Even many sophisticated investors didn't bite. "People looked at it and said it was a bunch of cats and dogs," Dr. Malone said of Liberty's holdings, largely a pastiche of minority stakes in cable programming services.

It did not help that the Liberty prospectus was an inch thick. "If you had to disclose what 34 bits and pieces are, there is no way to make it simple," Dr. Malone explained. Another deterrent was the $256 price. "We did that specifically because we did not want to have a gazillion and one shareholders," Dr. Malone said. "The servicing costs are very high, so we kept the share price relatively high."

The price was not nearly high enough to deter Dr. Malone from buying in, however. Taking advantage of the rights offering, he swapped $16.5 million of T.C.I. stock -- roughly half his holdings -- for about 8.7 percent of Liberty's shares. Had all of the rights been exercised, he would have had only 3 percent of the company.

AND then there was the options deal. The way Dr. Malone tells it, the T.C.I. board simply could not find anyone else to run Liberty. "The T.C.I. board said somebody has to look after this," he said. "What they said to me was, 'If you look after this on a part-time basis, we will give you just an option, an upside.' It was intended to be 5 percent of the stock."

So in a deal in which he agreed to work one day a week for Liberty, Dr. Malone got options for 100,000 shares, exercisable in equal amounts over five years at the issue price of $256.