Kevin Maney, senior technology writer and columnist for USA Today, will talk business with Comcast CEO Brian Roberts in a live interview to be held on Wednesday, April 19, at 6:30 p.m. in Wong Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.
The Sloan School of Management organized and is hosting the face-to-face meeting between Maney, author of the critically acclaimed "The Maverick and His Machine: Thomas Watson Sr. and the Making of IBM" (2003), and Roberts, who is credited with transforming a minor Philadelphia cable company into a major media powerhouse.
Maney will interview Roberts on how he got where he is -- including how his company expanded to include ownership of the Philadelphia 76ers NBA basketball team as well as the Philadelphia Flyers NHL hockey team -- and how he imagines the future for Comcast and the rest of the global media industry.
Under Roberts' leadership, Comcast grew into a Fortune 100 company with 80,000 employees. Roberts is also chairman of the board of directors of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA) and previously served as chairman of NCTA from 1995 to 1996, when the landmark deregulatory 1996 Telecommunications Act became law.
Roberts was a founding co-chair of Philadelphia 2000, the nonpartisan host committee for the 2000 Republican National Convention. An All-American in squash, he earned a gold medal with the U.S. squash team in 2005 and silver medals at the 1981, 1985 and 1997 Maccabiah Games in Israel.
Maney is the author of the bestselling "Megamedia Shakeout: The Inside Story of the Leaders and the Losers in the Exploding Communications Industry" (1995).
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on April 12, 2006 (download PDF).
