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network, stitching it together with--what do you call them? Links--oh!

Hookups? Microwave--

Yes. Microwave links, you know, with a tower every fifty miles. And we created a network in the Northeast that way. But it was a terribly inefficient, expansive way of doing business. We started it in Pennsylvania, Wilkes Barre, with-375, 365 subscribers. Somebody said to me--one of my colleagues said to me, “We've got to buy all of the Madison Square Garden events to entertain those 365 subscribers.” That was a pretty horrifying thought. But we did. And then we kept having to buy more and more film to fill up twenty-four hours of programming a day. It soon became that. And HBO looked like a tough losing proposition, and it was for many years, until Jerry Levin came up with the thought of using the satellite as, in effect, the cheap system of distribution. And the minute you got to the satellite, you could reach every cable system in the country without having to stitch together these things. And that really made the difference, and from that day on HBO was an enormous success.

What made you stay with cable all those years that it was--

Well, we kept backing and filling on that. When we sold the--when I went to the board of directors and said, “We have come to the conclusion that the TV stations have peaked in terms of market