• by Steven Rosenbaum , Featured Contributor, Yesterday

Leo Hindery’s career is full of milestones — leading TCI through its sale to AT&T, launching the YES Network with George Steinbrenner, racing at Le Mans, shaping Democratic strategy, and now serving as a trustee of the Sustainable Media Center (SMC). But what makes his story resonate today isn’t just what he built. It’s the conscience he brought to an industry too often defined by power and profit.

In a recent conversation with Gen Z advocate Emma Lembke of SMC, Hindery didn’t sound like a retired dealmaker. He sounded like a moral critic, warning about media’s drift and insisting that leadership is measured not only in dollars but in duty.

From Cable Consolidator to Moral Critic

Hindery came up modestly, raised in Seattle in the 1950s, was a veteran, and then was grateful just to get into Stanford's business school. His career began under Edmund Littlefield, one of America’s preeminent CEOs, whom Hindery still describes as his first and most important mentor. “It starts with a mentor,” he told Lembke. “You glom onto somebody you admire so much you don’t even ask how much they’re paid.”

Years later when head of TCI, Hindery took nine small Bay Area cable operators and merged them into one. “Even if you’re stupid you can make money with one competitor,” he admitted. “But it comes with tremendous obligation. Obligation to your employees and your community are transcendent. Don’t mess it up.” That duality — the inevitability of monopoly profits and the responsibility not to abuse them — became the central theme of his leadership.

The Great Sin

If there was one subject that lit him up, it was executive compensation. “The great sin is compensation,” he said flatly. “You’re not a partner if you make 435 times your average employee, you’re just not.” For Hindery, the line was clear: “If income ever goes above 20 to 1 against your average employee, you should look in the mirror and decide if you have the ethics for this industry.”

He contrasted that standard with today’s ratios — often 450 to 1 or higher — and called it not only economically unsound but “morally corrosive.” It is the kind of statement few media executives ever make, and even fewer repeat.

House of Cards

Asked by Lembke about today’s streaming economy, Hindery dismissed the arms race of platforms as unsustainable. “It’s fifty-four streaming services that do nothing different from the other fifty-three,” he said. “They will fail because there’s no difference between Netflix and Hulu.”

To a Gen Z interviewer who has grown up in that streaming universe, the warning carried weight. “Just because you have good programming tonight doesn’t mean you’ll have it tomorrow,” he added. “There’s no moat.”

Drawing the Line

Hindery’s sharpest example of responsibility came when he fought to keep Ultimate Fighting Championship off cable. “I abhor this thing called the UFC,” he told Lembke. “I think it’s an insult to society.” While he was in charge at TCI, the programming never aired.

But within days of merging into AT&T, the rules changed. “We merged on a Monday and they committed to us on Thursday,” Hindery recalled. “I wrote to my new chairman of AT&T, I said, how dare you. How dare you marginalize women.”

For Hindery, that episode captured the larger problem: when profit takes precedence, moral responsibility evaporates. “It’s a privilege to work in the media industry,” he said. “And it’s daunting to think how much you could screw it up.”

Steinbrenner in the Rain

Some of Hindery’s most memorable recollections came from the 2002 launch of the YES Network, where he partnered with Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. One story is as vivid as anything in his memoir could be. At a lunch before a stadium announcement, Steinbrenner suddenly fired staffers and ordered them outside. A torrential storm rolled in. “It was the worst rainstorm in the history of the planet,” Hindery remembered. “These three guys are standing out there in the rain waiting for George to invite them back in, and they got in the car… because he told them to get out of his eye and wait for him.”

The anecdote reveals both the volatility of Steinbrenner’s leadership and Hindery’s eye for the human detail. Power in sports and media, he seemed to be saying, could turn arbitrary in an instant — and people paid the price.

Lessons for Gen Z

Lembke pressed him on what her generation should take from his story. His advice was simple but pointed: “You have to start by believing it’s worthwhile to do it. If you believe that what you’re doing is powerful and important, then do it and do it.”

He reminded her that early in his career, every employee of his company became a shareholder. “If we were going to do well, we were all going to do well,” he said. “If we didn’t, we should all fail at the same time.” That ethic of shared success and shared responsibility is one he believes the industry has abandoned — and one he hopes Gen Z leaders will reclaim.

Why Now

Why does this matter in 2025? Because Hindery, now a trustee of the SMC, sees the current moment as make-or-break. Media once relied on scarcity — one cable operator in town, one newspaper, three networks. That scarcity created responsibility. Today’s abundance has created a race to the bottom, with violence, pornography, and exploitation filling the gap where purpose should be.

“With technology came responsibility,” he said. “And we’ve lost sight of that.”

At a time when democracy itself is strained by misinformation, Hindery believes media leaders can no longer hide behind market logic. The choices they make — in programming, in pay, in corporate culture — ripple outward into civic life.

A Different Kind of Legacy

Hindery will never be remembered for cowboy mythology or ruthless nicknames. His legacy is different: a voice of conscience in an industry that too often lost its way.

“It’s a privilege to work in the media industry,” he told Lembke. “And it’s daunting to think how much you could screw it up.”

The industry may have forgotten its conscience. Hindery hasn’t. And with his role on the SMC board, he’s betting that Gen Z leaders won’t forget it either.

Readers and view the entire interview here.