Charter to Slash Jobs in Wake of U.S. Probe

Charter Communications Inc., the nation’s third-largest cable TV operator, said Tuesday that it would eliminate a “significant” number of jobs in a management restructuring designed to reverse heavy subscriber losses and a crisis of confidence on Wall Street in the wake of a federal probe of the company’s accounting practices.

Federal investigators are examining how Charter, which is controlled by billionaire Paul Allen, the co-founder of Microsoft Corp., accounts for capital expenditures and subscribers. One allegation is that Charter kept nonpaying customers on its books to inflate the subscriber counts that Wall Street uses to value cable companies.

Speaking at an investor conference in New York on Tuesday, Charter Chief Executive Carl Vogel acknowledged that the FBI had contacted several program suppliers to determine whether the St. Louis-based cable company improperly sought rebates from networks such as ESPN and Discovery for nonpaying subscribers on its rolls in 2001.

The rebates totaled $15 million, and questions arising from the practice mostly have been resolved, Vogel said.

Charter, which serves 500,000 cable subscribers in Southern California, said Tuesday that it would eliminate several middle-management jobs to push decision making closer to its customers in the 40 states in which it operates.

The company is expected to lose about 280,000 of its 6.7 million subscribers this year because of difficult economic times, stiff competition with satellite TV firms and a purge of nonpaying customers from its books.

Charter shares rose 1 cent to $1.53 on Nasdaq.