Thank you, Charlie Rose, and thank you, Patrick Maines, Dick Wiley, and the Media Institute for this significant award.

I want you all to know that I am very fond of Charlie but my wife Suzanne, who is an Emmy Award winner with her show "Seeking Solution with Suzanne," and who is sitting right over there, actually adores Charlie. His program on public television starts at midnight in Philadelphia and is on until 1:00 a.m. in the morning. Suzanne never misses him, but certainly not as much as I miss our sex life.

I'm also a huge fan of Jim Kennedy. He has taken his company to a new level and he may well be the nicest guy, certainly the best athlete, in the whole cable industry. Congratulations, Jim.

In preparing for this talk, I asked Patrick if there is any specific question that he thought might be of particular interest to you. He then asked me:

"Did you think, when you bought that small cable system in Tupelo, Mississippi 35 years ago with 1200 customers, that one day your company would be on the verge of serving over 22 million subscribers?"

I answered him by saying, "Of course I did."

Now that's not quite correct. The fact that I found my way into the cable industry at all is just a bit of good luck. Having the instincts of an entrepreneur, willing to take a few risks, for some time I went from one business to another.

In fact, my first business when I got out of the Navy was making golf clubs. Since World War II had just ended and most of the manufacturing companies were still tooled up to build war materials, no one was producing golf clubs. However, my partner and I found a small metal shop that was willing to make some for us. We decided to develop a new kind of putter, a "centric" putter, where the shaft comes down just behind the middle of the club head.

One day, we learned that Bob Hope was in Philadelphia to do a show. So I went out to the Town Hall Theater on North Broad Street, and I brought my putter with me.

I had arranged with a friend who was a photographer for the Philadelphia Inquirer to get me backstage after the show to meet the star.

"Mr. Hope," I said, "I'm a veteran. I've started making golf clubs. You're a world-famous golfer. Would you mind if we took a picture of you holding this putter?"

He said, "Sure, kid," and he took the club, examined it, took some practice strokes, and we got wonderful pictures.

A short time later, I produced a brochure that I sent to all the pro shops across the country. It said, "Get on board, buy the Bob Hope Centric Putter," and there was this big picture of Bob holding my club.

Well, the orders came pouring in for hundreds of them, more than we ever anticipated. We needed many production runs to keep up.

Some time later, I was out playing a round of golf with a putter fresh from a new batch. I lined up from the edge of the green for a long putt, and hit the ball. Much to my amazement the putter shaft doubled back on itself like a curlicue!

I ran back to the clubhouse and called my partner. I said, "My club just bent like a pretzel"
"We are in serious trouble," he said. "I forgot to have the last batch of shafts heat-treated. They're all going to be like that."

Compared to golf clubs, this cable business looked a lot more stable. So I jumped at the chance to get into it.

Actually, by the time cable came into my life, I had been in the advertising business and the men's accessories business. I really didn't know much about cable, but then nobody else did either. It was called "community antenna television," CATV.

But one thing was very clear to me, people love choice and more is better and cable delivers more choice of movies, sports, news and it goes right into people's homes.

I've never regretted for a minute the decision to get into this business. I knew I did the right thing when in the early days I would go to Meridian or Sarasota or some of the other cities in which we were building, and I'd see people literally running after our installers' trucks shouting, "Will you come to my home next?"

Now, in the 21st century, I think the cable business is as sound and as promising as ever. Our company has been posting record cash flow growth and the best revenue results in our history.

Yet there are clouds hovering over our industry. All of us have suffered greatly in the stock market; cable stocks are down this year, on average, almost two-thirds in value.

I think the biggest problem we face is the overall weakness of our economy and the loss of confidence we have seen in the telecommunication sector, which has spilled over to us. This economic weakness, in turn, has been aggravated by an explosion of headlines about corporate malfeasance, which has severely undercut trust in American business.

Market sentiment is very negative right now. And in that kind of environment, Wall Street warns companies against capital investment. We understand the caution. But we also understand the cable business.

And we know that this is exactly the time when we should keep our systems in state-of-the-art condition, so that we can keep moving forward, sensibly, and with determination.

We have a great technological platform from which new products are continuously being born. History proves that our investments in more consumer choice always pay off. We can't sit on our laurels; we need to be ready to stay ahead of the pack, because every business we are in has competitors, and they are ready to pounce. So if we invest now, when the economy is weak, then we can be in the forefront of the recovery.

The other great overhang on investor confidence is this rash of incidents of corporate misbehavior. The accounting scandals, the alleged misappropriation of funds, the abuse of public and shareholder trust, many seem to believe this is a cancer that has infected all of American business.

However, I don't think these incredibly disturbing acts are anywhere near as pervasive as news reports might suggest. There are over 14,000 publicly traded companies in America and the number of those generating all the headlines is a tiny fraction of that. But the perception is otherwise.

So it will take a massive and coordinated effort on the part of all of us, government, the media, and business leaders, to restore a fundamental trust.

Investor confidence in the market is not going to be easily regained as long as the shareholder-public feels there is a continuing breach of faith. We must work together to heal this breach so people can once again be confident that their financial decisions are based on truthful information.

Now, despite all this turbulence in the past year, I can tell you that, without a doubt, we are more enthusiastic than ever about our pending acquisition of AT&T Broadband.

This is an extraordinary opportunity for our company, our shareholders and our employees. This is a business that we know intimately, and AT&T's systems are a great fit with ours.

In anticipation, we've been building an outstanding management team that we believe can succeed well in operating the largest cable company in America. This team is headed up by our son, Brian, who has been President of the company since 1990. He has proved himself well having been voted for a tour of duty as Chairman of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association and Chairman of Cable Labs.

He is recognized by his peers as a creative and excellent manager with lots of entrepreneurial genes. I think this is one case where nepotism turned out to be a good thing.

Over the years, I've seen a number of economic downturns, both in our industry and in our economy as a whole.

But through it all, I have always been an optimist, absolutely certain that the sun will rise again tomorrow. I am as confident as ever that cable's future will be something special, provided that we all keep reaching for that next horizon.

I was thinking about a story I heard on National Public Radio a couple of weeks ago. A reporter had interviewed dozens of Americans who had attained their hundredth birthday. She said that the most amazing thing was that hardly any of these people wanted to talk about what they'd gone through in their past. They all wanted to talk about tomorrow, about next year, about their future plans.

Now if that's what it takes to live to be a hundred, I'm going to keep on doing what I've always tried to do, look hard into the future with optimism, reaching out for that next horizon.

Thank you for this special award. It is greatly appreciated. Good night!