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Monday, April 6, 2015

How Big Could Charter Cable Get

Considering that the FCC has yet to approve the Comcast-Time Warner Cable deal, Multichannel is already speculating just how big could Charter get.  Once that deal is approved, and many believe that if it wasn't the FCC would have already said no, Charter Cable would move forward with its deal for Bright House Networks and acquire subs from the TWC consolidation to exceed a 10 million cable subscriber base.  

Given Malone's penchant for growth, this domestic drive for a larger cable footprint could lead to more consolidation.  According to the article, the next targets could include "Suddenlink Communications (private), Mediacom Communications (private), Cable One (planned to be spun off from Graham Holdings as a separate public company this year) and Cablevision Systems (public), with the latter possibly involved in a later system swap with Comcast."  But first, Charter would have to successfully integrate the Bright House properties before chasing after these names.  

How would the cable landscape look after AT&T acquires DirecTV and Comcast acquires Time Warner Cable, here you go:

MVPD                                                  Subscribers
Comcast/Time  Warner  Merger*         30,000,000
AT&T/DirecTV  Merger*                         26,300,000
Dish Network                                           14,000,000
Charter/Bright  House Merger*           10,000,000+
Verizon                                                        5,600,000
Cox                                                               4,100,000