EXECUTIVE MEMOIRS

Comcast

BOOK:  WIRED TO WIN: Entrepreneurs of the American Cable Industry

“Where is Tupelo? And what’s a community antenna television system?”

The year was 1962 and the speaker was Ralph J. Roberts. The dapper 42-year-old investment broker had just bumped into an acquaintance on Chestnut Street in Center City Philadelphia—one who wanted to unload a struggling local cable TV system in Mississippi. Intrigued, Roberts took the bait and bought the franchise. Thanks to that chance encounter, today’s $200 billion communications behemoth Comcast was born.

Roberts’s fascinating business story is one of almost two dozen in-depth cable industry profiles in Wired To Win: Entrepreneurs of the American Cable Industry (2005), written by Milestones founder Kathi Ann Brown for her client, the Entrepreneurs Club.