Conejo Cable Firm Agrees to Be Bought

Conejo Community Television, a Thousand Oaks cable television company serving 3,895 subscribers, has agreed to be acquired by Miami-based Storer Cable Communications within 60 days.

The general manager of Conejo Community Television, Tim Wilt, said the sale price is about $1,300 per subscriber, which would make the transaction a $5.1-million deal. The sale to Storer, now the larger of the two cable companies operating in Thousand Oaks, hinges on approval by the Thousand Oaks City Council.

Technical Question

City Atty. Mark Sellers said the council’s decision on whether to transfer the franchise will be based chiefly on the technical question of whether Storer is financially capable of managing the system. Both Storer’s and CCTV’s franchises in Thousand Oaks expire in 1991.

Roger Terneuzen, operations manager for Storer in the Conejo Valley, said CCTV customers will see no immediate effect on their service. He said Storer would try to retain the smaller company’s programming if the systems merge as expected in early 1987.

CCTV’s system in Thousand Oaks carries a basic menu of 23 channels for $11.25 a month. Subscribers also can take three supplemental movie channels.

CCTV’s service area has been an island surrounded by Storer’s, which has about 32,000 subscribers in Thousand Oaks, Westlake Village, Agoura Hills and Oak Park, Terneuzen said.

Wilt said CCTV showed its first-ever profit in 1981, 17 years after the business was founded. During 1985, the company, which has six employees, had a profit of about $387,000 on revenue of about $900,000.

Storer also has franchises in the California communities of Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach and Anaheim, as well as in 17 other states. Officials of both companies said Storer has the financial resources to exploit the industry’s rapidly advancing technology, such as pay-for-view programming.

“Storer is big enough to take both systems into the 21st Century,” Wilt said.