Company Town

Cable: Knight-Ridder Inc. is negotiating to sell its 50% stake in TKR Cable Inc. to its partner, Tele-Communications Inc., the companies said. TKR, a cable TV company based in Warren, N.J., has 744,000 subscribers in New York, New Jersey and Kentucky, 147,000 of whom TKR acquired a week ago from Sammons Communications Inc. With the acquisition, TCI would be stretching its lead as the country’s largest cable company. It currently has 11.7 million cable subscribers and, like most in the industry, wants to add more to make it cheaper to offer new services. Miami-based Knight-Ridder would be leaving the cable business to concentrate on its core newspaper properties. The two companies, which have been discussing the sale for two months, expect to complete the deal soon at a price of $750 million to $800 million, according to a source.