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Charter to buy Time Warner Cable (& continue with BrightHouse acquisition)

Thundershock MN

By Thundershock MN
in General TV

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ns8401 Station Group CEO

ns8401 846

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I know there is some discussion in the Comcast/TWC thread. But, this probably warrants its own thread as the deal is now official.

 

Also, worth noting that Charter will continue with their deal to acquire BrightHouse Networks. That deal was originally contingent upon the Comcast/TWC closing.

 

I guess I'm gonna become a Charter customer... I didn't even know BrightHouse was going away...
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ToriElectra News Director

ToriElectra 291

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Bright House had a symbiotic relationship with Time Warner- it was formed out of Advance-Newhouse's cable holdings along with some scattered TWC systems (including ones inherited from ATC, Time Inc's cable arm); hence Bay News 9 and CF News 13 escaping the YNN and TWC News rebrandings. Outside of Florida they didn't have much; I believe some of their areas included Indiana and near Detroit. From what I've read, Advance/Newhouse will still have a minor stake in the merged company.

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ns8401 Station Group CEO

ns8401 846

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Bright House had a symbiotic relationship with Time Warner- it was formed out of Advance-Newhouse's cable holdings along with some scattered TWC systems (including ones inherited from ATC, Time Inc's cable arm); hence Bay News 9 and CF News 13 escaping the YNN and TWC News rebrandings. Outside of Florida they didn't have much; I believe some of their areas included Indiana and near Detroit. From what I've read, Advance/Newhouse will still have a minor stake in the merged company.

 

I live in Metro Detroit in a pocket of Bright House (only a couple cities have it as their contract company) surrounded by either Charter or Comcast. The vast majority of homes in the Detroit market have Comcast.
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mike91 Primary Anchor

mike91 66

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I wonder what will happen to TWC's cable properties (TWC Sportsnet & the TWC News channels) as part of this deal.

 

I would say Charter would keep the news channels and the lower performing sports channels. Who the hell is going to buy those?

 

The higher performing sports channels (SNY, SportsNet LA) I could see going either way. Sure, Charter doesn't have any of these, but they are lucrative and bring in a lot of money, so I could see them keeping them. But, Charter could just as easily decide that they don't fit into their corporate plans and get rid of them and bring in a ton of cash. I would say Comcast would be the obvious suitor considering they already partially own SNY and they have other sports channels in California (although, I don't know how much of a presence Comcast has cablewise in the LA area). FOX, I doubt would go for them, considering they already have sports properties in LA and NYC. Root Sports could be a possibility for LA, but do they really want to bother having a small percentage in SNY? Don't think they would. I'm going to guess that Charter keeps all the sports nets.

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A3N Station Group CEO

A3N 996

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I would say Charter would keep the news channels and the lower performing sports channels. Who the hell is going to buy those?

 

The higher performing sports channels (SNY, SportsNet LA) I could see going either way. Sure, Charter doesn't have any of these, but they are lucrative and bring in a lot of money, so I could see them keeping them. But, Charter could just as easily decide that they don't fit into their corporate plans and get rid of them and bring in a ton of cash. I would say Comcast would be the obvious suitor considering they already partially own SNY and they have other sports channels in California (although, I don't know how much of a presence Comcast has cablewise in the LA area). FOX, I doubt would go for them, considering they already have sports properties in LA and NYC. Root Sports could be a possibility for LA, but do they really want to bother having a small percentage in SNY? Don't think they would. I'm going to guess that Charter keeps all the sports nets.

 

FOX might have some interest if the price is right. Comcast doesn't operate/own CSN's in markets other than the ones they operate in. Root Sports... possibly, but I don't know if they are willing to pony up that kind of cash for the rights.

 

I still think that Comcast is lurking in the water. While the Comcast-TWC merger did not go through, i'm sure they're hoping that Charter-TWC goes through so they can swap some cable systems. Comcast wants L.A. and N.Y. for sure, and in reality the Southern California market makes sense geographically and business wise for them. They already have two NBC O&O's (KNBC & KNSD), and could pick up two Sportsnet channels- three if you count the TWC Sports channel they have dedicated to CIF sports in the region (including the San Diego extension of TWC Sports- which is just an extension of the L.A. TWC sports).

P.R. move. Plain and simple.
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sanewsguy Station Group CEO

sanewsguy 509

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I want to hear from an actual Charter Cable customer. What do you think about their service provided and also their customer service. Are they as bad as Comcast? Because I've had bad experiences with Time Warner and of course Comcast is always in the news, but I never seem to hear much about Charter.

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Mrtraveler01 Station Group CEO

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Bright House had a symbiotic relationship with Time Warner- it was formed out of Advance-Newhouse's cable holdings along with some scattered TWC systems (including ones inherited from ATC, Time Inc's cable arm); hence Bay News 9 and CF News 13 escaping the YNN and TWC News rebrandings. Outside of Florida they didn't have much; I believe some of their areas included Indiana and near Detroit. From what I've read, Advance/Newhouse will still have a minor stake in the merged company.

So does that mean they'll keep the Bright House name?

 

Also have to wonder about Bay News 9 and News 13 Orlando since those stations are pretty successful.

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stevieboy247 News Director

stevieboy247 42

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FOX might have some interest if the price is right. Comcast doesn't operate/own CSN's in markets other than the ones they operate in. Root Sports... possibly, but I don't know if they are willing to pony up that kind of cash for the rights.

 

I still think that Comcast is lurking in the water. While the Comcast-TWC merger did not go through, i'm sure they're hoping that Charter-TWC goes through so they can swap some cable systems. Comcast wants L.A. and N.Y. for sure, and in reality the Southern California market makes sense geographically and business wise for them. They already have two NBC O&O's (KNBC & KNSD), and could pick up two Sportsnet channels- three if you count the TWC Sports channel they have dedicated to CIF sports in the region (including the San Diego extension of TWC Sports- which is just an extension of the L.A. TWC sports).

P.R. move. Plain and simple.

 

I doubt Charter will award Comcast the New York and LA units.

 

As far as what mike91 said, I could see the sports channels being sold, but I don't think Fox will go after them. They better hope though that they don't lose the broadcast rights to the Clippers.

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ToriElectra News Director

ToriElectra 291

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It'll likely be rebranded as Charter Sports, same thing'll likely happen to TWC SportsNet and some of the other scattered TWC sports channels. As for the news nets, I think they might go with "Charter News" or something like that, and that'll include the Bright House nets. (It'd be real nice if they had JC Burns did those graphics like he did for seemingly every channel but NY1 prior to the YNN idea.)

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Engineer57 Assignment Editor

Engineer57 2

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Two idle questions:

 

1. Given the public strife over this kind of megadeal and the cost of entering into huge mergers that get spiked by the regulatory agencies, would it be a safer growth strategy for large extant cable conglomerates to eat up multiple smaller companies rather than shooting for the moon in one fell swoop?

 

2. Given the money involved in these transactions in comparison to the relatively paltry sums involved in local TV station transactions, would it occur to cable systems that own station groups, namely Block and Bend to divest of the local stations and become a purer cable play in hopes of getting a much bigger payout from a Comcast or Charter?

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mixduptransistor

mixduptransistor 0

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Bright House had a symbiotic relationship with Time Warner- it was formed out of Advance-Newhouse's cable holdings along with some scattered TWC systems (including ones inherited from ATC, Time Inc's cable arm); hence Bay News 9 and CF News 13 escaping the YNN and TWC News rebrandings. Outside of Florida they didn't have much; I believe some of their areas included Indiana and near Detroit. From what I've read, Advance/Newhouse will still have a minor stake in the merged company.

 

This is close, but wrong on a few key points. All of the Bright House systems were formerly Time Warner Cable systems. For a decade or two the Advance/Newhouse Partnership systems were just rolled up into TWC, and TWC was technically a partnership between A/N and Time Warner, Inc. Back in the very early 00s, Advance/Newhouse wanted to manage their systems, so they split them back out. However, they kept other key parts of the partnership around. Primarily, TWC buys programming for Bright House (so, Bright House is essentially a division of TWC when buying programming) and TWC provides internet backbone services (though BHN has been building up their own infrastructure lately) and Bright House uses TWC's software for customer set top boxes.

 

Also, Advance/Newhouse will have something like a 16% stake in Charter when this deal is through, and Liberty Broadband (controlled by John Malone, and who controls Charter now via a 25% stake) will have something like a 19% stake. Liberty will have 3 seats on Charter's Board and Advance/Newhouse will have 2 seats on Charter's board. They will have a very significant amount of control over the new Charter.

 

 

 

I want to hear from an actual Charter Cable customer. What do you think about their service provided and also their customer service. Are they as bad as Comcast? Because I've had bad experiences with Time Warner and of course Comcast is always in the news, but I never seem to hear much about Charter.

 

Ok, so I'm in a very unique situation. I've been both a Charter and Bright House customer, within the past year, so I can give you some insight. Charter is the cable provider for the suburbs of Birmingham, AL, and Bright House is the cable provider for the city proper (Birmingham being a key market for Charter is probably part of why Bright House was attractive).

 

5-6 years ago and further back, Charter was awful. Just utterly awful. One of the key things to keep in mind about Charter (and cable in general) is that location matters a lot, so one area may be bad and another not so much. Charter's Birmingham market had been pieced together over the late 90s by buying up several systems. TCI, AT&T, Marcus Cable, lots of small local companies, all were represented. Eventually, though, when the current CEO took over it was a noticeable change. over the past 2-3 years, I never had an outage on Charter, and their pricing was simple and transparent.

 

Bright House has been largely great. I moved from the suburbs into town in November and switched to BHN. BHN service is great, no outages, great channel selection, etc. but they are super expensive. Almost twice as expensive for lower tiers than Charter, but closer to competitive when you get into the higher internet and channel tiers.

 

Overall, as a resident of a market that is Charter/BHN split, I am neutral. I don't think it will be bad, and neither company is so bad now that they will be drastically improved.

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LoadStar News Director

LoadStar 363

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Does this mean that People with charter can get TWC News?

TWC's news channels are purely regional. You can see their regional news channels listed on the front page of http://www.twcnews.com/.

 

If you are outside of one of those regions, even if you are on Time Warner Cable, you don't get a TWC news channel. The same would apply to all of the Charter regions as well.

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TheRolyPoly Station Group CEO

TheRolyPoly 1847

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TWC's news channels are purely regional. You can see their regional news channels listed on the front page of http://www.twcnews.com/.

 

If you are outside of one of those regions, even if you are on Time Warner Cable, you don't get a TWC news channel. The same would apply to all of the Charter regions as well.

 

Unless if its NY1, in which it can be seen in North Carolina and Florida.

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LoadStar News Director

LoadStar 363

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Unless if its NY1, in which it can be seen in North Carolina and Florida.

Huh. Really? I did not know that.

 

I wonder why they carry NY1 down there... isn't it really exclusively NY-focused coverage?

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mrschimpf Station Group CEO

mrschimpf 2058

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Huh. Really? I did not know that.

 

I wonder why they carry NY1 down there... isn't it really exclusively NY-focused coverage?

 

It's the same NY1 as in New York, just with generic PSA's and cheery 'Time Warner employees do charity work' ads over the ad breaks.

 

And even under Charter, NY1 is staying. TWC wanted to turn it into something like "Time Warner News New York" a few years back and everyone pushed back against it being genericized. Officially it's "Time Warner Cable News NY1", but nobody but the guy who writes the channel's PR uses that name.

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