Time Warner Cable: Nickelodeon Roots, Data Caps and the Spectrum Rebrand

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Time Warner Cable grew from American Television and Communications, founded in 1968, and Warner Cable, founded in 1973. In 1977 Warner Cable began making its own channels, Pinwheel and Star Channel, which became Nickelodeon and The Movie Channel, and in 1981 it launched MTV. Time Inc. and Warner Communications merged in 1990, and in 1992 their cable units became the Time Warner Cable Group. In 1993 it sold a 25 percent stake to phone company US West to fund fiber optic upgrades, and in 1995 a cable modem pilot in Elmira, New York, first called the Southern Tier Online Community, became Road Runner High Speed Online.

In 2006 it joined Comcast to buy bankrupt Adelphia's assets for $17 billion and swapped subscribers to cluster its markets, taking most of Los Angeles and Dallas. Time Warner spun the cable company off in 2009 without super-voting stock. Data cap trials starting in Beaumont, Texas in 2008 drew a group called Stop the Cap and Congressman Eric Massa, and TWC ranked at the bottom of the American Customer Satisfaction Index from 2011 to 2014. Comcast's $45.2 billion bid, announced in February 2014, was abandoned in April 2015 as the Justice Department prepared to sue. Charter then agreed to pay $78.7 billion, closed in May 2016, and by 2017 had renamed the service Spectrum.

• TWC launched DVR service in the Houston area in 2004.
• Its 2009 TV Everywhere plan let subscribers stream video online only after logging in with an active cable account.
• On March 16, 2010, a glitch in eastern North Carolina put Playboy TV on two kids on-demand channels for two hours.
• A combined Comcast and TWC would have controlled an estimated 57 percent of U.S. broadband capacity, with Netflix among the opponents.
• Charter folded in Bright House Networks alongside TWC and let legacy customers keep their roadrunner.com email addresses.