Cutthroat: High Stakes & Killer Moves on the Electronic Frontier - Softcover

Keating, Stephen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 155566248X ISBN 13: 9781555662486

Publisher: Johnson Books, 1999

Synopsis

A lively, fast-paced, unauthorized account of power brokers and sky-high deals, "Cutthroat" is the one book you must read to understand the players, the tactics, and the future in the brutal telecommunications market battle between satellite TV and cable. In 1997, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. joined forces with EchoStar, Charlie Ergen’s upstart company, to create a satellite-TV powerhouse—nicknamed Deathstar. The cable industry knew its lucrative monopoly was threatened, and with TCI’s John Malone in the forefront, cable fought back and held off the assault. How this deal lit up the sky before crashing down to earth exposes the outsized personalities, the high-stakes deal-making, the shifting alliances, and the ruthless politicking that surround the pursuit of megabucks in telecommunications today.

About this title

About the Author:

Stephen Keating is a business reporter at The Denver Post, where he has covered the cable, satellite TV, and media industries since 1995. He has also written for "Wired" magazine. He lives in Denver.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

(Prologue)

The game is going on right now, all over the world. It requires no allies, just alliances. No team loyalties, just self-interest. Strategies form and dissolve with every play. A helping hand may bring a knife in the back. In the next round, the players switch sides and do it again. Cutthroat is the name of the game on the electronic frontier. Cable cowboys once lassoed broadcast TV signals into rural towns, then sought to strangle the broadcasters. Satellite TV aims a laser at both. Phone companies must connect the calls of competitors or die of isolation. The Internet is a vast, chaotic network that owes its nature to print, phone, broadcast, cable, satellites and computers, yet is something else entirely that may devour all of it. Electronic media is an interlocked, trillion-dollar, global game that feeds on our insatiable desire to know, communicate and be entertained. The game is guided by technology, big money, regulation, demand and the artful savagery of media chie! ! fs. They need each other, as partners and suppliers. Yet they bleed each other as rivals and takeover targets. It all depends on the day, the deal, and the leverage to get it done. They're playing cutthroat in your home. With such thievery and cross-purposes built into the game, who wins and who loses? What are the stakes? The rules? The essence of the game is illustrated by one play. In February of 1997, Rupert Murdoch, the Australian media pirate, and Charlie Ergen, a wily American hustler, announced plans to launch a killer satellite TV service nicknamed Deathstar. It lit up the sky, then fell to earth, undone by a cable mastermind named John Malone. How these players and others came to be, the way that they clashed and what happened next is a view to the future of the electronic frontier.

About this edition

• Publisher: Johnson Books
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 155566248X
• ISBN 13: 9781555662486
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 326