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would plow up a trough down the street, lay in the cable, then go and knock on the door and say to the housewife: “Wouldn't you like to have cable?”
Well, in the areas where we were operating the housewife or the husband said: “Oh, we've already got cable.”
“Oh, you do. How much does it cost?”
“Well, it costs [so much].”
“Well, we'll give it to you for half that amount.” Obviously trying to buy its way in and force us out. Not a very pleasant competitive situation, but nevertheless what was happening.
Florida Light made one fundamental error. They started to plow up the Polo Club, where we had an exclusive contract, to serve that area--exclusive not with the city, but with the owner of the land. And as soon as Florida Power and Light began cutting up the turf, we took them to court, and they backed off very quickly. It's clear that utilities don't want to get into a court fight, because they've got too many rate problems and so forth that would get ventilated, or could be ventilated, if they got into a real battle in court.
We weren't prepared to make that kind of a battle, because we didn't have that kind of money. But at any rate, we scared them, and they had--I've forgotten how many homes they had wired--maybe 7,500 at that time. I said to my partner, “If they'll fold their tents and get out of town, let's give them a piece of our company in exchange for their subscribers. So at the time of my partner's death, they ended up owning roughly twenty percent of the
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