et gossip. Big chunks of their conversa- tion ended up in the story. Worse, the article contrasted Mandl's "flamboyant" style with that of his low-key boss. The story made it Don't Dance to the Music of Your Own Buzz look like he was not only running for CEO, but also essentially run- ning the company. AT&T headquarters reverberated to the sound of noses going out of joint. The board never formally named Mandl Al- len's successor. And that contributed to his decision less than a year later to leave the company to become CEO of Teligent, a now-defunct wireless start-up, setting the stage for the subsequent hiring of John Walter. The Media Noose Many CEOs put themselves in an ever-tightening noose by tying themselves to news cycles. Armstrong calculated that he had only ninety days to outline his strategy. Because he didn't take over until November I, 1997, that gave him until the end of January. Despite the holidays, he met his deadline and staged an analyst conference on January 26, 1998, to announce an impressive set of cost reduction targets, to be achieved largely through an early retirement offer that was wildly popular among employees. A series of quick acquisitions followed, including the largest collection of cable TV systems in the country. AT&T's revenue growth rate doubled in both 1998 and 1999. It looked as if Armstrong would succeed in rebuilding the venerable long-distance company around a promise of "one-stop shopping" for wired and wireless, voice and data communications, plus cable TV. Then the bottom fell out. We now know that the problems of late 2000 and 2001 were not perpetrated by any of the suspects we had identified three years ear- lier. The Bell monopolies were still not in the long-distance business in any significant way. People were still not making many phone calls over the Internet. But wireless calling plans, which essentially made long distance "free," were putting a big dent in the business. Since we owned the wireless company that introduced the first of those plans, and since ou