From his 11th-floor executive suite, John C. Malone commands a regal view of the Rocky Mountains and metropolitan Denver.
This is the lofty perch of the chief executive officer of Tele-Communications Inc., the man Al Gore, as a senator, likened to Darth Vader and the ringleader of the "cable cosa nostra."But John Malone wants you to know he is really just a family man, a husband and father.
He is, however, more than that.
He is rich. In the past two years, stock deals, spinoffs and savvy have swelled his net worth close to $1 billion.
He is powerful. Through his cable systems and interests in programming, Malone shapes the television habits and expectations of millions of Americans.
"In the American cable industry, one man has . . . seized monopoly power," media conglomerate Viacom charged last year in an antitrust suit against TCI. "Using bully-boy tactics and strong-arming competitors, suppliers and customers, that man has inflicted antitrust injury on . . . virtually every American consumer of cable services and technologies.
"That man is John C. Malone."
Malone transformed TCI from a debt-ridden backwater company into the world's largest cable television company.
With 11.3 million subscribers in 49 states, TCI now accounts for nearly a quarter of the cable industry's sales and work force.
And now TCI and Malone are taking on the phone company. They aim to offer millions of Americans an alternative to local telephone monopolies.
This is no small agenda, even for an engineer, financier and futurist with one bachelor's degree, two master's degrees and a Ph.D.
The `Doctor'
At TCI headquarters in the Denver Tech Center, employees speak almost reverently of the man they call "The Doctor."
Even an executive the company fired talks fondly of him.
"He's a shirt-sleeves kind of guy," said Steve Dougherty, former general manager of TCI's Mile Hi Cable in Denver. "He rides the elevator like everybody else."
But Malone sets his own rules.
At noon, he's off to lunch - not with bigshot dealmakers but with his college-sweetheart wife, Leslie.
Summers, he's in the roiling Atlantic off Boothbay Harbor, Maine, helmsman on a 59-foot yacht, tethered to the Fortune 500 world by cell phone.
Born 53 years ago in Milford, Conn., Malone grew up in an 18th-century farmhouse filled with prototypes of early televisions.
His father, a scientist and engineer for General Electric, introduced him to the world of am-pli-fi-ers, tuners and picture tubes. The young Malone was awed by his father's inventive, competitive spirit and the backyard barn that sometimes served as a laboratory for GE's first commercial television sets.
Malone did his homework watching Milton Berle.
"There's no question, I grew up in front of a TV set," Malone said in a recent interview. "Even today, I can hardly exist without a TV set blaring in the background."
Malone's entrepreneurial instincts developed early. By age 8, he was running a profitable little radio repair business with used parts retrieved from the GE junk-yard.
At 22 he landed at AT&T's Bell Labs and quickly became a rising star. Bell was so impressed it sent him to earn two master's degrees at Johns Hopkins University.
Former Bell colleague Gerald Bennington shared the same rooming house with Malone at Johns Hopkins. He remembers Malone reciting poetry, discussing politics and having a "memory like an encylopedia."
Back at Bell, Malone found the company "too structured." So at 26 he quit, and went on to New York's Park Avenue and the management consulting firm McKinsey & Co.
Malone's next move propelled him into the trailblazing years of cable television as an executive with General Instrument Corp., a major equipment supplier to the industry.
His reputation for financial smarts and long-range thinking spread quickly. Steven J. Ross, the mercurial chief of Warner Communications, wanted Malone to run his cable operations. It would have meant California, big money and limousines - but Malone said no.
The move
Instead, he took a 50 percent pay cut, moved to Denver and signed on with Bob Magness. Malone saw TCI as an uncut diamond and Mag-ness, its founder, as a mentor.
The early days were brutal, as TCI teetered on the brink of bankruptcy.
"We never missed an interest payment . . . but I was personally signing anything in the company that was more than 500 bucks," Malone said.
In the two decades since, the two men have made telecommunications history and fabulous wealth for themselves.
As CEO and president of a company with $4 billion in annual revenues, Malone makes $500,000 a year in salary - decidedly low for the industry. But net worth at this level goes far beyond the paycheck thanks to generous stock options and corporate maneuvering.
In managing TCI, Malone relies on a handful of senior executives to run daily operations while he devotes his time to strategy and dealmaking.
At TCI headquarters, Malone is low key, showing up between 8 and 9 a.m. and working a normal 40-hour week.
A shade under 6 feet, he prefers to dress casually, forgoing three-piece suits for polo shirts and loafers. A square jaw, silver hair, broad shoulders and slight paunch lend him the air of a general in civilian clothes.
Outside the office, Malone is a loner. Even his closest business associates can speak little of his private side.
Malone is candid about it.
"I like my ideas to be exposed, but I just don't like to be personally exposed," he explained. "It's a dichotomy . . . a tough struggle."
The most influential person in John Malone's life clearly is his wife.
Leslie Malone, a painter, shares her husband's desire for privacy, shunning social gatherings for a simple rural lifestyle in which dogs and horses must be fed and exercised.
"His life basically revolves around three things - his family, his company and his sailboat in Maine," said Denver cable broker Charles Daniels, who shares a skybox with Malone at Mile High Stadium.
Fearsome reputation
His passion for family does not tame his fearsome reputation in the industry as predatory and unyielding.
New York cable consultant Larry Monroe calls Malone a modern-day robber baron in the worst tradition of the early railroad and Western land moguls.
But the harsh rhetoric about Malone must be viewed in context.
Viacom's antitrust accusations against Malone came as the conglomerate slashed its way toward acquisition of Paramount Communications. TCI and Malone were allied with a competing takeover group.
Malone dismisses Viacom's still pending suit against TCI as "show business," insisting hard feelings between the two media moguls pretty much evaporated once TCI pulled out of the bidding.
"It was a tactical move by Viacom to get us out of the picture," Malone said. "It's all fair, you know. In essence, he was successful and that's why he now owns Paramount."
Indeed, not long ago, Viacom czar Sumner Redstone announced that his "good friends" at TCI were buying Viacom's cable operations for $2 billion.
Daniels doesn't buy the bully-boy portrayal either.
"He doesn't use muscle. He uses good business sense. One of John's great lines is, `Well, what do you want to do?' Now you may debate it, but in the deal business we're in, it's a great opening statement."
Integrity? Toughness?
"I've never cut a deal with John Malone where he hasn't lived up to every word he said he would," Daniels said.
Malone said, "When they call me tough, I don't mind. Maybe it's a compliment. I like to be regarded as a straightforward and very honest, brutally so sometimes."
Still visible
Barely a year ago, Malone seemed headed for a lower profile.
TCI's proposed merger with Bell Atlantic would have made him No. 2 on the power chart.
"For me personally, it was a very good scenario," Malone said. "It wasn't retirement. I would be fully active, but I wouldn't be visible, and that I liked."
But the deal fell apart last February. Fitting the two giant corporations together proved too complex.