Robert Smith

I don't think my kids know what a channel is.

I guess.

Then there were six of them.

They were free and they sucked.

So now Atari needs to make its own cartridge-based game.

And they need much, much more money than they needed for Hongpong, right?

Like, Sears Bank funding them isn't going to do it.

The capital costs are just too high.

Venture capital isn't big enough at this point to fund that.

They consider going public, but it doesn't work out.

So in 1976, Bushnell and Valentine decide that they need to sell.

They need to sell Atari to get the capital to take the next step.

And they look around at, you know, big incumbents who might buy them.

And one possibility is Warner Communications.

Based in New York, it owns movie studios, record labels, getting into cable TV at this time.

Yeah, it's a media company, essentially, a big media company.

Run by a guy named Steve Ross, who just coincidentally had recently taken his kids to Disneyland, where they spent a long time putting quarters into an Atari video game called Indy 800, a driving game.

So he... Had a steering wheel.

Had a steering wheel, I'm sure, yeah.

So good.