15 minutes later, i m off the phone, thinking to myself this guy knows what he doesn t know and he s in a hurry to find out. it s curiosity and humility. those two things are m.i.a. these days. it s a sad time but it s a reminder of what character and the leadership and presidency is all about. in the cable business, we often focus on what a president does. as you work on the baker buyography, one of the things many people don t understand is what didn t happen as a result of his presidency. everyone s wondering what s going to happen in the world. and nothing happened. that s part of the legacy, isn t it? well, that s right. the world changed completely. nothing bad happened. george h.w. bush did not want to spike the football. that was his phrase. at the end of the cold war. he understood very much the cost of the peaceful break you-up of
uncut in your home. all the naughty bits intact. and then september 1975 we debut t coast to coast with one of heavy weigh fights. mohamed ali at the end of the 40th round. before that you re counting growth if tens of thousands of subscribers. after that you re counting millions. that s day one for both businesses, hbo and the cable business. if what you see in the minutes to follow may quince you you re gone to sports heaven. there were these three giants, cbs, actiobc, nbc and t in connecticut somebody got a hold of a transponder.
of the great deals in history and they understood. they needed context. they needed to get in the context business and i think with time warner deal they have a third of the in this country area they are set up to be one of the most important companies in this country in the coming several decades and it will be interesting to talk to brian. it is a stunning story and they have not done anything wrong. thomas roberts, there s actually a part of this story that you ll like. brian roberts father decided to get in the cable business because he made belts and in the early 1970s, prototypes back in the early 1970s, they had the elastic waist on the pants. elastic waist, yeah. my lineage, i m related to brian roberts. my mother is hopeful as she is watching this morning.
the latest on unemployment numbers. yesterday the markets were mixed with the nasdaq closing in positive territory and four day rally we have been witnessed on wall street and jeff is live in london with the latest. jeff, good morning. reporter: yeah, good morning to you, thomas. retail sales and jobs numbers that the market will be watching as we have this little pause in upsides for markets at the moment. another fascinating story out there. comcast our parent here in the nbc universal stable is stepping up to buy time warner s cable business. $44 billion. it will give them a significant stake in this space now. that is interesting to the regulators because they will have 33 million subscribers. it also means they will have a third of the broadband market as delivered by a cable and further u.s. video subscriber. the regulators will take a look. comcast, at the moment, seems
have more access than people without money and the whole idea about the internet in the first place was that everybody have equal access. it s not just for rich people this shoots a hole in that there. there are businesses that are taking up 20%, 30% of the bandwidth to it s a business, just like the cable business is a business. you have to get, you know, people that go ahead and advertise on the business for it to go on. what s really going to happen here is i don t think anything s going to happen, because before net neutrality, the internet s been thriving. so i don t think there s going to be any changes, i don t think there s going to be any extra charges, i think that s just a scare tactic. the whole internet disagrees with you, and everything you read about net neutrality and what the internet is and what it s designed to do flies in the face. who pays you? i have my own business, so nobody s paying, there s no