Of Mouse and Men

As a freshly minted graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Brian L. Roberts helped build his family’s small Philadelphia cable-TV company by climbing utility poles to install lines.

Comcast Corp. is now the nation’s largest cable operator. As chief executive, the 44-year-old Roberts sees the movies, sports and other programs traveling through those lines as key building blocks for the company’s future. And Comcast’s bid for Walt Disney Co. and its stable of movie studios and television networks is Roberts’ most ambitious effort to smash the barrier between content and the cable pipes that carry it.

Since taking over as president at the age of 30, Roberts has driven Comcast into the media business. He bought stakes in E! Entertainment Television and the QVC shopping network. He made the company majority owner of Philadelphia’s professional basketball and hockey teams. He even coaxed Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates into investing $1 billion in Comcast and used some of the money to upgrade its pipes to deliver new kinds of interactive programming.

Media and technology executives have seen Roberts as a rising star since he orchestrated the $25.5-billion takeover of AT&T; Corp.’s cable business in late 2001, earning a promotion to chief executive.

“I’ll bet my last dollar on Brian Roberts,” Ted Turner has said of the Comcast leader, who sat on the Turner Broadcasting System Inc. board from 1989 to 1996.

Wednesday’s $51-billion offer for Disney has cemented Roberts’ place among the world’s top media moguls along with Viacom Inc.’s Sumner Redstone, News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch and Time Warner Inc.’s Richard Parsons, said Leo Hindery Jr., who once ran AT&T;’s cable operation.

“He has grown brilliantly,” said Hindery, who is now chairman and chief executive of the New York Yankees’ YES Network. “It is an extraordinary evolution.”

At an early age, Roberts became fascinated by the cable business his father, Ralph, built with two partners almost from scratch.

The elder Roberts, who serves as Comcast chairman, used the proceeds from auctioning off his belt and suspenders business to buy a community cable company with 1,200 subscribers in Tupelo, Miss., in 1963. Six years later, he changed the name from American Cable Systems to Comcast and moved it to Philadelphia. (He was also for a time a vice president of Muzak Corp., a provider of what is known as elevator music.)

In grade school, Brian Roberts gave his father his opinion on Comcast’s logo. As a teenager, he punched the company’s coupon books and sat in on meetings with bankers. The fourth of five children, he spoke early and often about his desire to one day run the family business.

At first his father resisted, urging the son to pursue another living. But after proving his dedication to the business by climbing utility poles and selling cable service door to door, Roberts was named controller in Comcast’s Trenton, N.J., office. Ralph Roberts shocked the industry by handing over the reins to Brian in 1990.

“We’re going into a new decade, and the cable industry is going to have to shift its gears,” Ralph Roberts said at the time. “We need some new young horses to keep the industry moving at the same pace in the future.”

The son demonstrated that he had ambitions, accumulating a television portfolio that includes E!, the Style Network, the Golf Channel, Outdoor Life Network, the video game channel G4 and Comcast SportsNet. Comcast also bought the Philadelphia Flyers hockey team, the 76ers basketball team and the stadium where the two teams play.

Over the last 14 years, Comcast shares have sharply outperformed Disney shares, rising 521%, compared with 176%.

Mark Cuban, who owns the Dallas Mavericks basketball team and made his fortune in Internet broadcasting, said Roberts was well known for eschewing conventional wisdom and for his “ability to see the big picture.”

“The acquisition of Disney would be the best thing to ever happen to Disney shareholders,” he said.

Cuban is not the only mogul Roberts has impressed. Over dinner one night in 1997, Roberts asked Gates to invest in Comcast.

The Microsoft founder thought highly enough of Roberts to commit $1 billion of Microsoft’s cash hoard for an 11.5% stake in the cable operator, enhancing the reputation of the young Comcast leader.

Until the bid for Disney, Roberts’ defining deal had been the takeover of AT&T; Broadband. Initially hostile, the bid was later approved by AT&T; and tripled the ranks of Comcast’s subscribers, which now number 21.5 million, giving Roberts access to 1 in every 4 U.S. pay-TV households.

Some gambits have failed. In 1999, Comcast’s efforts to buy MediaOne Group were trumped by AT&T.;

Roberts’ pursuit of Disney may not work out either, Hindery said. But even if it doesn’t, Roberts will have proved his intentions to redefine the cable industry.

“I am hugely complimentary of him,” Hindery said. “God and the market are going to decide if he wins.”

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Brian L. Roberts

* Position: President & CEO, Comcast Corp.

* Born: June 28, 1959, in Philadelphia.

* Education: Earned a degree in finance from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

* Career: Entered the cable business, even though he was discouraged by his father, Comcast founder Ralph Roberts; worked in various management positions at Comcast, at one time overseeing the company’s Michigan system; became Comcast president in 1990; became CEO after Comcast acquired AT&T;’s cable assets.

Source: Associated Press