Showdown in Bristol County

Cable World,  March 10, 2003  

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John Wolfe at Cox said that to compare the Full Channel situation with Starlight was like comparing "apples and pomegranates."

So what now for Bristol County's oldest cable company? Perhaps the biggest irony here is that Donofrio says he'd still be open to a buyout offer, from Cox or anybody else. Early in his career Donofrio was the GM of a Rhode Island radio station, and it was there, he says, that he learned never to turn away a salesperson. "You never know if they have a better typewriter," he says. "I never close the window on anything, actually."

Trouble is, Cox may have done just that. Now that its plant is almost completely built, there's little need to buy Full Channel.

Claus Kroeger, SVP of operations for Cox's Eastern division, says he sees no point in talking with Full Channel now. As it stands, Cox has spent an estimated $16 million to build out Bristol County. "Depending on how quickly we gain market share," Kroeger says, Cox's return on its investment could run "somewhere in the neighborhood of four to six years."

What's more, Jim Robbins has been quite clear when addressing Cox investors that he won't be spending money on acquisitions right now.

That leaves Donofrio in a tough spot: still independent in a market he used to have all to himself but no longer does, and wondering if, five years from now, the company he built will still be in the game.

As he fights on, he's convinced it will be, citing the country's many small operators that exist even as the biggest MSOs grow ever larger. "I don't think there is the slightest chance in the world Cox is going to put us out of business."

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