Promising lower costs, higher speeds, and the Los Angeles Dodgers, Charter Communications CEO Chris Winfrey announced on Thursday the finalization of a long-pending acquisition of Cox Communications, Santa Barbara’s sole cable provider, for a reported $34.5 billion. The deal affects six million Cox customers, who Winfrey said would initially see no differences in their billing. However, within 18 months, they would gain entirely U.S.-based customer service.
“Customers will see no changes to their Cox service or pricing and packaging unless they choose to make a change themselves,” Winfrey promised, adding a sweetener: “And, right now, we’re offering one line of unlimited mobile service free for a year.”
Winfrey continued: “To our new customers in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, we’re launching Spectrum Sportsnet LA, the television home of the Dodgers.” To the intense frustration of fans, Cox has blacked out Dodgers games for more than a decade, refusing to pay the team’s high license fee, according to the Los Angeles Times. That changes this weekend when the Dodgers should become available on Channel 36.
Other offerings with which Charter intends to lure Cox customers to Spectrum include its internet broadband network, which has 45 million wi-fi access points nationwide, said to be faster than 5G. Winfrey claimed that the Spectrum One package with internet, mobile service, and wi-fi gave $1,000 in savings in the first year compared to AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile. “And if we don’t hit that number of savings, we’ll cover the difference,” he stated.
As well, Winfrey said streaming apps like Disney Plus Hulu, HBO Max, ESPN, and the Tennis Channel were bundled in Spectrum TV at no additional cost.
Among Cox employees, while redundancies at the administrative levels might “change the composition for a number of different employees,” Winfrey said that adding U.S.-based employees to the 24/7 customer team meant hiring more than 1,000 new sales positions in the company’s new markets. Charter stated it would dispatch technicians the same day, if requested before 5 p.m., and provide customers with credits for outages lasting longer than two hours.
Winfrey also announced $50 million in funding to the new Spectrum Foundation to continue Cox Communication’s giving programs. In Santa Barbara, the James M. Cox Foundation — named for the man who started Cox Enterprises with several newspapers and a handful of radio stations after running for president in 1920 with Franklin D. Roosevelt as his vice-presidential candidate — has given $20,000 to the Boys and Girls Club STEM lab, provided high schoolers with career coaching, and reduced internet rates for families with children in school. This last Charter has agreed to continue as part of its negotiations with California regulators to finish the deal, the Wall Street Journal reported, an acquisition that was first announced in May 2025.
James Cox’s great-grandson Alex Taylor will become chair of the Charter Communications board. He’ll see his forebear’s name return, as Charter, while retaining the Spectrum product names, will change its corporate parent name to Cox Communications in a year’s time.
