Newhouse family enters cable’s top tier

The Newhouse family’s media empire spans the glossy magazines of Condé Nast, a clutch of local US newspapers and a controlling stake in Discovery Communications, home of cable networks TLC and Animal Planet. Now the family’s latest and biggest deal could propel billionaire brothers Si and Donald Newhouse into the top tier of the rapidly consolidating US cable television industry at a time of sweeping changes in the way media is created, distributed and consumed.

Their private company, Advance Publications, is poised to become the largest shareholder in the nation’s second-largest cable operator, if Charter Communications’ $10.4 billion bid for Advance’s Bright House Networks is successful. The structure of the proposed deal gives Advance a 26.3 percent stake in the enlarged company, eclipsing John Malone’s Liberty Broadband, which would hold 19.4 percent of the combined group. Advance will hand Liberty the larger vote, however, by transferring 6 percentage points of its voting stake to Malone’s group.