John Malone, the ‘Cable Cowboy,’ Fought Bill Gates and Still Inspires David Zaslav and Gerry Cardinale

Yet he seemed to enjoy making Gates sweat, leaving him “quite agitated,” as Malone told Desmond with “a lean, goofy grin.”

But despite his teasing of the incredibly serious Gates, Malone was well aware that he needed Microsoft and Silicon Valley in general. Malone imagined a future in which entertainment and the Internet would merge into a single device that could deliver everything from TV shows to email to online shopping—what we would call a smart device today. And Gates also needed Malone, whose network of cables connecting to homes across America could solve the bandwidth problems that made the Internet too slow for ordinary consumers.

“The panacea that techies are now seeking is a powerful set-top box—a computer, really—installed above every television, providing not just video but also superfast Internet access for everything from financial services to videophone conversations,” Desmond writes.

In short, Malone saw that everything was about to change and put all his pressure on Gates. The Malone-Gates feud presaged the encroachment of technology on the entertainment industry, a changing of the guard that has been going on for decades and is still ongoing: Last week, the heir to an old-school media baron sold Paramount Global to a scion of tech wealth, while Shari Redstone struck a deal with David Ellison’s Skydance Media.

Malone’s presence looms large over the current roster of media industry executives. Gerry Cardinale, the founder of RedBird Capital and a major backer of the Paramount deal, called Malone’s prescience an inspiration when I interviewed him recently. And David Zaslav, the CEO of Warner Bros. Discovery (of which Malone is a majority shareholder and board member), considers him a mentor and proudly displays a photo of the two in his Los Angeles office.