[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 144 (Thursday, October 6, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[Congressional Record: October 6, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
GLENN JONES: CABLE VISIONARY
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HON. THOMAS J. MANTON
of new york
in the house of representatives
Wednesday, October 5, 1994
Mr. MANTON. Mr. Speaker, I would like to call to the attention of my
colleagues an article regarding Glenn Jones which appeared in the
September 26 edition of Business Week. Glenn Jones is the chairman of
Jones Intercable, our Nation's seventh largest cable operator.
Mr. Speaker, the Business Week article is extremely timely because
the cable industry is in a state of rapid technological transformation.
At the cutting edge of this transformation is Glenn Jones, who has been
on the forefront of such important developments in cable technology
such as using fiber optic backbones for cable systems, implementing
joint cable telephone systems, bringing individual inventors into cable
limited partnerships, and seeking telecommunications markets in other
parts of the world.
As the Business Week article correctly points out, Glenn Jones has
been very successful. His net worth has been pegged at $300 million.
Glenn Jones, however, is an important visionary who has not chosen
simply to acquire wealth, but rather to spend a sizable portion of his
fortune to transform cable technology into a vehicle for raising the
intellectual capacity of our Nation. For the past 5 years, Glenn Jones
has put more than $30 million of his wealth into Mind Extension
University, a long-distance learning project that permits Americans to
obtain a college education without traveling to a college classroom.
Mind Extension University has vast potential for every region of the
country, from inner cities, where single-income parents struggle to
find time to obtain a degree, to people in rural communities which are
hundreds of miles from the nearest campus.
Mr. Speaker, Glenn Jones always is on the move. Even as Mind
Extension University continues to evolve and grow, he is now hard at
work in developing a new cable programming service devoted to computer
science and leasing satellite transponder space through his Jones
Spacelink subsidiary. During the past several years, critics of the
cable industry, both in and out of Congress, have suggested the cable
industry has become staid and complacent. While there are numerous
important success stories within the industry that prove that charge is
false, none is more compelling than the story of Glenn Jones. I urge my
colleagues to read the Business Week article, and I ask that it be
included in the Record at this point.
The Expanding Universe of Glenn Jones
Employee meetings at the Englewood, Colo., headquarters of
Jones Intercable Inc. are hard to miss. ``It's the sound of
the bagpipes,'' says Robert Luff, the company's former chief
technology officer. Summoned by kilted musicians, employees
attend ``state-of-the-fleet meetings.''
That's fleet as in spaceships, reflecting the founder's
fascination with the science fiction classic ``Dune.''
There's also the company's Medallion of the Alliance, awarded
to employees who have achieved the rank of ``dragon slayer''
by beating back the fire-breathing challenges of the day.
True north.--To the uninitiated it may sound less like a
day at the office than one at a theme park. But to the
faithful at Jones Intercable, the nation's seventh-largest
cable operator, such corporate flamboyance is simply
testimony to the entrepreneurial brilliance of founder Glenn
R. Jones. The 64-year-old Jones, a onetime bomb-disposal
expert for the U.S. Navy, is known as much for his offbeat
enthusiasms as for making his $683 million-a-year cable-
television empire one of the most innovative in the industry.
``Glenn's a dreamer, and sometimes that makes him seem a
little different,'' says Bill Daniels, a Denver-based
investment banker who specializes in cable TV. ``But his
dreams have turned out pretty well.''
Indeed, driven by what Jones calls his ``own North Star,''
his company was among the first to replace old-style coaxial
cable with high-performance optical fiber and to secure a
European beachhead. Both moves have since paid huge
dividends. In July, Intercable folded its six British cable
franchises into a company controlled by Bell Canada
International Inc., getting in return a 14% stake in Bell
Cablemedia PLC, Britain's largest public cable and telephone
company.
Now, Jones is again pushing the frontiers. With the launch
of tests offering telephone services to its cable customers
outside Washington D.C. and Chicago later this year,
Intercable is rushing to become the first cable outfit to
counter the wave of telephone companies that are moving to
sell video services over phone lines. And Jones's ties to
Bell Canada will soon grow exponentially. By yearend, federal
approval is expected for BCI's December agreement to pay up
to $400 million for a 30% stake in Jones Intercable. The deal
would give Jones access to BCI technology he needs to expand
into phone and data services, as well as provide the muscle
to raise up to $1.6 billion to buy new cable systems.
Jones has long excelled at deft management of cable
systems. Far ahead of competitors, he saw the advantage of
building systems in close regional clusters, concentrating on
upscale suburban areas such as Northern Virginia and outside
Chicago. Clustering cuts down on administrative and other
operational costs. Jones's systems are also among the most
technologically advanced, with fiber-optic cabling beginning
ahead of the pack in 1989. ``When you talk about vision and
getting somewhere first, Jones is usually at the top of the
list,'' says Sharan Stover, vice-president at cable rival
Tele-Communications Inc.
The son of a Pennsylvania coal miner, Jones labored briefly
as a lawyer and found cable TV after an unsuccessful 1964 run
for Congress as a Goldwater Republican left him $40,000 in
debt. In an oft-repeated story, he borrowed $400 on his beat-
up Volkswagen for the downpayment on a cable system that
served 150 homes in Georgetown, Colo. Borrowing again, he
bought two more systems.
Then, he started dreaming bigger. ``I sat down and figured
that it would take $10 billion to cable all of America, and I
didn't have any way of getting that much,'' he says. So,
Jones copied the deals common in oil and gas, becoming the
first cable operator to finance growth through what became a
widely popular vehicle, limited partnerships. The
partnerships, which paid fees to his company for managing
cable systems owned by investors, shielded Jones from heavy
debt. As rising values brought new investors, shielded Jones
from heavy debt. As rising values brought new investors, the
network of cable systems Jones's companies own or manage has
grown to 55, with 1.3 million subscribers.
Today, publicly held Jones Intercable and its sister
company, Jones Spacelink Ltd., have combined revenues of $299
million, up 15% from $260 million in 1992, while the
partnerships they manage have revenues of $386 million. Like
most cable operators, however, they lose money. Intercable
and Spacelink together lost $35 million in the fiscal year
ended in May, while the partnerships lost $73.3 million.
But in the cable-TV industry, reported losses matter
little. Cable companies have enormous capital costs--and the
partnerships are designed to give tax losses to investors.
More important than producing earnings has been Jones's
ability to generate cash flow needed to fund expansion and
upgrade systems with fiber-optic cable. Still, the complex
web of partnerships and the relatively thin trading of its
stock have hurt Jones's tightly controlled public companies
on Wall Street. ``It's just not worth the time it takes to
understand it.'' says Kidder, Peabody & Co. analyst Alan
Gould, who follows one of Jones's partnerships.
The complexity hasn't hurt Jones, however. He has amassed a
fortune estimated at more than $300 million by holding huge
blocks of both Intercable and Spacelink, as well as a
controlling stake in Jones Space Segment, a private company
that generates millions from the operating companies by
leasing satellite transponder space. A few years back. Jones
Intercable also paid its chairman $4.3 million for his stake
in Jones Galactic Radio, which provides stereo music to cable
subscribers, while other private companies owned by Jones
provide data and financial services and arrange deals for the
public cable companies.
Jones's deal with BCI is expected to simplify the
structure, giving the company more allure on Wall Street.
Intercable and Spacelink will be merged and many of the
investment partnerships bought out. Although the deal will
cut Jones's personal stake in the merged companies to 35%--he
currently controls 86% of Spacelink and 48% of Intercable--it
will give him the funds to go shopping for more cable
systems. He'll also pour more money into his longtime
infatuation, Mind Extension University. Jones spent $30
million of his own to launch the seven-year-old cable
university, which offers college courses to some 26 million
cable homes.
For Jones, a voracious reader who employs a full-time
staffer to summarize books for him, education is a mantra.
But he insists the money-losing Mind Extension University is
also a business in the making; he is currently launching
three new channels with courses in computers, foreign
languages, and health.
Jones plots his empire's next move from a building just
outside Denver that is designed to give employees a grand
view of the Rocky Mountains. The waterfall in the atrium, he
admits, was inspired by a scene from ``Dune.'' His office
suite includes a ``war room'' with a console of TV screens
and electronic devices that would do that Starship Enterprise
proud.
No question about it, there are few chief executives who do
things quite like Glenn Jones. Writing as ``Yankee Jones'' in
a series of books he has published called Briefcase Poetry,
Jones might be talking of himself in a poem entitled
``Entrepreneur'': ``The dreamer is a practical man, he can do
things no one else can.'' And now he has the cash to turn
more of his dreams into reality.
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