Marc Nathanson

Marc Nathanson (May 12, 1945) is an American entrepreneur. He is best known for his founding of Falcon Cable, which he sold in 1999 for $3.7 billion. He is also known as an investor and philanthropist.

Nathanson was born to a Jewish family in Los Angeles and raised in Glencoe, Illinois and Highland Park, Illinois. His father, Don Paul "D.P." Nathanson was an investor in the radio and cable industry, operated an advertising agency, and was the publisher of Radio Showmanship, a magazine that focused on how to use radio for advertising. His great uncle was Nathan Nathanson, the founder of Famous Players. Nathanson graduated from Highland Park High School and graduated the University of Denver in 1967. His first job was as a door-to-door salesman selling cable to people in their homes. In 1969 he took a job with Cypress Communications Corporation in Malibu, California, where he then became head of marketing, which was sold to Warner Cable in 1973. He also earned an MA from the University of California Santa Barbara.

After working with Able Cable, Nathanson became the vice-president of marketing and programming for TelePromptTer in 1972. In 1975 he left the company to start his own firm called Falcon Cable, with a self-investment of $25,000. He then received a $2 million investment from his father and father-in-law, in addition to $6 million from a bank loan. The first cable systems he ran were in Gilroy, Porterville and San Luis Obispo, California. The umbrella corporation for the cable company and Nathanson's other ventures was Falcon Holding Group, which Nathanson served as president for until 1999. The corporation included Falcon International Communications and Falcon International. He also served as the company's CEO from 1975 until its sale in 1999. From 1988 to 1999 he also served as Chief Executive Officer and President of Enstar Communications Corp. He served as Chairman of the Board for each of the companies as well.

Falcon Cable grew to over one million subscribers in 26 states between the early 1980s and 1992, becoming the largest independent cable company in California. According to the Los Angeles Times, "While many larger cable TV companies have scrambled to wire major metropolitan areas with flashy, 75-channel, state-of-the-art cable TV systems, Falcon has found success in operating no-frills systems in areas that get poor TV reception."

Falcon also purchased other smaller cable companies in order to enter new markets. The Falcon Group formed in 1984 with Nathanson as "co-owner of the cable company along with other members of his family and Mutual Life Insurance of New York, or MONY. [It] was formed in 1984 after Nathanson and his partners paid $50 million for 18 cable systems in seven states that were owned jointly by Warner Communications and American Express," according to the Los Angeles Times. Nathanson was a part of larger mergers between cable entities during the 1990s as well. In 1998 Tele-Communications Inc took a 47% stake in Falcon, and the following year the company was sold to Paul Allen's Charter Communications for $3.7 billion after initial reports that the price would be closer to $3.6 billion. The deal provided Nathanson with the second largest stock holding among the Charter shareholders. According to the St. Louis Business Journal, the deal made "Charter the fourth-largest cable TV operator in the country, with 5.5 million customers."

Twenty-four years after founding Falcon Cable, Nathanson sold the company for $3.7 billion to Charter Communications. He invested the profits from the sale into his investment firms Mapleton Investments and Mapleton/RDS Real Estate Group, which has investments in industries ranging from radio to real estate to waterless urinal companies with Falcon Waterfree Technologies, which he first invested with in 2000. He is currently Chairman of each firm. Falcon Waterfree Technologies is the largest manufacturer of waterless urinals in the world.

Nathanson became Vice-Chairman of Charter Communications upon the sale of Falcon and a director of the board, until 2008. He also served as Director of the National Cable Television Association and a trustee of the Aspen Institute. He had also previously served as President of the California Cable Television Association, as a Member of Cable Pioneers, and founded both the Cable Television Administration and Marketing Society (CTAM) and the Southern California Cable Television Association. In addition he is Co-Chair of the Pacific Council on International Policy, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the World Affairs Council, and several charity boards in southern California. He is also a member of the board of directors for the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

During the Clinton Administration, Bill Clinton appointed him to a three-year term on the Board of Governors of International Broadcasting of the United States Information Agency. He served as Chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors during the Clinton and Bush Administrations, is a member of the American Democracy Institute, the U.S. Institute of Peace's International Advisory Council, and the USC Annenberg School of Communications. His tenure as Chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors lasted from 1995 to 2002, and included leading the Broadcasting Board of Governors through its international response to the September 11th attacks.

He has said of the role of the Board that, "The role of U.S. international broadcasting today is as important as ever. It plays an important part in the broad support of democracy and the open exchange of accurate and objective news in countries and regions of the world where, because of geographic, developmental, or political reasons, there is a dearth of free and open information. U.S. international broadcasting empowers and educates. And in many cases, it is the only alternative voice." According to the Aspen Institute, "In 2012, Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, appointed Nathanson as her representative to the Board of the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii ... He is currently Vice Chair of the National Chair of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and was founding Chair of the Homeland Security Advisory Council (HSAC) for Los Angeles."

He has said of the role of the Board that, "The role of U.S. international broadcasting today is as important as ever. It plays an important part in the broad support of democracy and the open exchange of accurate and objective news in countries and regions of the world where, because of geographic, developmental, or political reasons, there is a dearth of free and open information. U.S. international broadcasting empowers and educates. And in many cases, it is the only alternative voice." Nathanson was also an early supporter of Barack Obama during his 2008 presidential nomination fight.

Nathanson bequeathed the endowment for the Marc Nathanson Fellowship program at the University of Denver, Nathanson's alma mater. According to the program description, "The Marc Nathanson Fellowship was first awarded in 2011 and has been awarded each subsequent year to a high-achieving, second-year MA student at the Korbel School of International Studies. Working with the Office of the Dean and Sié Center, the Nathanson Fellow is responsible for planning two annual events: together with the Aspen Institute, the Aspen Institute's annual Dialogue on Diplomacy and Technology (ADDTech), and the Public Diplomacy Speaker Series hosted by the Sié Center." He is also the namesake and endowering patron of the Nathanson Fellowships at USC, for which Nathanson was acknowledged by President George W. Bush during a 2002 speech commemorating the 60th anniversary of Voice of America.

Following a $10 million donation of art to the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, the museum named a gallery for he and his wife. He has also served as a trustee for UCLA, USC and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. In 2006 they also financed the purchase of a series of prints by Edward Ruscha for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He has also been a patron and sponsor for exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, including a retrospective of Andy Warhol.

Nathanson and his wife have also hosted fundraisers for Los Angeles cultural institutions like the Los Angeles Music Center Opera in their home. Their foundation, the Jane and Marc Nathanson Family Foundation, both invests charitably and sponsors scientific studies into environmental problems like water shortages and usage efficiency. They are also known for being early supporters of AIDS victims during the early years of the epidemic. At UCLA an endowment produced their namesake Jane and Marc Nathanson Family Professor in Psychiatry chair.

Nathanson is a member of the Cable TV Hall of Fame and in 1994 he was Inc. Magazine's Entrepreneur of the Year. According to the Milken Institute, "Nathanson is a recipient of Global Green's Millennium Award and the Environmental Media Association's Lifetime Achievement Award for his environmental work."

Nathanson's wife is Jane Nathanson, a psychologist and philanthropist, whom he met in college. Their son, Adam Nathanson, married Lauren Waisbren in a Jewish ceremony in 2010 and is the founder of radio station owner and operator Mapleton Communications.