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Andrew HeiskellAndrew Heiskell
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together as good an outside board as we could. And it was a mix of business types and non-business types, for example, John Gardner, Matina Horner. We wanted a woman, and she was chosen because she was an expert on women in business. We got David Kearns from Xerox. We inherited Keelor when we got Temple-Eastex. We got in Sol Linowitz, who was an international lawyer. We got Don Perkins from Chicago. Arthur Temple came with company; he's really an insider. It never really became a full outside board, because I also felt that the outside directors should know the key players on the inside, and that the key players should know that the board wasn't something out there that was making changes without understanding what the company was all about. So I thought it was good both ways, and that's why I continued to have quite a few insiders on the board, more than most companies would do, and more than I guess they would do in the future.

I tried very hard to make the board very responsible. I don't think I succeeded very well.

Q:

In what sense?

Heiskell:

I don't really think that a board can be responsible for an awful lot of the aspects of this kind of a company, which deals with such esoteric matters as magazines, programming--how is a board going to deal with programming HBO? What can they say other than complain about a dirty movie, which they do? I mean, that's the sum total of their contribution. [laughter]





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