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What was the Blue Network?

Well, for reasons that I've forgotten, A.B.C. had two networks: the red network and the blue network. And we owned a part of the blue. Then at a considerably later date, we had conversations with the United Artists--this was in the early 1960s, I guess--with United Artists that ended nowhere in particular. And then Jim got absolutely fascinated by the movie business--Jim Linen--and we acquired a substantial part of MGM? MGM. Well, the movie business is a very different business from ours, and one that we knew nothing about, and we stumbled along, falling into one pothole after another, until the whole thing was sort of washed off, and it was just another disaster.

But there were films--there is more to it later on. There were more film ventures--were there not?

Well, of course, when we got into HBO we had both feet in the film business, and still have. In fact, at one point, Hollywood considered HBO was the greatest menace that it had ever seen and that HBO was taking over Hollywood, which it didn't do. But then you're right into the movie business, with all the different mores of movie life, pay scales, limousines, glamour world and so on so on. And it took a long time to figure out how to run it and how to separate it. This is one of the things that Dick Monroe was involved in. It was HBO. HBO started with an idea of a fellow whose name escapes me at the moment, and we in effect bought it from him, and we started this