Cable company Charter buying Time Warner Cable for $55.3B

NEW YORK (AP) — Charter Communications is buying Time Warner Cable for $55.33 billion, creating another U.S. TV and Internet giant.

And executives say they're confident regulators will allow it.

The deal comes a month after Comcast, the country's largest cable provider and owner of NBCUniversal, walked away from a $45.2 billion bid for Time Warner Cable, the No. 2 cable company, after intense pressure from regulators. Time Warner Cable had chosen the Comcast deal and rejected a $38 billion hostile offer from Charter in early 2014.

There has been a wave in consolidation in the cable industry as providers are starting to lose TV subscribers, costs for TV, sports and movies rise and pressure from online video services such as Netflix and Hulu increases.

John Malone's Liberty Broadcast Corp., which owns more than a quarter of Charter's stock, is backing the acquisition, which puts Charter in the same league as Comcast. Liberty Broadband is expected to own about 20 percent of the new Charter, which will also include Bright House Networks, a smaller cable provider Charter said Tuesday it is buying for $10.4 billion.

Charter, combined with Time Warner Cable and Bright House, will have nearly 24 million customers, compared with Comcast's 27.2 million.