Top Cable Executives Are Willing to Buy Operators

Leaders of the top three U.S. cable television operators said Monday that they were ready to go shopping for both programming companies and smaller cable systems to compete against satellite TV and phone companies.

In remarks to the annual National Cable Television Assn. conference in New Orleans, chief executives of Comcast Corp., Time Warner Inc. and Charter Communications Inc. also reaffirmed their faith in the combination of content and distribution.

“We have an interest at the right time and right price to expand our cable footprint,” said Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons. “The growth prospects [for cable] are as good as any of the businesses in our portfolio.”

Comcast CEO Brian L. Roberts still believes a combination with Walt Disney Co. would have benefited the shareholders of both companies. He added Comcast’s failed bid for Disney has not dampened his enthusiasm for building or acquiring programming assets.

“At the time we were criticized for not making grander projections for where the synergies [with Disney] were,” he said. “Hopefully we’ll be able to build those assets whether it’s on our own or acquiring others.”

Parsons views the combination of distribution and content as necessary as the media market consolidates.

“Inevitably, the forces of the market are going to bring that together,” he said. “If you can capture the whole thing it’s a more stable business going forward.”

All three executives said they would look to buy smaller cable operators to compete with satellite providers, which have a national footprint.

Even Charter, the No. 3 U.S. cable company that is saddled with debt, sees itself acquiring rather than selling systems.

“I think scale is something all operators are going to look at very seriously,” said Paul Allen, Charter’s controlling shareholder and chairman of Vulcan Inc., which holds stakes in DreamWorks SKG and owns the pro basketball Portland Trail Blazers and football’s Seattle Seahawks.

Comcast, by far the largest cable operator, believes it has room to expand even beyond the 30% of U.S. cable customers it now serves. Roberts said the recent court ruling that struck down a 30% market-share limit on “multichannel households” -- which include satellite television -- suggests “that the cap should be something different, higher.”

In a reference to Adelphia Communications Corp., which has put itself up for sale in a reorganization, Roberts said he thought the company had plenty of room to grow.

“So any scenario you look at, with Comcast and any other cable system that’s been talked about recently, I don’t think we’d be bumping up against the limit in any realistic way,” he said.