Comcast reaches deal with Charter

The "Squawk on the Street" news team discuss details of a proposed divestiture between Comcast and Charter Communications, as Comcast attempts to close in on a deal to buy Time Warner Cable for $45 billion pending regulatory approval.

"It's been a large learning curve for me and my guys," Malone said, looking back over the last four decades. "A lot of it has been growing up and making things work in environments as they change."

Raised in Milford, Conn., Malone was a bright middle-class kid with a newspaper route and a small radio-repair service. His dad, who he says was "absolutely" an inspiration, was an electronics engineer who started his own firm. Malone earned an engineering and economics degree at Yale in the mid-1960s and then studied industrial management and operations research at Johns Hopkins.

He went on to high-level work at Bell Labs, where he was present at the creation of the computer industry; McKinsey & Co.; and General Instrument/Jerrold Electronics, which developed the nation's first cable TV systems in the 1960s. That routelined with a host of strong mentorseventually delivered Malone to the Denver doorstep of Tele-Communications founder Bob Magness, a crusty old Texas cowboy who loved cable TV but couldn't run a company.

When Malone reported to TCI in 1973, the place was a shambles. The Colorado cable TV company booked $13 million in yearly revenue, but it owed $130 million. Growth was nil, the physical plant decrepit. And TCI's bankers were just about ready to call their loans.

Malone, an engineer-turned-rookie CEO, got down to cases, spending the next six years of what he calls "nuclear winter": squeezing nickels in a bad economy. He could build infrastructure only by the inch, had nothing to spend on marketing and devoted a good deal of time stiff-arming lenders.

By 1979, though, the tide began to turn. Malone refinanced TCI with some progressive insurance companies that gave him carte blanche. Then the feds approved small dishes to download satellite signals, which nurtured cheap distribution of TV programming.

Flush with a few bucks, Malone began to acquire cable systems, invest in programmers like CNN and USA and expand subscribers' TV-channel lineups whether they liked it or not so that TCI could raise monthly rates and strengthen its cash flows.

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Liberty's Malone breaks silence on Comcast deal