Ralph Roberts Going Strong at 90

By K.C. Neel -- Multichannel News, 3/22/2010 1:10:47 PM

 At 90 years old, Ralph Roberts still comes into the office four days a week, dressed in a suit and his signature bow tie.

He gave up horse jumping only a year ago, after hip replacement surgery and doctor’s orders. Earlier in the week, he spent all day in Washington, D.C., in congressional hearings pertaining to Comcast’s deal for a controlling stake in NBC Universal. And he returned to Philadelphia later that evening, joining longtime partner Julian Brodsky to meet and greet about 100 NBCU executives who were in town on business.

The next day was his birthday, and he was feted in a lunch-time ceremony in Comcast’s gleaming 58- story headquarters in Philadelphia, cheered on by hundreds of employees in “Ralph’s Café.”

Slowing down? Not hardly. The elder statesman of cable is still energized by the business.

“I’ve always been very fortunate in whatever business I have been in, and I have been in quite a few,” Ralph Roberts told Multichannel News a few days after his March 13 birthday. “I’ve had no unpleasant moments in business.”

In that long career, Roberts has sold ads, golf clubs, belts, cologne, elevator music and encyclopedias, and was successful in all those ventures.

His first entrepreneurial enterprise: digging up his mom’s flowers and selling them to the neighbors, according to Kathi Ann Brown’s 2003 book Wired to Win: Entrepreneurs of the American Cable Industry (Spectrum Publishing).

The foray into the cable business eclipses all previous successes. Today, Comcast is the world’s largest cable operator with almost 24 million customers. The company is on the brink of becoming one of the largest programming companies once it takes a majority stake in NBCU. (Current owner General Electric Co. will retain a 49% stake in the media firm.)

Ralph Roberts said last week his greatest achievement is recognizing and working to create a business that people love and learn from every day. “I have always believed in this business and its future,” he said. He has been asked many times if he envisioned Comcast morphing into the behemoth it has become today — and he typically smiles knowingly and says, “of course.”

Comcast’s size today is a direct result of the list of deals painstakingly analyzed and unanimously agreed upon by the company’s top echelon. Comcast was a small player — the 16th-largest MSO — when it partnered with Tele-Communications Inc. and American Television & Communications (now Time Warner Cable) in 1986 to buy Group W Cable’s assets.

That deal, followed by closely the acquisition of 50% of Storer Communications two years later, turned Comcast into the fifth-largest MSO in the country, with more than 2 million customers.

Other deals followed; most turned out well. Even investments once thought strategic but later liquidated generally worked out well financially.

Comcast was an early believer in the cellular business when it purchased American Cellular Network Corp., with a territory covering 2 million people in New Jersey and Delaware, in 1988. It later sold out of that sideline, with the cable company retaining many of its key executives.

Now, having become a big player in Internet-protocol wired phone service, Comcast is looking to rebuild a wireless presence via an investment in Clearwire.

The one deal that outright flopped was Comcast’s effort to nab The Walt Disney Co. in 2004. It was a bold and audacious move, though, that educated Comcast’s top brass and gave them the experience necessary to successfully execute the MSO’s current play for control of NBCU, analysts have said.

“We’ve bet the farm more than once,” Brodsky said. “We’ve always been risk-takers. But every deal we’ve ever done has been well thought out. We’ve never experienced a financial crisis and we’ve never had a shortage of cash. We’ve always been confident in our ability to execute and deliver on our promises and opportunities. Ralph always had a vision of what we could do next. Our mantra was always ‘growth.’ We used to call his instinct ‘The Golden Gut.’”

Said a fellow pivotal figure in the cable industry, Cablevision Systems chairman Charles Dolan: “Ralph Roberts is one of cable’s great pioneers. He had the imagination, determination and courage to create something meaningful. I am honored to know someone like Ralph whom I consider to be a friend and a true inspiration to all of us.”

BRIAN ROBERTS, Ralph’s son and Comcast’s CEO, still regularly seeks his father’s counsel on company and industry issues, as do other company executives.

"Ralph's decades of experience make him an important and trusted adviser to our executive team,” Brian Roberts said. “It’s not unusual to go into Ralph’s office and find an executive running ideas by him and seeking his guidance.”

Ralph Roberts got into the cable business in 1963 by buying the Tupelo, Miss., system owned by Pete Musser, at broker Dan Aaron’s urging. The legend, as Roberts himself has said, is that Musser remarked to Aaron as they saw Roberts walking toward them on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia: “Here comes our fish. He just sold his business and he’s got a lot of money.” Roberts had indeed just sold his company, belt-and-suspender maker the Pioneer Suspender Co., and was seeking a new investment.

Smart enough to buy that first of many cable systems, he also was smart enough to know what he didn’t know. And he was fortunate enough to have good, smart people join him in his new cable adventure. Aaron stayed on and ran the cable operations, while Brodsky handled finance. Roberts took on the role of visionary and conciliator.

Brodsky said he and Aaron, who died in 2003 after suffering from Parkinson’s disease, often found themselves on opposing sides when it came to decisions. But the trio would hash out every possible argument until unanimous decisions were agreed on. That business environment still exists today at Comcast, Brodsky said.

After lengthy discussions on a topic, Brian Roberts will hand out small pieces of paper and everyone votes on the issue at hand, he said. Everyone in the room gets a blind vote and more discussion usually follows. “Ralph’s style was similar with Dan and me,” Brodsky said. “We didn’t do things until we all agreed. There was no back-biting. No turf wars. Ralph was a genius at building consensus, and Brian is the same way.”

The elder Roberts may be very good at building consensus, but he is also a sharp and hard-nosed businessman.

When Barry Diller was trying to sell home-shopping channel QVC to CBS in 1994, Ralph and Brian Roberts met him at the private airport where Diller was landing his plane and summarily fired him as chairman of QVC. Comcast took control of the home-shopping network and effectively scuttled the deal with CBS.

“Ralph has a soft, fuzzy exterior. But he is hard as nails,” Liberty Media chairman John Malone said. “He understands patience and the fact that each deal binds on the one before it.

FEW MULTI GENERATIONAL corporations have had as much success and as little internal strife as Comcast, and most industry observers see the close relationship between Ralph and Brian as the keystone to Comcast’s long-term success.

“Not many people can say they have had the opportunity to work with their father for over 30 years,” Brian Roberts said. “It has been an incredible honor. He is a great inspiration for me and I think for all of us at Comcast.”

“My father has a wonderful mentoring style,” Roberts told The New York Times in 2007. “He would never say, ‘This is a terrible idea.’ Instead, he says, ‘Have you thought about this?’ ”

The younger Roberts began sitting in on meetings with Ralph Roberts when he was a young teen. Brian Roberts would ask his dad why he was doing one thing over another or why decisions were being made like they were. It was their time to bond with each other and they still bond the same way today.

Cable-industry brethren credit the elder Roberts for his ability to let Brian Roberts learn the ropes and take the reins of the company early on.

They also give kudos to Brodsky and Aaron for their long mentorship of Brian Roberts. All three men spent countless hours teaching the younger Roberts about the industry and company.

“One of Ralph’s greatest accomplishments was how he brought Brian along,” Brodsky said. “So many companies have failed at [multigenerational transitions].

But he did it so well.” “Ralph did it right from the beginning,” Turner Broadcasting System vice chairman Andy Heller said in December. “He brought Brian in when he was young and sat him at his knee and let Brian watch him work.”

“Ralph is a wonderful guy and he’s been consistent in wanting to see his son build a great company wherever that may lead,” Malone said last December. “And Brian, with his education, experiences and personality, has worked hard to build that company for his dad. They both get psychic pleasure out of each other. And they’ve been very successful. It just doesn’t get any better than that.” The elder Roberts takes pride in Comcast’s family atmosphere. When Comcast bought Storer Communications in 1988, Aaron and Roberts introduced themselves to the Storer employees by dancing on stage, Brodsky said.

“The Storer folks were rather stiff and we had this get-together when we bought the company,” Brodsky recalled. “During the opening meeting, Ralph and Dan come out in vests and hats and canes and performed this soft-shoe number. Everyone had a wonderful time. The Storer guys didn’t know what hit them. But it set the stage and made everyone feel at ease instantly about the acquisition.”

RALPH ROBERTS HAS LONG BEEN a crowd-pleaser. Steve Brookstein, Bresnan Communications’ chief operating officer. Steve Brookstein, who was in charge of Comcast’s marketing efforts in the 1990s, remembered that every time he traveled with Ralph Roberts, the employees would go crazy.

“Every time he entered the room, he was like a rock star,” Brookstein said. “And every time, his eyes would light up. He was so energized by those events. He was so humble. Nothing made him happier than talking with installers and customer-service reps. I have often said it takes a big person to be small.”

Said John Alchin, who served as Comcast’s CFO before retiring from the company a couple of years ago: “He can electrify a gathering of employees regardless of the size of the group. It just does not seem to matter if he’s talking to a group of 20 or 40 in Comcast University, or to a stadium gathering welcoming new employees to Comcast. He is so quiet and understated, and yet all Comcast employees respond time and again with unbridled enthusiasm.” Roberts may exude a celebrity sensibility during events, but he is a family man at heart and has worked hard to make sure Comcast maintains a culture that resembles family. It’s not easy with 100,000 employees, he said.

But he looks at the company like an extended family unit. Departments are like immediate family; regional districts and programming networks are cousins, aunts and uncles.

“While growing and running Comcast’s business was a key focus of Ralph’s, an equally important priority of his is developing a culture that is defined by integrity, honesty and respect, and establishing an environment that people want to work in,” said David Cohen, the company’s executive vice president. “He spends a great deal of his time and energy nurturing the family atmosphere that we enjoy today.”

In an industry where migration between companies is common-place, executives tend to stay with Comcast for years. Cohen served as chairman of Ballard Spahr, Andrews & Ingersoll, one of the 100 largest law firms in the country, before joining Comcast in 2002 — and is a relative newcomer to the company.

Brodsky still maintains an office at Comcast’s headquarters, as does Alchin, who joined Comcast in 1990. Steve Burke, Comcast’s chief operating officer, could easily run his own company and has been approached more than once by others to be the No. 1 guy. But he is happy serving as Comcast’s COO.

“It has been one of those rare privileges in my life to work with Ralph,” Alchin said. “Ralph is one of those unique individuals who exudes calm and confidence but, at the same time, he knows exactly when to seize an opportunity with daring and determination.

“Several times I would find myself immersed in the numbers and daunted by the potential risks only to hear Ralph respond with optimism and strategic direction. His business instinct goes well beyond anything than can be taught in a textbook. It’s a skill that derives from decades of strategizing from the position of the underdog.”

RALPH ALWAYS HAD visions for his company that went way beyond” its current status, Aaron wrote in his memoirs, Take the Measure of the Man, co-written by David A. Long (Veritas Press). “When we only had five or six employees, he was always drawing up tables of organization with 30 or 40 people. When he had 30 or 40 people he was making organizational charts for 100 people. He was always looking at the future.”

Roberts soon figured out he was on to something when he saw people running down the street chasing his installation trucks. It was a love affair with a business and industry that exists to this day. That’s not as long as his 67-year marriage to Suzanne, his wife. But it’s endured well.

“I realized the cable business was the best of all the ones I had invested in and decided to go forward full boat,” he said in his Cable Center oral history. “It was exciting once we realized you got to develop programming and you could do other things that would make people want to buy … people loved cable television because more is better.”

Of all the products and services Roberts has helped develop, create and roll out, the basic cable system still manages to enthrall him the most. Roberts said cut back on some obligations, but he’s still active. In addition to his activities at Comcast, he remains involved in numerous community and civic activities.

HE HAS BEEN honored with several industry awards including the Distinguished Vanguard Award for Leadership from the National Cable and Telecommunications Association and the Walter Kaitz Foundation Award for contributing to the cable industry’s diversity eff orts. He has been inducted into the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame and the Cable Television Hall of Fame. He received the University of Pennsylvania’s Joseph P. Wharton Award, and the conferral of a Doctor of Humane Letters by Holy Family College.

He still has plans that involve Comcast and he continues to travel with friends and family every year. “I’m hanging in there,” he said last week. “Thre are a lot of things I’d like to do and see. The world is still wide open and receptive.”