He paved way for Fox, CNN. He’s not sure we’re better off

John Malone helped create the modern media industry over the past half century. In a new memoir, ‘Born to Be Wired,’ he looks back on what he has wrought, writes Benjamin Mullin from aboard a yacht in Maine

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op quiz: Which media mogul backed Rupert Murdoch’s launch of Fox News, supported Ted Turner's plans for CNN and helped lay the groundwork for the internet revolution that powers Instagram, TikTok and Google?

Need a hint? He's also the second-largest private landowner in the United States, with 2.2 million acres.

Of all the captains of industry who have transformed what we read, watch and talk about over the past half century, John Malone is among the most influential and the least understood. An engineer turned omnivorous investor, Mr Malone, 84, guides his expansive kingdom from a remove, serving as a behind-the-scenes consigliere to the executives at Warner Bros Discovery, Formula 1, LiveNation, the Atlanta Braves and Sirius XM.

“I would pay alot of money to avoid a cocktail party,’ he said this month, aboard a yacht bobbing in the tranquil slip of his compound in coastal Maine.

But Mr Malone is stepping into the spotlight next month with his autobiography, a book that recounts his climb from a small cable company toa perch atop a sprawling media empire. (The book was written with the help of the journalist Mark Robichaux, who'd written a previous book about Mr Malone; he said Mr Robichaux talked him into the memoir.) Mr Malone largely offers an unsparing view of himself, noting that he was frequently “cast as a ruthless villain,’ even ticking off all the pejorative nicknames he amassed over the years: Genghis Khan. Robber baron. Darth Vader. (That last one was bestowed upon him by Al Gore, then a Democratic senator from Tennessee.)