Cable Service Could Change After Insight Sale

One month after an unsuccessful attempt to sell itself at auction, Insight Communications has a buyer. Time Warner Cable has agreed to purchase Insight for $3 billion.The deal will give Time Warner increased access to the Midwest by allowing them to absorb 750,000 customers in Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio. It will create some redundancies for employees and Time Warner hopes to cut costs further after closing the deal."It's really premature to talk about any of that," says Time Warner spokesman Alex Dudley. "We certainly hope to enjoy some operational synergies, but to a large degree, customer-facing employees are the least-likely to be impacted."The sale requires the approval of the federal government and every local government with a contract with Insight."So Louisville Metro Government would be one," says Insight spokesman Jason Keller. "We also have more than 90 other local franchises in Jefferson County in addition to all of the caller counties and the statewide franchise that we have in Indiana and Ohio."Dudley says Time Warner representatives will soon begin talking about the deal with Louisville Metro and other city governments in Kentucky.The sale also means that local television stations will have a new negotiating partner to have their content carried on local cable. Time Warner is a notoriously tough negotiator in these talks, but WDRB General Manager Bill Lamb says he hasn't seen anything to make him worried at this time.GigaOM has a writeup of the sale and the benefits for Time Warner, which was recently ranked one of the most hated companies in the U.S.