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Andrew HeiskellAndrew Heiskell
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Session:         Page of 824

1970s, and cable went bust at that point.

Heiskell:

Yes. That's about right, [laughter] And we got cold feet, and we sold most of our systems except for Manhattan Cable to--

Q:

Which you tried to sell--

Heiskell:

Which we tried to sell.

Q:

To ATC.

Heiskell:

To ATC, and they wouldn't pay one dollar for it. It now makes about 25 million, or 20 million. Then the cable business--then we looked at it more carefully, and decided it did have a future after all, and step by step we moved into ATC, and eventually acquired ATC. And Manhattan Cable became part of ATC at that point.

Then the whole thing boomed until there was a slowdown in the 1980s when most of the markets were built, and the few big ones were held back for political reasons, and also because of the high construction costs. And I can remember the political reasons. For instance, I can remember arguing with the editor of the editorial page of the New York Times, then Max Frankel. He was doing an editorial which was going to impose all sorts of securities--security measures--on the sale, the availability, for a company to go into one of the other boroughs. Only Manhattan had cable. And it was sort of to guarantee that there would be no political shenanigans, or anything. I said, “Max, if the city goes along with your proposal, I





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