Liberty Media Corporation
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| Public | |
| Traded as |
NASDAQ: BATRA, BATRK, FWONA, FWONK, LSXMA, LSXMB, and LSXMK OTCQB: and OTCQB: |
| Industry | Mass media |
| Founded | Spin-off from Tele-Communications Inc. (1991) |
| Headquarters | Douglas County, Colorado, United States |
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Key people
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John C. Malone (Chairman) Greg Maffei (President & CEO) |
| Products |
Movie production TV production Broadcasting Cable television Sport management |
| Revenue |  US$4.795 billion (2015) |
 US$950 million (2015) |
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US$64 million (2015) |
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| Total assets |
US$29.798 billion (2015) |
| Total equity |
US$10.933 billion (2015) |
| Owner | John C. Malone (Controlling Shareholder) |
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Number of employees
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3,423 (2016) |
| Divisions | List of divisions |
| Website | libertymedia |
Liberty Media Corporation (commonly referred to as Liberty Media or just Liberty) is an American mass media company controlled by chairman John C. Malone, who owns a majority of the voting shares.
Liberty Media began in 1991 as a spin-off of TCI, an American cable-television group. Peter Barton, hired by TCI's Malone, served as president until retiring in April 1997 to start an investment firm and spend time with his family.
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.
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 merged with 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 for use 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.
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Wikipedia