Time Warner Cable

Last Thursday night, CEO Susan Wojcicki claimed her company reaches more 18-49s on mobile alone than any TV network. Less than a day later, Time Warner Cable Media took up the charge, devoting its NewFronts presentation to making the case that TV is still by far the best way to reach audiences. And yes, that includes millennials.

As expected, the FCC on Thursday approved — with conditions — Charter Communications’ purchase of Time Warner Cable for $55.1 billion. The commission said an order detailing its reasoning and the conditions will be issued in the coming days.

Time Warner Cable conceded Thursday that it has failed in its efforts to win broad distribution for SportsNet LA, the TV channel owned by the Los Angeles Dodgers. Time Warner Cable made several pitches this month to other pay-TV providers — including AT&T’s DirecTV and Cox Communications — hoping to entice them to sign up for the Dodgers channel in time for the baseball season, which begins Monday.

Streaming TV has gotten popular as several online services such as Netflix make past seasons of TV shows available for binge-watching, while Hulu offers episodes from the current season. Now, some television companies are balking at giving viewers timely access to shows. The big worry: Making streaming TV too pleasant might encourage viewers to cut back or drop their cable service.

The carriage renewals cover more than 900,000 subscribers of Big 4 network affiliates in 16 markets across the country.

The new multi-year deal covers more than 3 million households in14 markets.

Dish’s Sling TV and Sony’s PlayStation Vue paved the way with innovative online services nearly a year ago. Last fall, Comcast, Time Warner Cable and its buyer-in-waiting, Charter Communications, followed suit with their own online bundles. These now represent the latest gambit from the quasi-monopolistic cable industry, which continues to shed TV customers as more people watch online video from a variety of new outlets.

Top executives from Comcast and Charter Communications said this week their companies are considering participating in next year’s incentive auction of 600 MHz broadcast TV spectrum. However, Time Warner Cable will not take part in the bidding. But TWC did hint that it could be open to launching a wireless service if its competitors do.

Time Warner Cable is going to start testing in New York City a cable service that doesn’t need a cable box and is delivered over their customers’ home Internet.

The Wall Street Journal reports digital video rights have become a major sticking point in the carriage dispute between Time Warner Cable and CBS, highlighting how new online TV services are adding more tension and complexity to the dealings between content owners and distributors. WSJ subscribers can read the full story here.

Lockwood Broadcast Group’s CW affiliate WCWG Greensboro/High Point/Winston-Salem, N.C. (DMA 46), has had its ch. 20.4 subchannel that carries Bounce TV added to Time Warner Cable, on its ch. 1260. The market, which encompasses 15 counties, is ranked 27th in the country for African-American households. Bounce television targeted to African Americans. “We’ve listened to our […]

The American Customer Satisfaction Index is out with its latest report, which ranks pay TV companies and Internet service providers in last place for customer satisfaction out of all the industries it measures, thanks mainly to poor customer service and higher prices. And once again, the cable company with the lowest marks was Time Warner Cable.

Time Warner Cable said its chief financial officer, Arthur Minson, would leave the company for another position, just days after the cable distributor agreed to be purchased by Charter Communications. The move is effective immediately.

The $56.7 billion deal is the latest in the sector as companies struggle to keep pace with the changing habits of how Americans watch and pay for television.

Time Warner Cable, blocked from merging with Comcast this week by federal officials, may have a new suitor: Charter Communications. Charter, the nation’s fourth largest cable company, has begun exploring a bid for Time Warner Cable, an industry official familiar with the matter said Friday.

Time Warner Cable is expected to shoulder the burden of its bad deal to acquire TV rights to Los Angeles Dodgers games by writing down the value of the asset by up to $1 billion, sources say. Time Warner Cable and Dodgers fans are facing a second season of silence from West Coast TV distributors who, so far, are balking at the price for carrying Time Warner Cable’s SportsNet LA, which carries the Dodgers games exclusively.

Diginet co-founder Martin Luther King III wants the MSO to carry the subchannels airing his programming in the country’s top two markets.

When the Los Angeles Dodgers take the field Wednesday against the Chicago White Sox in Arizona for their first spring training game, they’ll be invisible to most TV fans back home. For a second straight year, a dispute over the subscriber fees sought by Time Warner Cable, which operates the Dodgers’ SportsNet LA, is blacking out games to more than 60% of Los Angeles-area viewers.

One major media analyst says its time to pull back on cable stocks — with the advent of a big broadband regulatory push and a continued fleeing of customers. “With stocks having largely achieved our target prices, with cord-cutting risks mounting, and regulation clouding the path forward in broadband, it seems to us to be time to reduce exposure,” says Craig Moffett of MoffettNathanson Research. He downgraded the big three cable stocks — Comcast, Time Warner Cable and Charter — to “neutral.”

Time Warner Cable and Cablevision are partnering to provide advertisers with set-top box data that reveals granular viewing trends in the New York market. The cable operators said they will release a quarterly report based on audience tuning data on more than 300 TV networks, drawn from more than 3.5 million households that represent nearly half of the New York designated market area.

Time Warner’s dramas usually take place on its TV series, rather than its earnings calls. Not today. John Martin, CEO of Time Warner’s Turner Broadcasting division, struck back after Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen threatened to permanently drop Turner’s cable networks and said CNN is “not quite the product that they used to be.” “Ordinarily, we wouldn’t be in the practice of commenting publicly as it relates to what’s a private business dispute,” Martin said on Time Warner’s earnings call today. However, Ergen’s comments about the contract dispute during Dish’s earnings call yesterday were “very antagonistic and aggressive,” Martin said.

With much of Los Angeles unable to view Dodgers games throughout the season, Time Warner Cable on Monday said it has reached a deal with L.A. independent station KDOC to carry the final six regular season games. The Dodgers are in a race for the National League West division championship.

Comcast Corp. says it now expects its planned $45.2 billion acquisition of Time Warner Cable to be completed early next year. The expected timing is due to Comcast’s current expectations about regulatory approvals, the Philadelphia-based company said in a filing. Comcast previously said that the transaction may be completed by the end of 2014.

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti is asking the FCC to examine the stalemate between Time Warner Cable and other pay TV operators that’s prevented much of the region from watching Dodgers baseball this season.

The commission has asked Comcast Corp. to explain its Internet and content policies as part of the review of the company’s $45.2 billion bid to acquire Time Warner Cable. The FCC asked Comcast to provide information on a range of its business practices, from programming agreements with sports leagues to Internet traffic management and data caps imposed on customers.

he impasse over rights to the Los Angeles Dodgers, which has left 70% of television viewers in the market unable to access broadcasts of the hometown baseball team’s games, indicates that there may just be a limit to the stratospheric cost of sports rights.