Report: Comcast, Charter Near Deal on Time-Warner

Bloomberg reports that Philly-based Comcast and Charter are near a deal, under which Charter would buy Time-Warner Communications—and then Comcast would buy Time-Warner’s New York, New England, and North Carolina cable operations from Charter.  “Comcast operates in 39 states including New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut and the Carolinas. The Philadelphia-based company is interested in Time Warner Cable’s markets that abut its current operations, said two of the people with knowledge of the matter. Acquiring those assets would give Comcast opportunities to cut costs and sell programming and advertising to larger swaths of people.”

Bloomberg says the deal could be worth about $16 billion: “Comcast and Charter have a framework agreement on what Comcast would pay for those three cable markets, said one of the people, though that number will depend on what Charter pays for Time Warner Cable. Time Warner Cable has about 3 million subscribers in those markets, another person said. Charter paid $1.63 billion last year for Cablevision Systems Corp.’s Optimum West assets, about $5,345 per subscriber, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Industries. At the same per-subscriber value, Time Warner Cable’s customers in those markets would be worth about $16 billion.”