time warner cable

History

Time Warner Cable was formed in 1989 through the merger of Time Inc.'s cable television company, American Television and Communications Corp., and Warner Cable, a division of Warner Communications.

Acquisition of Adelphia

On July 31, 2006, Time Warner Cable and Comcast completed a deal to purchase Adelphia for $17 billion [1]. Time Warner Cable will gain 3.3 million of Adelphia's subscribers, a 29 percent increase, while Comcast will gain 1.7 million subscribers. Time Warner Incorporated is giving Adelphia stockholders 16% stock of Time Warner Cable, and Adelphia is required to sell at least one-third of the Time Warner Cable stock it received within three months of the offering.

As well as Adelphia's coverage being divided up, Time Warner Cable and Comcast have also agreed to exchange some of their own subscribers in order to consolidate key regions, an example of this is the Los Angeles market, which was mostly covered by Comcast and Adelphia, is now under Time Warner Cable. Much of the Houston area, which was under Time Warner, will be under Comcast [2]. The change in the Houston market, which is expected to take place at least by January 2007, will take place when federal regulators approve of the change.

Advance/Newhouse and Time Warner

Some of the regional cable system clusters operated by Time Warner Cable are owned by the Time Warner Entertainment - Advance/Newhouse Partnership (TWEAN). In 2002, Advance/Newhouse Communications, unhappy with some of the operating policies of Time Warner Cable in the AOL Time Warner era, forced a restructuring of the TWEAN partnership such that Advance/Newhouse would actively manage and operate a portion of the jointly owned cable systems equal to their percentage of equity. Under this arrangement, Advance/Newhouse enjoys the proceeds of their actively managed systems rather than simply a percentage of the partnerships total earnings. The majority of the affected systems are in the Tampa and Orlando markets under the Bright House Networks brand.

The value of this deal is that it allows Advance/Newhouse to more directly control their cable investments without having to completely unravel the TWEAN partnership, which does bring some benefits via Time Warner's development and purchasing clout.

Sprint Nextel Venture

In late 2005, TWC and several other cable companies formed a venture with Sprint Nextel. This caused TWC customers to receive a full suite of products, linking in-home and out-of-home entertainment, information, and communications services. All of this was included in the new "Quadruple Play", similar to the Triple Play but an addition of new services through Sprint Nextel.

Start Over

Start Over allows customers to jump to the beginning of a program in progress without any preplanning or in-home recording devices and is available to digital cable subscribers at no additional charge.

History

Start Over was first launched to customers in South Carolina in November 2005. Time Warner Cable announced Start Over will become available this summer to customers in Greensboro, North Carolina; Rochester, New York; and San Antonio, Texas. In South Carolina, Time Warner Cable has made the Start Over functionality available on select programming from 62 networks.

Beginning in June, Time Warner Cable will deploy Start Over to customers in San Antonio. Deployments will continue throughout the summer into Rochester, followed by Greensboro. The service will be systematically rolled out in each of these divisions, launching neighborhood by neighborhood until Start Over is available to all customers in the market. Time Warner Cable expects to launch Start Over to customers in another three to four divisions later this year.

About It

Start Over is enabled by a software upgrade to the existing video on demand (VOD) platform and to the installed base of digital set top boxes. The Start Over system instantaneously captures live television programming for immediate, on demand viewing.

When tuning to a Start Over-enabled show in progress, customers are alerted to the feature through an on-screen prompt. By pressing "Select" on the remote control, the program is restarted from the beginning. Commercials will appear in the same sequence of the show as they would have in the initial telecast. Start Over-enabled programs can be restarted within the shows' telecast window.

Statistics

Within six months Start Over has become one of the most popular advanced services launched by Time Warner Cable. Seventy percent of those able to use Start Over are doing so about seven times each month and more than two-thirds use Start Over three times per week.

Carriage controversies

• When the CW (which is half-owned by Time Warner) launched on September 18, 2006, a number of TWC systems did not carry the digital subchannels that the CW uses as affiliates in some areas. Among the stations whose subchannels are not carried on TWC are WCBD (DT2), Charleston, South Carolina; KVIA (DT2), El Paso, Texas; WLIO (DT2), Lima, Ohio; and KESQ (DT2), Palm Springs, California.
• On August 1, 2006, Time Warner Cable removed the NFL Network from its lineup. TWC has carried the National Football League's 24-hour network on a digital tier, however, it claims that the NFL now insists on making it into a premium channel on its systems.[3] As a result, NFL Network lost millions of cable households just as it is beginning a new contract to air eight regular-season games a year. On August 3, 2006, the FCC ordered Time Warner Cable to reinstate the NFL Network on those systems from which it had removed the channel, upholding the complaint that they had failed to comply with the required 30 day notice period required to be given to customers, before removing a channel.[4] After considering its options, Time Warner Cable restored the channel at midnight on August 4, 2006, with an onscreen notice warning the viewers the channel would be removed in 30 days. Time Warner Cable issued a petition to the FCC in an attempt to reverse the decision citing "severe, immediate and irreparable harm" to Time Warner Cable and its customers, and threatening legal action if the FCC did not reach a decision by 10am on August 7, 2006. On that day, the FCC responded to Time Warner Cable's petition by upholding the Commission's initial ruling that the NFL Network remain on the air for the required period. After two extensions of the deadline, TWC finally pulled the plug on September 15, 2006. "We will continue to negotiate and remain hopeful that an agreement will be reached that is beneficial to all," the network said in a statement that flashed on the screen in place of NFL Network.
• On May 12, 2000, ABC network stations were unavailable to TWC subscribers for 19 hours. The pullout, in a middle of a "sweeps" ratings period, came because TWC could not agree with ABC's parent company, the Walt Disney Company, on whether to carry some specialty channels, like ESPN Classic and SoapNet. Those tuning in to stations like WABC in New York City or KABC in Los Angeles instead saw this static message, "Disney is taking ABC away from you." Thousands of people bought antennas from Radio Shack and other stores to view ABC programs, and KABC radio in L.A. carried the audio feed of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, then the network's highest-rated program. Amidst huge public outcry, and threats of Congressional action, TWC and ABC reached a new deal to put the ABC stations back on the systems.
• The majority of Time Warner Cable markets still do not have access to StarzHD or Starz on Demand. This is due to a long running dispute over carriage of Starz on Demand. Starz! require this to be free to their subscribers, however Time Warner Cable insist on packaging all Premium On Demand channels in a separate tier which would require an additional monthly fee for Starz subscribers. Time Warner Cable will start carrying Starz! On Demand beginning November 1st.
• Sometime in Late September 2006, Time-Warner threatened to pull Fox-owned stations: KDFW & KDFI until negotiations were made on October 4, 2006. Before that, a message was scrolling on a leased access channel saying, "Please be advised that pending progress of ongoing negotiations, Time Warner may be forced to discontinue carriage of KDFW and KDFI. While we remain hopeful that further negotiations are being made to keep KDFW and KDFI programming in the lineup, we're letting customers know in advance of this issue".

Cable Clusters

Info as of 12/31/05. More than 75% of the company's customers are in systems of 300,000 subscribers or more.

These numbers do not reflect the addition of 3.5 million Adelphia customers as of August 1, 2006.

• Alabama Cluster
  • Alabama - Dothan
• California Cluster (700,000 customers)
  • California - Desert Cities, Los Angeles, San Diego
• The Carolinas Cluster (1.763 million customers)
  • North Carolina - Charlotte, Raleigh, Greensboro, and Wilmington
  • South Carolina - Columbia, Florence, Summerville, and Myrtle Beach.
• Florida Cluster
  • Florida - Lake City/Live Oaks (Merging with Comcast) and St. Augustine/Palatka
• Hawaii Cluster (401,000 customers)
  • Hawaii - Hilo, Kahului, Kauai, Kona, Lahaina, Lanai, Molokai, Oahu
• Louisiana Cluster
  • Louisiana - Monroe, Shreveport (trading with Comcast for the Dallas market area.
• Mississippi Cluster
  • Mississippi - Jackson
• New England Cluster
  • Maine - Portland
  • New Hampshire - Berlin, Keene
• New York Cluster
  • New Jersey - Bergen County, Hudson County
  • New York - Albany, Binghamton, Buffalo, Delaware County, Greene County, Mount Vernon, New York City (Manhattan, Queens, Staten Island, most of western Brooklyn), Orange County, Poughkeepsie, Rochester, Sullivan County, Syracuse, Ulster County
  • Massachusetts - Pittsfield, Orange, Athol
  • Pennsylvania - West Philadelphia, Erie County
• Ohio Cluster (1.476 million customers)
  • Ohio - Akron, Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton, and Youngstown. Cleveland will soon be added as a result of the Adelphia/Comcast deal.
• Oklahoma Cluster
  • Pryor
• Texas Cluster (2,076,000)
  • Texas - Austin, Beaumont/Port Arthur, Corpus Christi, Dallas (Begining Late 2006 from Comcast), El Paso, Harlingen, Houston, Laredo, Rio Grande Valley, San Antonio, and Waco
• West Virginia Cluster
  • West Virginia - Clarksburg
• Wisconsin Cluster (566,000 customers)
  • Wisconsin - Green Bay and Milwaukee

Divisions

Time Warner Cable's 53 Divisons, from Time Warner's 2006 Corporate Profile and from official webstie, through seaerching locations

• Oceanic Time Warner Cable (Hawaii)
• Time Warner Cable Alabama
• Time Warner Cable Albany
• Time Warner Cable Austin
• Time Warner Cable Barstow
• Time Warner Cable Binghampton
• Time Warner Cable Border Corridor
• Time Warner Cable Charlotte
• Time Warner Cable Cincinnati
• Time Warner Cable Clarksburg
• Time Warner Cable Dayton/Miami Valley
• Time Warner Cable Desert Cities
• Time Warner Cable Eastern Carolina (Wilmington)
• Time Warner Cable Erie
• Time Warner Cable Fort Benning
• Time Warner Cable Golden Triangle
• Time Warner Cable Greensboro
• Time Warner Cable Houma
• Time Warner Cable Houston - Flagship Division
• Time Warner Cable Hudson Valley
• Time Warner Cable Jackson, MS/Monroe, LA
• Time Warner Cable Kansas City
• Time Warner Cable Kerrville
• Time Warner Cable Lake City/Live Oak (Merging with Comcast)
• Time Warner Cable Los Angeles
• Time Warner Cable Mid-South (Memphis, TN, AR, and MS)
• Time Warner Cable Mid-Ohio (Columbus)
• Time Warner Cable Minnesota (Minneapolis)
• Time Warner Cable Myrtle Beach
• Time Warner Cable National (non-clustered systems)
• Time Warner Cable Nebraska (Lincoln)
• Time Warner Cable New England (Portland, ME and Berlin and Keene, NH)
• Time Warner Cable New York and New Jersey
• Time Warner Cable North Texas (Dallas) (Merging with Comcast)
• Time Warner Cable Northeast Ohio (Akron)
• Time Warner Cable Northeastern Wisconsin (Green Bay)
• Time Warner Cable Raleigh
• Time Warner Cable Rochester
• Time Warner Cable San Antonio
• Time Warner Cable San Diego
• Time Warner Cable Shreveport (Merging with Comcast)
• Time Warner Cable South Carolina (Columbia)
• Time Warner Cable South Central
• Time Warner Cable Southeastern Wisconsin (Milwaukee)
• Time Warner Cable Southern California
• Time Warner Cable Southern Tier New York
• Time Warner Cable Southwest (Corpus Christi, El Paso, Harlingen, etc.)
• Time Warner Cable Southwest Florida
• Time Warner Cable St. Augustine/Palatka
• Time Warner Cable St. John
• Time Warner Cable Syracuse
• Time Warner Cable Terre Haute
• Time Warner Cable Western New York (Buffalo)
• Time Warner Cable Wichita Falls

Statistics

As of August 1st, 2006, there were 14.5 million basic cable subscribers, 5.6 million Digital cable subscribers, 5.2 million Road Runner residential subscribers, 1.7 million DVR subscribers, and 1.4 million Digital Phone subscribers.

External links

• Official Website
• Time Warner Cable Media Sales
• Time Warner press release regarding Advance/Newhouse restructuring
• Time Warner press release regarding Start Over
• Time Warner press release regarding Adelphia acquisition