William J. Bresnan

Photo Illustration By Kris Kathmann

Madison Lake-native William J. Bresnan, as much as any other American, made the cable TV industry into what it is today. During cable’s adolescent growth spurt, 1965-1984, he was a top executive, usually a CEO, at either the nation’s No. 1 or No. 2 cable TV company. From 1984 on he would raise up his own sizeable cable TV enterprise, Bresnan Communications – and also spearhead ventures that would thread cable TV throughout Poland and Chile. He never was as flashy as Ted Turner or Jack Kent Cooke, his former boss, but his contributions to the cable industry have been just as substantial.

In February 2000 Bresnan inked a bold exclamation point to his grand career when he and others sold Bresnan Communications to Paul Allen-led Charter Communications for $3.1 billion. His personal payday was a tidy sum for a businessman whose rags-to-riches tale is virtually unknown back in his old stomping grounds.

Today Bill Bresnan is just your garden variety cable TV industry legend who enjoys visiting his sister on State St. in West Mankato, swapping yarns with old Madison Lake and Mankato buddies – and most recently, donating $2.5 million for a new Bresnan Arena at Taylor Center. Except for his wallet, he’s the same likeable Bill who lived back in the ’50s on North Fifth St. three houses down from Madison Ave. If you think he’s itching to retire at 67, think again: he’s currently on the lookout for other investment opportunities in telecommunications.

CONNECT: Your father died when you were five. Your mother had to go back to work to financially support you and your three siblings. How did that hardship mold you?

BRESNAN: My mother was a seamstress who made draperies for people’s homes. She had worked for a department store before being married. After my father’s death she went back to the trade. As a seamstress – and entrepreneur – she was able to stay home nearly all the time, except for when she had to go into people’s homes to measure windows or out to buy material. She fabricated the draperies on our dining room table all week long before cleaning it off for Sunday dinner. She had to work. There were no social programs like we have now.

My mother was a tremendous woman, honest and good-natured, who passed away at 101 last February. She had a tremendous impact on my life. She strongly believed that just because she was in a difficult situation it didn’t mean she had to stay there. She took the cards she was dealt and held her head high.

We may have been poor but we always wore clean clothes – at least they were clean when we left home in the morning. They weren’t the latest fashion or anything close to it and sometimes they even had patches. Our table always had food on it. She really instilled in us a tremendous loyalty to each other as family members. And we are still together.

CONNECT: How did your father die?

BRESNAN: He died of tuberculosis in 1939, contracting it, I believe, through unpasteurized milk, and then suffering for several months before passing away. That was before antibiotics. When I was seven, in 1941, we had to leave Madison Lake so Mom could move closer to all the potential customers in Mankato.

CONNECT: In 1950 one cable pioneer was quoted as saying that “anybody” could put in a cable system. Could anybody do it?

BRESNAN: (Laughter.) Yeah, I guess anybody could do it then. The exact time when cable began still is up for argument. The first cable system owners also owned TV and radio sales shops. Bob Tarleton, founder of Panther Valley Cable, an early company, had one such shop. He placed an antenna on top of a hill in Pennsylvania and ran wire down from it to his store. The town had been in a valley where big city signals couldn’t reach. After selling TVs to the people around him, he ran wires from his shop to the homes. It grew from that. He didn’t have a franchise.

CONNECT: How were you hooked on cable TV, and how did you end up in Rochester?

BRESNAN: I graduated from what is now South Central Technical College in 1953, from its Radio Repairman and TV Serviceman Program. In the mid-’50s I was selling radio and electronics supplies for a Minneapolis company to the southern third of Minnesota. I lived in Mankato and wasn’t married. The company had two compensation plans. One paid three percent of gross sales – and with this plan you were provided a car and a per diem. The other plan paid five percent but you paid your own expenses. If you wanted to make more money, and had the confidence, you took the five percent. Which I did.

Then I heard of a group of Mankato lawyers, including Bob Regan and Cliff Kroon, which was planning to wire Mankato for cable TV. I sold cable then to radio stations and to homes for antennas, in shorter lengths. To wire Mankato would require miles and miles of cable.

I approached the Mankato group. They said that if I could supply the cable at a comparable price and stock it in Minneapolis, they would buy from me. Armed with their promise, I went to the owner of my company and presented a plan. To get the price they needed our company would have to become a distributor for the particular brand of cable needed. My boss said the deal would require too much work. Undaunted, I convinced him that I would do all the legwork to get the distributorship for his company. Two phone calls later he had the distributorship, which also meant the right price, and I was selling cable to the Mankato system.

From there I began helping the engineer in Mankato write his cable orders. By doing it I learned the basics of the business. When some of the same Mankato investors wanted to build a system in Rochester, they approached me. I didn’t know much about building a system, but I knew more than anyone else. Cable was very new. Minnesota had only three systems then: Mankato, Jackson and Brainerd. For the people in Rochester, I was the closest person in the state who knew anything about building a cable system.

We received the franchise in Rochester in 1958 at a city council meeting. After the final vote the Mayor of Rochester said to us, “Well, it looks like you guys have your franchise. I don’t know what you’re going to do with it, but this is a free country and everybody ought to have the right to go broke.” (Laughter.) I was named chief engineer of Rochester at age 25.

Not everyone took us as lightly as that mayor. The movie theaters were afraid we were going to run them out of business. The local TV station was afraid we were going to run them out of business. The radio and TV shop owners were concerned.

CONNECT: You worked in Rochester for seven years?

BRESNAN: From 1958 through 1965. The business was sold in 1960 to two men from Minneapolis who were also the majority owners of the Brainerd system. I stayed with them until 1965 when Jack Kent Cooke bought the Rochester cable system.

CONNECT: And then Jack Kent Cooke wined and dined you?

BRESNAN: He wanted me to fly to Beverly Hills, California, where he would interview me for an open vice president of engineering position.

CONNECT: How did he know about you? and why was he after you specifically?

BRESNAN: He had purchased Rochester in March 1965. By then I had a reputation in the region for my work. The owner of the Winona system, and also Frank Thompson, who had been running Rochester, both recommended me to Cooke.

I flew into L.A. late one afternoon. Cooke’s chauffeur, driving a Bentley, met me at the airport and drove me to Cooke’s Beverly Hills office, which was in the “shops” area near the Beverly Hilton Hotel. At that time I wondered what the heck I was doing there. I was just a country boy from Madison Lake; a fish out of water.

Jack was very gregarious. We chatted at his office, and later met his wife for dinner at the Escoffier Room atop the Beverly Hilton Hotel. He had a chamber music group serenade us while we sat in a big, plush booth. He said, “What will you have to drink?” Before I could answer, he said, “You’ll have a scotch and soda.” So I had scotch and soda. When it came time to order food, he said he’d had Dover sole flown in from England that day for dinner. He said, “You’ll have the Dover sole.” So I had Dover sole. I was feeling really out of place. I’d never seen anything quite like it before.

We had a wonderful evening. I could see he had already made up his mind that I would work for him, but I was worried about one possible objection he may have to hiring me: my education. I said, “Jack you have to understand: I never graduated from college.” He leaned across the table. “Good!” he said. “Neither did I!” He added, “Most people are educated beyond their intelligence anyway – you know that, don’t you?” (Laughter.)

He asked all about my dad and mom; then my siblings. When my brother Pat came up, Cooke wanted to know where he was working. I said he was selling advertising for the Mankato Free Press. “You can’t make any money doing that,” he said. “Get him out here working for me. Besides, you call that a job? He works for the local meat wrapper.”

I said, “Jack, you don’t even know me, and now you want to hire my brother who you’ve never seen?” He said, “I know you. I can judge people.” He said if my mother had raised my brother the way she’d raised me then Pat would be just fine. He kept pressing me to call Pat.

He even gave me advice on how to make the decision to call Pat. He said, “Here’s what I do if I can’t make a decision. When I wake up in the morning, first thing, I ask myself, Should I or shouldn’t I? I always think best right after waking up.” This is how he made decisions: He first collected as many facts from as many sources as he could, and then he made his morning decisions. He told me to call Pat the next morning at 7:30 a.m.

CONNECT: Here he’s not only telling you what to do with your life, but telling you what to do with your brother’s life?

BRESNAN: (Laughter.) The next morning I didn’t call Pat. After Jack kept bothering me, I finally called Pat the third morning. I told him I didn’t know if Cooke could really be trusted or not, but that he did want him to come out for a job.

CONNECT: Did you know then Cooke was an owner of the Washington Redskins?

BRESNAN: Yes, and that he had a bid in for the Los Angeles Lakers. The next year, in 1966, he also bought the L.A. Kings hockey franchise. I knew he had money, and that he was buying, with cash, all these cable companies. He had the highest profile of anyone in the industry at the time. My brother did come out for an interview, and later worked for him. I was hired as Cooke’s vice president of engineering.

CONNECT: How many cable systems did he have then?

BRESNAN: Twenty-two, I believe. One of Jack’s great talents was in finding undervalued assets. He said that he made his money when he bought, buying cable systems that could be made valuable with work. At that time a state-of-the-art cable system had 12-channel capacity. Cooke would buy mostly five-channel systems, improve them to 12 channels and raise the rates, which would increase the system’s cash flow and value. I was the one he hired to rebuild all the systems. It was a big job.

CONNECT: What if Jack Kent Cooke hadn’t called you out to California?

BRESNAN: Paul Schmidt, the majority owner of Rochester cable, also had a microwave transmission company. It carried TV signals to cable systems in Brainerd and Willmar, for example. He wanted me to head that company as its president. At first he offered me 10 percent, and later a 15 percent interest. Where that would have taken me I have no idea.

CONNECT: And not soon thereafter you became the president of the largest cable company in the nation?

BRESNAN: Cooke merged his cable company with H&B American in 1968. I became president of the new company, which was then the nation’s largest. Jack Kent Cooke owned 33% of H&B American, which was a de facto controlling interest. H&B was a cable company that had systems in rural markets. These are called “classic” cable systems where cable was necessary to receive any TV (as opposed to major cities that had local channels). There was no satellite at that time. Classic systems were good cash generators with predictable revenue, but they didn’t have much sizzle – growth potential. There were no new services on the horizon. Growth was very slow.

CONNECT: And then the merger with TelePrompTer.

BRESNAN: TelePrompTer was headed by Irving Kahn, who was a visionary – and a nasty man. He was buying franchises in major markets like Los Angeles, New York and Seattle with the intent of later offering pay-per-view.

The marriage of H&B and TelePrompTer was a very logical idea in the minds of many stock analysts – and in the minds of Jack Kent Cooke and Irving Kahn. H&B’s cash generation could financially support the launch of TelePrompTer’s’ big city systems. The only problem was that a decent pay-per-view technology didn’t exist then. (This was even before HBO, considered subscription TV.) Pay-per-view had been tried, but the technology wasn’t cost effective or consumer friendly. Kahn was ahead of his time. He was building the big city cable systems as we merged. Jack Kent Cooke’s chief financial officer and I both pleaded with Jack not to do the venture.

I didn’t trust Kahn. To make the deal Kahn insisted on owning voting rights to all Cooke’s stock even though Cooke was the largest shareholder. Unbelievably, Jack gave in to him. Jack just fell in love with the logic of the deal. He later regretted his decision.

We agreed to the merger in late 1970. After closing the deal we learned Kahn was being investigated for bribery and also perjury connected with the bribery. He had been a “con” man. That made us sick to our stomachs. With Jack’s voting rights Kahn had total control of the company. A big battle ensued: we brought an action against Kahn, and later received our voting rights back when Kahn was convicted of bribery in December 1971. It was a yearlong battle.

CONNECT: You were named president of TelePrompTer Cable in 1974, once again heading what was the largest cable company in the nation. You continued in that capacity through 1981 when Westinghouse bought TelePrompTer. The 1970s was a very trying time for the cable industry – and especially so for TelePrompTer Cable. Your company had acute financial problems.

BRESNAN: That’s an understatement.

CONNECT: What were the challenges you faced? and could you explain how you tried tackling those challenges?

BRESNAN: The 1970s was very tough for cable and extremely so for TelePrompTer. A number of things were happening. Of course, we forced Kahn out after his conviction to take control in 1972. The company had been tarnished by having its CEO jailed. Kahn had tarnished the whole industry.

The company by then was virtually bankrupt. Kahn had been in control but wasn’t spending any time building the company. Rather he was spending his time fighting the lawsuit – and spending the company’s resources doing it. The money that was supposed to be going to build new systems was being used to defend this criminal.

Interest rates were high in the ’70s. Cable still hadn’t earned enough respect to receive good financing. We had to rely on finance company financing at five points over prime – and prime was high. Money was very expensive when available. FCC rules had frozen the industry from a technical standpoint. And TelePrompTer was virtually bankrupt. I look back now and think we were crazy to have carried it on, but we did.

CONNECT: How did you handle it emotionally? Were you thinking about jumping ship at any point?

BRESNAN: I had trouble sleeping at night but never seriously considered jumping ship. I had a firm conviction that I shouldn’t leave until it was all fixed.

I had told Jack in 1968 right after we merged with H&B that I wanted to start my own company. He said to stick with him for a while. He was a great salesman.

When we merged with TelePrompTer I really didn’t like or trust Kahn. I didn’t want to move from L.A. to New York. We had no more completed the merger when we learned the truth about Kahn. Jack said I had to stick with him again. It wasn’t just because of Jack I stayed on; it was because of me, too. It had become a “pride” issue. Personally, I thought I wouldn’t be measuring up to my own standards were I to leave. I worked day and night and on weekends for over a year. It was worth it. When we started with Kahn, company stock had been as low as $3 a share and when we sold in 1981 to Westinghouse it was $36.25.

In 1980 I wrote Jack a “secret” letter – so secret I felt compelled to handwrite it on sheets of yellow legal pad – in which I explained that we could never be the No. 1 cable company again because our competition, mainly public companies, had more money for growth. I suggested we either infuse more money into the business or else sell out. Jack decided to sell. After that we performed a very quiet, private search for buyers. Jack contacted Westinghouse CEO Bob Kirby and eventually he sold to them.

CONNECT: Right around the time Cooke sold to Westinghouse was when Ted Turner started making a name for himself. What did Ted Turner add to the cable industry that it didn’t have before?

BRESNAN: He was a man with vision. In the ’70s he started with a small UHF station in Atlanta, WTCG (later renamed WTBS). We carried his signal on our TelePrompTer cable systems via microwave throughout the South. I developed a relationship with Ted Turner. When Ted first had the idea of an all-news channel in 1976 he said to me that he could begin the project with just $20 million. I thought then his details were wrong but his concept was right. A number of people urged him to increase the $20 million figure.

He said he could get CNN off the ground if we would put 85 percent of our subscribers onto CNN and pay him 15 cents a month per subscriber. As CNN developed and gained advertisers, he said he would begin cutting the 15 cents down to zero. Eventually he would be paying us, he claimed. When I sold Bresnan Communications in 1999 we were still paying him 35 cents a month per subscriber.

CNN went far beyond my vision for it. Ted had news bureaus all over the world. He was a marketing person, and very, very driven – not that different from Jack Kent Cooke.

CONNECT: You helped create C-SPAN?

BRESNAN: In 1976, Brian Lamb was the editor of a cable trade magazine, and he had also worked on Capitol Hill. He knew all the cable operators and lined ten of us up to pledge $25,000 each. It was a lot of money to TelePrompTer then because we were almost broke. He created C-SPAN on our $250,000.

CONNECT: The Cable Act of 1984 deregulated cable. Was it just coincidence that you started your own company the same year cable became deregulated?

BRESNAN: It was a coincidence. 1984 was significant because that was when my three-year contract with Westinghouse expired. Westinghouse had purchased TelePrompTer in 1981, and made me CEO of Group W Cable, which made that the nation’s No. 2 cable system. I told Westinghouse Broadcasting Chairman Dan Ritchey right after he closed on TelePrompTer that I would agree to a three-year contract. I also said to him that if for any reason he didn’t want me during the three years, he could release me. In 1983, I told him that I wouldn’t be renewing the contract.

CONNECT: To start your own company in 1984, did you have to rely on an investment group or banker?

BRESNAN: I had a partner, John Malone, president of TCI, who had been a dear friend for ten years. I was his first friend in the cable business. TCI’s chairman, Bob Magnus, was a good friend also. I told John that I wanted to start a company and he proposed a partnership.

I announced my intent to form my own business a year before I left Group W. Calls from potential partners flooded in from all over the nation. People in the industry knew me. The yellow legal pad on my desk documented three pages of names of people inquiring about either forming a partnership or creating an investment opportunity with me. Part of the attention was because of deregulation and people wanting into the industry. The timing couldn’t have been better. Another reason for the three pages of names was due to my high profile. For 19 years I had been the top officer at a leading cable operation.

CONNECT: What system did you purchase first?

BRESNAN: A group of five systems actually, all in Upper Michigan, which we bought from Westinghouse. I knew they had wanted to sell them. Jack had originally bought the systems in 1965, they were merged into H&B, merged into TelePrompTer, and later merged into Westinghouse. My last year at Group W Cable I struck a deal with Dan Ritchey that I could work halftime with Westinghouse and halftime putting together my own company. I had a really good relationship with them.

CONNECT: Where did you place your headquarters?

BRESNAN: In the same office building in White Plains, New York, that it is in now. At the time I lived in nearby Scarsdale, only 15 minutes away. I’ve since moved my home to Greenwich, Connecticut, about 20 minutes away.

CONNECT: What did the Cable Act of 1984 do to the industry?

BRESNAN: It was very good in many respects; bad in one. It created tremendous interest in an industry that had been very financially strapped. The rates had been regulated before – unfairly, in many instances. Some city councils wouldn’t raise rates during an election year. One politician in Morgantown, West Virginia, said he knew our company was due a rate increase but he wouldn’t vote for one because he had an election coming up. “You got your problems, I got mine.” That’s exactly what he said.

Deregulation was the promise that we could price our product at market value. It created an interest in the investment community. Massive amounts of money were plowed into rebuilding systems and creating new channels.

The bad aspect of deregulation was that it brought into the industry a group of entrepreneurs that lacked knowledge of the industry and a commitment to community service and programming excellence – or anything else except making a profitable deal. To make matters worse, for those of us who were conscientious, these entrepreneurs began paying whatever it took to buy a system because they felt they could later pay for it by raising rates. In bidding against them for a system, we would do our rate projections responsibly. They wouldn’t. They won many acquisition battles, raised rates irresponsibly, and then the entire industry received a bad reputation because of the bad apples. Ultimately the industry had to be re-regulated in the late 1980s.

CONNECT: Why sell Bresnan Communications?

BRESNAN: I didn’t plan it. We had just formed a new partnership with AT&T and were beginning preparations for an Initial Public Offering. We filed drafts with the SEC. Microsoft’s Paul Allen, the big money behind Charter Communications, got wind of what we were doing. He was buying up a lot of companies then, and he expressed an interest in acquiring us. At first we resisted. He made some very high offers.

It would be a complicated deal. In February 1999, my previous partnership with TCI was rolled into a new partnership with AT&T and an equity player, New York-based Blackstone Group. In our negotiations then with Blackstone Group we agreed that if their return on investment went up with the new company, so would our share of ownership in the business.

Just three months after we closed on the new partnership, we received a lucrative offer from Paul Allen. With the deal, Blackstone, which had been in the deal only three months after putting in $136 million, would stand to reap $720 million. It was an astronomical return on investment. Of course, the steep return also increased our percentage of ownership. It was a big windfall.

We seriously considered selling. One complication was an equity participation fund we had for our key people, which covered 70 of our 1,500 employees. We were a partnership, so it wasn’t a stock option.

CONNECT: You couldn’t not do the deal.

BRESNAN: I couldn’t not do it. But I wasn’t doing it for me. It wasn’t going to change my life-style, but for those 70 key employees – many of whom were friends – this would change theirs. As a result of the deal we made over 30 new millionaires. I feel very good about that. It didn’t change my life but it sure changed theirs.

Some tremendous stories came out of the deal – stories that bring tears to your eyes. One VP, who earned a million dollars from the deal, was able to set up a college trust for all his and his wife’s less-fortunate nieces and nephews. Because we sold to Paul Allen people’s lives were changed, including many lives not yet born.

CONNECT: How much did Paul Allen pay for Bresnan Communications?

BRESNAN: $3.1 billion.
CONNECT: What was your take?
BRESNAN: I started with John Malone’s company, TCI, as a 50-50 partner. By 1987 I wanted to grow the company faster than my ability to keep up my capital contribution. I took some money off the table. John wanted to buy an option on some of my interest, with the option exercised later. I agreed to that. My effective ownership went from 50 to 20 percent, with his going to 80 percent. He paid me for that option.

In February 1999, when we created the new partnership with AT&T and Blackstone Group, my shares were diluted to 10.2 percent in a company that was three times larger. However, because of the return on investment incentive in the agreement, my 10.2 percent became an effective 23 percent for me and my key people when we sold.

CONNECT: How large was Bresnan Communications when you sold to Paul Allen’s Charter Communications?

BRESNAN: We had about 700,000 subscribers. In ranking we were No. 17 in the nation – however, with consolidation, today it would have been in the Top Ten.

CONNECT: Tell me about your separate ventures in Poland and Chile – separate deals from your sale to Paul Allen.

BRESNAN: They began six years ago. Bell Atlantic was in the process of buying my partner, TCI, and I didn’t know what that meant for our partnership because Bell Atlantic would own 80 percent of Bresnan Communications.

It prompted us to look offshore for opportunities, which led to an intense screening process to find just the right countries. We wanted to do business in countries with significant growth potential – unlike western Europe where entering a market meant paying market price.

CONNECT: You wanted a stable country.

BRESNAN: A stable country, economy, and politics. We wanted an honest government, and no corruption. We wanted our employees to be physically safe. We wanted growth opportunities, which meant countries undeveloped in cable. Right away we eliminated western Europe. In Latin America the only country meeting our criteria was Chile; in central Europe, Poland. I showed John Malone my findings and suggested we create two new partnerships: Chile and Poland. We built those two countries up. In some cases we acquired systems and expanded, in others we built new franchises.

We built up most of the major cities in Chile before trading that partnership to TCI for part of their interest in Poland. We had a big operation in Poland. We bought the franchises for Warsaw, Krakow and others, and expanded them. In one Polish city near the German border we built the first cable telephone system. Telephone service had been very bad there. We leapfrogged from what they had, which was very ancient, to state-of-the-art U.S. technology. Up until then those people were waiting up to five years for new phone service – and that after putting down a deposit equivalent to $300. Our cable telephone company was providing service in three days, plus we were giving them two lines, not one, and we offered call waiting and conferencing – all services outside their frame of reference.

The cable also provided improved television. Ten years earlier these people were watching two communist-run television stations. We offered 50, including MTV, CNN, and HBO Polska. They also had clearer reception.

CONNECT: And that was all part of Bresnan Communications?

BRESNAN: I was involved in three separate partnerships, all managed by Bresnan Communications, the management company. The U.S. partnership was the biggest company. We had the same partners in Chile (except for Blackstone). In Poland we had AT&T and two others. These were all separate partnerships under the same umbrella. We sold off the Chile and Poland partnerships before Paul Allen bought what was left, so we’re out of everything right now. Currently we’re looking at a number of opportunities in telecommunications and cable TV.

CONNECT: What about cable and the Internet?

BRESNAN: Cable and the Internet will have a tremendous future together. We began Internet service on our cable systems in 1997. Cable technology has tremendous bandwidth, which means speed. It’s a natural for Internet service. The next generation of cable and Internet, which is what Paul Allen seems interested in, is in e-commerce that uses a cable system to sell directly into the home.
You will watch TV and access the Internet at the same time. You will watch a commercial and click to receive a new car brochure. You will watch a TV commercial for a music group and instead of dialing 1-800 to buy a tape you will click to receive it over the Internet. You will read your emails while watching TV. It’s a tremendous way to market, very convenient, and done so simply and easily with cable because of its bandwidth.

CONNECT: You recently gave $2.5 million to Minnesota State University to build a basketball arena inside Taylor Center. You’re an SCTC graduate. Why give to MSU?

BRESNAN: (Laughter.) Mankato is very close to my heart. The University is a very important part of Mankato. We have also developed business relationships at MSU. All MSU campus dorm rooms have high-speed modems from Bresnan, which is now Charter. This agreement with the University allows the cable company to transmit all MSU games and events at Bresnan Arena – and hockey games at Midwest Wireless Civic Center – to area cable systems. This will be good for the University. Up through our sale we were building a fiber link from our LaCrosse cable system – and I know that Charter was planning to finish this – to Mankato that flows through Winona, Rochester, Albert Lea, Austin, Faribault and Owatonna. Anything broadcast out of Bresnan Arena could go over that cable system. It will be a tremendous recruiting tool for Minnesota State.

I graduated from South Central Technical College and have a great love for it. I helped create an endowment there for the children of single parents, and for the parents themselves. It’s an issue that is close to my own personal experience and heart.

William J. Bresnan – Biography

Born: December 5, 1933.

Education: South Central Technical College, 1953, Radio Repairman and TV Serviceman Program.

Organization Memberships: C-SPAN (board member); CableLabs (board member); Foundation for Minority Interests in Media (board member); National Cable Television Center Museum (chairman of the board).

© 2001 Connect Business Magazine. All Rights Reserved.