Cablevision CEO Confirms Desire To Make A Deal With Time Warner Cable

The $45 billion Comcast-Time Warner Cable (TWC) merger has been dead for two weeks and talk is already turning to the next deal. But this one has an entirely different flavor, in part because it covers just one market – New York – and in part because it was proposed on stage in the middle of a panel at the Internet & Television Expo in Chicago.

TWC head Rob Marcus joked about being “asked out on a date” to deflect the very public proposal made by Cablevision Systems CEO James Dolan, according to Digital Trends. The executive suggested that Cablevision and TWC could partner, rather than compete, though he didn’t get specific about what that partnership might look like.


Dolan made the kinds of claims we’re used to hearing when companies are publicly pitching consolidation: it could lead to more innovation and better pricing for customers. But the elephant in the room was the deal between TWC and Charter Communications, which had been in the works before the doomed deal between Comcast and Time Warner. When asked about whether those talks had been revived, CEOs of both companies declined to comment.

In any event, Dolan seemed to be uninterested in making deal with Verizon, with which Cablevision Systems competes. But absolute drubbing Comcast and Time Warner Cable suffered at the hands of the FCC seems not have tempered cable companies’ desire to merge.