How it started
1991–1999
Liberty Media began in March 1991 as a spin-off of Tele-Communications Inc. (TCI), a U.S. cable-television group. Peter Barton, hired by TCI's Malone, served as president until retiring in April 1997. The company took over TCI assets considered to have little value, but Barton completed "a deal every ten days for six years" and made the company a big success. Liberty was merged back into TCI in the mid-1990s. In 1995, Liberty Media acquired a 49% ownership stake in the Faith & Values Channel (which would later be known as the Hallmark Channel), and took over operational control of the network, adding more secular and family-oriented programming. It was rebranded as the Odyssey Network in 1996. On March 13, 1998, Liberty Media Group and TCI Group announced the merger of Encore and STARZ! into a single company—Encore Media Group, owned by Liberty. Encore was taking advantage of the growth of digital cable, while TCI, which had previously owned twenty percent of Encore, was more interested in traditional cable.
After U.S. Department of Justice approval that required TCI to sell its 23.5% interest in Sprint Corporation PSC, TCI was acquired by AT&T on March 9, 1999, for approximately $48 billion. Liberty Media merged with TCI Ventures Group LLC (TCIVA), TCI's telephone and Internet businesses, and the resulting company became part of AT&T, giving Liberty Media $5.5 billion to repurchase stock or buy other companies. AT&T bought the other TCI businesses—@Home Corp., National Digital Television Center and Western Tele-Communications Inc.—for $2.5 billion in cash. TCI chairman Malone, who became head of the new company, said buyers would not want all of TCI, but they would be interested in Liberty Media. Malone wanted to start a finance unit similar to GE Capital, which could start new cable or Internet services. TCI had already planned digital cable set-top boxes.
On September 28, 1998, Liberty Media announced the formation of Liberty Interactive, a company which would take advantage of new technologies such as set-top boxes to develop interactive programming. The company would own 86% of TCI Music Inc. (NASDAQ symbol: TUNE/TUNEP). In 1999, E! president and CEO Lee Masters became the company's CEO.
On June 2, 1999, Liberty announced that it would acquire the Associated Group for $2.8 billion.
On September 10, 1999, Liberty Media Group renamed TCI Music to Liberty Digital Inc. (NASDAQ symbol: LDIG), with the new company trading on NASDAQ's National Market tier, after Liberty Media traded most of its Internet content, interactive television assets, and rights to provide AT&T's cable systems with interactive services, in addition to cash and notes valued at $150 million, for TCI Music stock. Masters, who became Liberty Digital's CEO, told The Wall Street Journal that the new company had a value of $1 billion, $650 million of that from the interactive unit of Liberty Media, which had also used the name Liberty Digital. Liberty Digital lost $244 million with revenue of $66 million in 1999, thanks to investments in struggling Internet businesses homegrocer.com, drugstore.com, TiVo and iVillage. In August 2000, the company bought a 50% stake in the Sony Pictures-owned Game Show Network because of its interactive features.
From Wikipedia’s article on Liberty Media, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2