Those Guys Have All the Fun - James Andrew Miller [11]
GEORGE CONNER:
The initial proposal from Bill was for $10 million, and what Bill wanted to do was build some studios in Bristol, Connecticut. I knew where Connecticut was; I didn’t know where Bristol was. He wanted to build four state-of-the-art television production trucks with the most expensive equipment that there was to be built by Compact Video in Burbank; he wanted to hire some very expensive on-the-air talent; and he wanted to pay the NCAA, I don’t remember the exact number, but something like $450,000 for the first contract to rebroadcast NCAA events and show them over and over and over.
I was trying to learn about transponders and Nielsen ratings and all that. I needed to get up to speed so I could properly evaluate it and make a recommendation for Getty to invest or not.
A friend introduced me to Tex Schramm, who was the general manager of the Dallas Cowboys at that time. I told him we were looking at doing a venture that would have sports on television twenty-four hours a day. His comment was “There’s already an awful lot of sports on television.”
BILL RASMUSSEN:
Getty had this thing where every investment has a best outcome, a probable outcome, or a worst outcome, and Stu would ask us to come out and present details about the cable industry and our business. I remember the topic of the day once was where will the cable industry be at the end of the 1980s, and how many subscribers would we have? There were 12.5 million cable homes in 1979, and we put together a presentation that said 30 million homes in ten years. Stu was really upset with us and told us that number was way too high and irresponsible. Turns out, at the end of the eighties there were 60 million homes.
We had somehow managed to pay ourselves $1,500 a month, but we were running out of money and we had to have an answer by the end of the year, which was twenty-two days away. I was worried because most companies can’t make that kind of decision that fast.
GEORGE CONNER:
So the end of December comes—the 27th, 28th, or something. Stu called me in and asked, “George, what do you think?” I said, “Stu, if Bill has to have an answer today, we have to tell him no, but I kind of like the idea and I think you do, too. Why don’t we fund payroll and some other expenses until we can finish looking at it.” When we told our response to Bill, there was a long pause, but then he said that sounded pretty good. I mean, he had been turned down by seven other companies, he was up to his limit on every credit card he had, and the venture capital fund in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, had said they weren’t going to put any more money in it. This was the best offer he had.
SCOTT RASMUSSEN:
Then we had the situation with the Bristol development commission. We had “bought” the land but hadn’t paid for it. They told us, “If you don’t have financials at our next meeting in February, we’re going to give the land to somebody else.” My dad was out West pleading with Stu to find a way that we could give hints to others that Getty was going to invest, but the word from Stu was absolutely not. They hadn’t committed anything; they weren’t going to let their name be associated with it. So my father called and said, “You’re going to have to do what you can. Go to the meeting and buy us a month.” I sat there, kind of depressed, trying to think what I was going to say that night. Then I watched as it began to snow. The storm became so bad, the meeting was canceled. By the next month Getty was in. Had it not snowed, I don’t know what I would’ve said, or if we would have found a way to buy a month. We might have lost Bristol.