return on investment below their corporate objectives as their reason to exit.”"

"As we were bulking up, big, traditional, earnings-oriented media companies, including Westinghouse, Dow Jones, and American Express, were selling out. They learned that metropolitan areas were far more costly to wire, and residents could easily tune in broadcast channels in big cities. In 1988, we took aim at a target I had missed two years earlier, when Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR), a big private equity firm, bought Storer Communications, the fourth-largest cable operator in the country, in a hostile leveraged buyout. Henry Kravis at KKR wasn’t a cable operator—they were financial investors betting on cable’s growth—and they had hit the timing just right."