a firsthand briefing on the cable busi- ness from the people running it, the board decided to reject the Com- cast offer as "inadequate." But the board also had to concede that Comcast had effectively put AT&T Broadband into play. For example, two days after the Robertses' offer was made public, Armstrong re- ceived a call from AOL Time Warner's co-chief operating officer, Dick Parsons, who suggested that a merger of the two companies' cable properties would not only trump Comcast's offer but resolve their long-running dispute concerning Time Warner Entertainment (TWE). By the end of the week, Armstrong and Noski had dinner with AOL Time Warner CEO Gerry Levin at the New York Athletic Club. Joined by Parsons, co-chief operating officer Bob Pittman, and chief financial officer Mike Kelly, Levin pulled out all the stops. He spun a scheme under which AT&T would combine its cable systems with Time War- ner Entertainment's to form a new company, to be called AT&T Time Warner. The new company would embrace Armstrong's vision of a broadband services company providing communications, data, and entertainment services. The TWE problem would go away. AOL Time Warner would own the majority of the company, but AT&T's share- owners would have a significant minority position. Mike would be its chairman and Noski the CFO. Jim Robbins, the CEO of Cox Communications, also called Arm- strong and asked if they could do a deal. He offered to match Com- cast's offer, promised a greater commitment than Comcast to cable telephony, and left open such issues as the new company's name and management. But he also said that the Cox family needed to retain its supermajority voting stock, giving it effective control. Disney's CEO, Michael Eisner, wanted to talk about ways in which the two companies might work together and, not incidentally, expand the Mouse's programming on AT&T's cable systems. Bill Gates of- Credibility Breaks All Ties fered to increase Microsoft's existing $5 billion investment in AT&T if that would help its cable division 