d his profile, it would contribute to the sense that he had somehow been demoted, but it would lower the perception of loss. It was a highly personal question for me. Zeglis had had more to do with my promotion to executive vice president in November of 1997 than Armstrong, who had known me for less than a month at that point. I liked Zeglis and considered him a friend. But my job was to protect the company. So whereas in the 1997 annual report, Zeglis appeared standing beside Armstrong at the end of the letter to share- owners, in the 1998 report, I tucked him into an inside page, compar- ing cell phones with the head of the wireless business. When Armstrong decided to issue tracking stock for the wireless business in late 1999, the president of that division tried to shove Zeglis aside as Hindery had done. By then, however, Armstrong had learned a lesson from the Hindery saga. Zeglis stayed; the wireless head left. For his part, Zeglis followed the example set by Armstrong himself when he had been CEO of GM's tracking stock, Hughes Elec- Casting Is Everything 145 tronics: He never stopped trying to separate the wireless business even more decisively from its parent, AT&T. Meanwhile, TCI introduced cable telephone service when the merger closed, and by the end of 1998, it had nearly 100,000 custom- ers. But the consumer long-distance business received none of the benefit. The cable business took its new phone customers off whatever AT&T calling plan they were on. It bought its long-distance carriage from AT&T's business unit. Rather than using wireless or cable to get to its customers, AT&T Consumer Services watched those units take its customers away. AT&T's most profitable business became a wet nurse for units that were hemorrhaging losses. Consumer long-distance revenue dropped by more than half in just five years-from $23 billion in 1998 to $9.5 billion in 2003. Meanwhile, Armstrong had placed his trust in Hindery, who shared neither his vision nor his values. And he had made an enemy of Zeglis, who was now 