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For more than 30 years, John Kiesewetter has been the source for information about all things in local media — comings and goings, local people appearing on the big or small screen, special programs, and much more. Contact John at johnkiese@yahoo.com.

New Owners For Charter Cable?

The cable company serving Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky could get its third owner in two years if Japanese tech giant SoftBank Group Corp. succeeds in buying Charter Communications.

 

St. Louis-based Charter merged with Time Warner last year, after Comcast's attempt to buy Time Warner fell through, and rebranded the residential cable system as Spectrum. 

 

Bloomberg reports that Masayoshi Son, SoftBank chairman, "is now mustering an offer from SoftBank to buy Charter outright" after "Charter on Sunday rebuffed his proposal to combine the company with Sprint Corp., which SoftBank controls."

 

Son "intends to make the offer this week," Bloomberg says.

As I reported last year,  Charter acquired Time Warner Cable for $78 billion in 2016.

 

The Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky Time Warner systems had been in play for two years.

Under the failed 2014 merger of Comcast (No. 1 US cable operator) and Time Warner (No. 2), Charter was going to buy Time Warner systems in Ohio and Kentucky, including Greater Cincinnati, Southwestern Ohio and Northern Kentucky. When the Comcast deal fell through in 2015, Charter announced plans to buy Time Warner.

Stay tuned.

John Kiesewetter, who has covered television and media for more than 35 years, has been working for Cincinnati Public Radio and WVXU-FM since 2015.