When you're the CEO of a company as big as Time Warner, can you afford even in the deep

recesses of your mind to want to be liked?

Some people don't care if they're liked and unfortunately I do care and it's weakness.

That makes the job harder, right?

Yeah, it does and you don't do things you should and I was conscious of that.

When you arrived at HBO in the late 70s, there were plenty of smart, ambitious people there

and a bunch more arrived through the years.

How did you wind up running the entire place?

I didn't cheat anybody and I told the truth.

And you never asked for a promotion, is that right?

Never raised or a promotion.

There were quite a number of times I was afraid I was going to be promoted and I was right.

I kept telling my friend Tom Freston when I was running Homebox and he had MTV, I said

look, whatever you do, things are not looking good up at corporate, at five come more time

and they're going to come to us, don't do it.

And so he took it first and then were they well coming along and the smoking ruin up

they are.

They said you've got to come up, not my favorite day.

I really began thinking about all the challenges and waking up in the middle of the night thinking

about all the challenges, retail price was high, the wholesale price was high, competition

was rising.

We had to continue to send up a lot of money of course to corporate and where the investment

...