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Frank StantonFrank Stanton
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Session:         Page of 755

In order to get an extension on that note, the banks were insisting that everything I had be pledged against it--my house, my art. If they had known I had a dog, they would have taken the dog.

It was a rough period. It was at that time my wife died, so it was--in fact, she knew that this was going on, and on her hospital bed had said to me: “I don't care what it costs us, I want you to promise me to get out of this business, because it's something that's going to be a problem for you and the sooner you get out, the better.” She wasn't opposed to the business per se, but she could understand the strain that I was under, because of the financial part of it.

To make a long story short, Florida Power and Light became a prospective buyer. I had gone to them and asked them to buy me out--and I would have taken stock in Florida Power and Light in exchange for my assets in the company--but they didn't want to do that. In the end, they did buy the eighty percent that I owned, folded it into their twenty percent and then they sold the whole thing at a tremendous profit.

Q:

Who did they sell it to?

Stanton:

I've forgotten. In fact, I was so bitter about the whole thing--that I wanted to get out of it and be free of the commitment, and I broke even. I didn't lose any money on it. I expect you could argue that I could have done something with the money that would have given me some profit. But I didn't suffer any abnormal loss.

I guess that's just about the end of my personal cable involvement. Corporate cable





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