Gentleman In the Lead.

The company Ralph Roberts built has offered a model of stability through the fast, turbulent decades that have filled cable's history

TENSION HAD REACHED AN ALL-TIME HIGH IN the executive conference room of Comcast Corp., where principals were wrestling with the idea of bidding for QVC. The cable shopping channel's proposed merger with CBS was the talk of Wall Street, where investors relished the idea of combining QVC chairman Barry Diller's renowned programming skills with the foundering CBS empire.

The deal wasn't such good news for Comcast, which would se