Cable controller
Malone makes waves as TWC waits
Don’t count out John Malone, the king of cable, just yet.
The Liberty boss is making a play to win whether or not Comcast’s $45 billion deal to acquire Time Warner Cable gets a rubber stamp or gets KO’d by the Feds.
Libertybacked Charter Communications — Malone’s socalled “horizontal acquisition machine,” moved into acquisition mode Thursday.
Bloomberg reports that the Connecticutbased cable operator is holding talks to acquire Syracusebased Bright House Networks to tuck another 2.5 million subscribers under its wing.
Charter rose 5.9percent to $193.46. Investors are swooning at the prospect of a fresh round of cable consolidation ahead of a decision on Comcast’s much chewedover deal to acquire New York City’s Time Warner Cable.
Independent telecom sector analyst Craig Moffett said the news sheds little light on whether Comcast’s big deal is kaput, but it is a significant chess move.
“This could be as a Plan B if the Comcast deal breaks, or it could be as a Step Two if it doesn’t. Either way, it doesn’t cost anything to talk and explore options,” Moffett told The Post Thursday,
If Time Warner Cable finds itself pursuing an independent future, then its most obvious acquisition partner would be Bright House, since they have a joint contentacquisition deal.
Bright House is owned by the Newhouse family’s Advance Publications — which is also a shareholder in Discovery Communications, another Malone company.
Cablevision popped 2.6 percent to $18.03. Comcast and Time Warner Cable both rose more than 2 percent in the session.
Bright House has customers in Florida, Detroit and California.
Charter, which currently reaches 4.4 million households, is set to grow as the result of a cascade of deals contingent on a Com castTime Warner Cable merger.