Business
Cable giant Charter to buy Cox in a $34.5-billion deal, uniting providers that serve SoCal
Charter Communications and Cox Communications plan to merge in a $34.5-billion deal that would unite Southern California’s two major cable TV and internet providers to sell services under the Spectrum brand.
The proposed consolidation, announced Friday, comes as the industry grapples with accelerating cable customer losses amid the shift to streaming.
The companies could face even more cord-cutting after their long-time programming partner, Walt Disney Co., begins offering its ESPN sports channel directly to fans in a stand-alone streaming service debuting this fall.
If approved by Charter shareholders and regulators, the merger would end one of the longest TV sports blackouts.
Cox customers in Rancho Palos Verdes, Rolling Hills Estates and Orange County would finally have the Dodgers’ TV channel available in their lineups. For more than a decade, Cox has refused to carry SportsNet LA because of its high cost.
Charter distributes the Dodgers channel as part of a $8.35-billion television contract signed with the team’s owners in 2013. Charter has bled hundreds of millions of dollars on that arrangement and now offers the channel more widely via a streaming app.
The Atlanta-based Cox is the nation’s third-largest cable company with more than 6.5 million digital cable, internet, telephone and home security customers. Stamford, Conn.-based Charter has more than 32 million customers.
Charter dramatically expanded its Los Angeles presence in 2016 by acquiring Time Warner Cable for more than $60 billion.
The Charter-Cox combination would have 38 million customer homes in the country — a larger footprint than longtime cable leader, Philadelphia’s Comcast Corp.
“This transformational transaction will create an industry leader in mobile and broadband communication services and seamless video entertainment,” Charter Chief Executive Christopher Winfrey said in a conference call with analysts.
Winfrey would become the proposed entity’s CEO.
A major motivation for the deal was to be able to combine operations in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties where both services currently operate and add attractive markets like Phoenix, Winfrey told analysts.
“Our network will span approximately 46 states passing nearly 70 million homes and businesses,” Winfrey said.
Cox is privately held. The billionaire Cox family, descendants of an Ohio press baron who bought his first newspaper in 1898, began acquiring cable systems in 1962 and has since held them with a tight grip. The Cox cable assets were long seen as a lucrative target.
Last year, Cox generated $13.1 billion in revenue and $5.4 billion in adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization.
“Cox was always the first name that would come up in consolidation conversations… and it was always the first name dismissed,” longtime cable analyst Craig Moffett wrote in a Friday research note. “Cox wasn’t for sale.”
Until it was.
In an unexpected twist, the name of the merged company would be changed to Cox within a year of the deal closing. However, its products would carry the Spectrum moniker.
The Cox family would be the largest shareholder, owning about 23% of the combined entity’s outstanding shares.
Charter shares got a slight bump on Friday’s news, climbing nearly 2% to $427.25.
“Cable is a scale business. [The] added size should help Charter compete better with the larger telcos, tech companies and [Elon Musk’s] Starlink,” said Chris Marangi, co-chief investment officer of value at the New York-based Gabelli Funds, a large media investor.
Adding the Cox homes will allow Charter to expand distribution for its El Segundo-based Spectrum News channel.
Charter said it would absorb Cox’s commercial fiber, information technology and cloud businesses. Cox Enterprises agreed to contribute the residential cable business to Charter Holdings.
Cox Enterprises would be paid $4 billion in cash and receive about $6 billion in convertible preferred units, which could eventually be exchanged into Charter shares. The Cox family would get about 33.6 million common units in the Charter Holdings partnership, worth nearly $12 billion.
The combined entity will absorb Cox’s $12 billion in outstanding debt.
Charter’s ability to navigate the challenged landscape was a factor in the family’s decision, said Cox Enterprises Chief Executive Alex Taylor, a great-grandson of the company’s founder, told analysts.
“Charter has really impressed us above all others with the way they have spent capital,” Taylor said. “In the last five years, they’ve spent over $50 billion investing” in internet infrastructure and building a wireless phone service.
“This deal starts with mobile,” cable analyst Moffett wrote. “Cox is relatively late to the wireless game. But that only means that the opportunity in [the combined companies’] footprint is that much larger.”
The companies said they could wring about $500 million a year in annual cost savings.
The combined company would have about $111 billion of debt.
Cox would have two directors on the 13-member board, including Taylor, who would serve as chairman.
Advance/Newhouse would keep its two board members. Advance/Newhouse would hold about 10% of the new company’s shares.
The transaction is expected to close at the same time as Charter’s merger with Liberty Broadband, which was approved by Charter and John Malone’s Liberty Broadband stockholders in February.
After the consolidation, Liberty Broadband will no longer be a direct Charter shareholder.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to homeowners who take steps to reduce wildfire risk on their property died in the Legislature.
The Senate Insurance Committee on Monday voted down the measure, SB 1076, one of the most ambitious bills spurred by the devastating January 2025 wildfires.
The vote came despite fire victims and others rallying at the state Capitol in support of the measure, authored by state Sen. Sasha Renée Pérez (D-Pasadena), whose district includes the Eaton fire zone.
The Insurance Coverage for Fire-Safe Homes Act originally would have required insurers to offer and renew coverage for any home that meets wildfire-safety standards adopted by the insurance commissioner starting Jan. 1, 2028.
It also threatened insurers with a five-year ban from the sale of home or auto insurance if they did not comply, though it allowed for exceptions.
However, faced with strong opposition from the insurance industry, Pérez had agreed to amend the bill so it would have established community-wide pilot projects across the state to better understand the most effective way to limit property and insurance losses from wildfires.
Insurers would have had to offer four years of coverage to homeowners in successful pilot projects.
Denni Ritter, a vice president of the American Property Casualty Insurance Assn., told the committee that her trade group opposed the bill.
“While we appreciate the intent behind those conversations, those concepts do not remove our opposition, because they retain the same core flaw — substituting underwriting judgment and solvency safeguards with a statutory mandate to accept risk,” she said.
In voting against the bill Sen. Laura Richardson, (D-San Pedro), said: “Last I heard, in the United States, we don’t require any company to do anything. That’s the difference between capitalism and communism, frankly.”
The remarks against the measure prompted committee Chair Sen. Steve Padilla, (D-Chula Vista), to chastise committee members in opposition.
“I’m a little perturbed, and I’m a little disappointed, because you have someone who is trying to work with industry, who is trying to get facts and data,” he said.
Monday’s vote was the fourth time a bill that would have required insurers to offer coverage to so-called “fire hardened” homes failed in the Legislature since 2020, according to an analysis by insurance committee staff.
Fire hardening includes measures such as cutting back brush, installing fire resistant roofs and closing eaves to resist fire embers.
Pérez’s legislation was thought to have a better chance of passage because it followed the most catastrophic wildfires in U.S. history, which damaged or destroyed more than 18,000 structures and killed 31 people.
The bill was co-sponsored by the Los Angeles advocacy group Consumer Watchdog and Every Fire Survivor’s Network, a community group founded in Altadena after the fires formerly called the Eaton Fire Survivors Network.
But it also had broad support from groups such as the California Apartment Association, the California Nurses Association and California Environmental Voters.
Leading up to the fires, many insurers, citing heightened fire risk, had dropped policyholders in fire-prone neighorhoods. That forced them onto the California FAIR Plan, the state’s insurer of last resort, which offers limited but costly policies.
A Times analysis found that that in the Palisades and Eaton fire zones, the FAIR Plan’s rolls from 2020 to 2024 nearly doubled from 14,272 to 28,440. Mandating coverage has been seen as a way of reducing FAIR Plan enrollment.
“I’m disappointed this bill died in committee. Fire survivors deserved better,” Pérez said in a statement .
Also failing Monday in the committee was SB 982, a bill authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, (D-San Francisco). It would have authorized California’s attorney general to sue fossil fuel companies to recover losses from climate-induced disasters. It was opposed by the oil and gas industry.
Passing the committee were two other Pérez bills. SB 877 requires insurers to provide more transparency in the claims process. SB 878 imposes a penalty on insurers who don’t make claims payments on time.
Another bill, SB 1301, authored by insurance commissioner candidate Sen. Ben Allen, (D-Pacific Palisades), also passed. It protects policyholders from unexplained and abrupt policy non-renewals.
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Politicians in Washington and the reporters who cover them have an often adversarial relationship.
But on the last Saturday in April, they gather for an irreverent celebration of press freedom and the First Amendment at the Washington Hilton Hotel: The White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
Hosted by the association, an organization that helps ensure access for media outlets covering the presidency, the dinner attracts Hollywood stars; politicians from both parties; and representatives of more than 100 networks, newspapers, magazines and wire services.
While The Times will have two reporters in the ballroom covering the event, the company no longer buys seats at the party, said Richard W. Stevenson, the Washington bureau chief. The decision goes back almost two decades; the last dinner The Times attended as an organization was in 2007.
“We made a judgment back then that the event had become too celebrity-focused and was undercutting our need to demonstrate to readers that we always seek to maintain a proper distance from the people we cover, many of whom attend as guests,” he said.
It’s a decision, he added, that “we have stuck by through both Republican and Democratic administrations, although we support the work of the White House Correspondents’ Association.”
Susan Wessling, The Times’s Standards editor, said the policy is a product of the organization’s desire to maintain editorial independence.
“We don’t want to leave readers with any questions about our independence and credibility by seeming to be overly friendly with people whose words and actions we need to report on,” she said.
The celebrity mentalist Oz Pearlman is headlining the evening, in lieu of the usual comedy set by the likes of Stephen Colbert and Hasan Minhaj, but all eyes will be on President Trump, who will make his first appearance at the dinner as president.
Mr. Trump has boycotted the event since 2011, when he was the butt of punchlines delivered by President Barack Obama and the talk show host Seth Meyers mocking his hair, his reality TV show and his preoccupation with the “birther” movement.
Last month, though, Mr. Trump, who has a contentious relationship with the media, announced his intention to attend this year’s dinner, where he will speak to a room full of the same reporters he often derides as “enemies of the people.”
Times reporters will be there to document the highs, the lows and the reactions in the room. A reporter for the Styles desk has also been assigned to cover the robust roster of after-parties around Washington.
Some off-duty reporters from The Times will also be present at this late-night circuit, though everyone remains cognizant of their roles, said Patrick Healy, The Times’s assistant managing editor for Standards and Trust.
“If they’re reporting, there’s a notebook or recorder out as usual,” he said. “If they’re not, they’re pros who know they’re always identifiable as Times journalists.”
For most of The Times’s reporters and editors, though, the evening will be experienced from home.
“The rest of us will be able to follow the coverage,” Mr. Stevenson said, “without having to don our tuxes or gowns.”
A former female staffer who worked for Beast Industries, the media venture behind the popular YouTube channel MrBeast, is suing the company, alleging she was sexually harassed and fired shortly after she returned from maternity leave.
The employee, Lorrayne Mavromatis, a Brazilian-born social media professional, alleges in a lawsuit she was subjected to sexual harassment by the company’s management and demoted after she complained about her treatment. She said she was urged to join a conference call while in labor and expected to work during her maternity leave in violation of the Family and Medical Leave Act, according to the federal complaint filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina.
“This clout-chasing complaint is built on deliberate misrepresentations and categorically false statements, and we have the receipts to prove it. There is extensive evidence — including Slack and WhatsApp messages, company documents, and witness testimony — that unequivocally refutes her claims. We will not submit to opportunistic lawyers looking to manufacture a payday from us,” Gaude Paez, a Beast Industries spokesperson, said in a statement.
Jimmy Donaldson, 27, began MrBeast as a teen gaming channel that soon exploded into a media company worth an estimated $5 billion, with 500 employees and 450 million subscribers who watch its games, stunts and giveaways.
Mavromatis, who was hired in 2022 as its head of Instagram, described a pervasive climate of discrimination and harassment, according to the lawsuit.
In her complaint, she alleges the company’s former CEO James Warren made her meet him at his home for one-on-one meetings while he commented on her looks and dismissed her complaints about a male client’s unwanted advances, telling her “she should be honored that the client was hitting on her.”
When Mavromatis asked Warren why MrBeast, Donaldson, would not work with her, she was told that “she is a beautiful woman and her appearance had a certain sexual effect on Jimmy,” and, “Let’s just say that when you’re around and he goes to the restroom, he’s not actually using the restroom.”
Paez refuted the claim.
“That’s ridiculous. This is an allegation fabricated for the sole purpose of sparking headlines,” Paez said.
Mavromatis said she endured a slate of other indignities such as being told by Donaldson that she “would only participate in her video shoot if she brought him a beer.”
“In this male-centric workplace, Plaintiff, one of the few women in a high-level role, was excluded from otherwise all-male meetings, demeaned in front of colleagues, harassed, and suffered from males be given preferential treatment in employment decisions,” states the complaint.
When Mavromatis raised a question during a staff meeting with her team, she said a male colleague told her to “shut up” or “stop talking.”
At MrBeast headquarters in Greenville, N.C., she said male executives mocked female contestants participating in BeastGames, “who complained they did not have access to feminine hygiene products and clean underwear while participating in the show.”
In November 2023, Mavromatis formally complained about “the sexually inappropriate encounters and harassment, and demeaning and hostile work environment she and other female employees had been living and experiencing working at MrBeast,” to the company’s then head of human resources, Sue Parisher, who is also Donaldson’s mother, according to the suit.
In her complaint, Mavromatis said Beast Industries did not have a method or process for employees to report such issues either anonymously or to a third party, rather employees were expected to follow the company’s handbook, “How to Succeed In MrBeast Production.”
In it, employees were instructed that, “It’s okay for the boys to be childish,” “if talent wants to draw a dick on the white board in the video or do something stupid, let them” and “No does not mean no,” according to the complaint.
Mavromatis alleges that she was demoted and then fired.
Paez said that Mavromatis’s role was eliminated as part of a reorganization of an underperforming group within Beast Industries and that she was made aware of this.
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