Nathanson Company to Buy Conejo TV

A company headed by cable television entrepreneur Marc Nathanson has agreed to buy Conejo Community Television, which serves 4,000 subscribers in Thousand Oaks, for about $5 million.

The planned sale to Nathanson’s Pasadena-based Falcon Cablevision, scheduled to be completed next month, follows the collapse of an agreement announced in January for CCTV to be acquired by Miami-based Storer Cable Communications.

Officials declined to say why that deal, also valued at about $5 million, fell through. Storer, which has 30,000 subscribers in Thousand Oaks, Newbury Park, Westlake Village, Agoura and Oak Park, is the larger of the two cable television firms serving Thousand Oaks.

Thousand Oaks City Atty. Mark Sellers said he does not expect Falcon’s proposed acquisition of CCTV to hurt service to subscribers. He said the city will review Falcon’s financial status and performance before deciding whether to grant final approval for the deal.

Official to Remain

Tim Wilt, CCTV’s general manager, said he will continue to run the firm, which might become a part of Falcon’s cable operation in Malibu.

Nathanson, a Beverly Hills resident and Falcon’s president, is co-owner of the cable company along with other members of his family and Mutual Life Insurance of New York, or MONY. Falcon was formed in 1984 after Nathanson and his partners paid $50 million for 18 cable systems in seven states that were owned jointly by Warner Communications and American Express.

Nathanson also heads Falcon Cable Systems and Falcon Communications, two other Pasadena-based cable companies.

Craig Ehrlich, Falcon Cablevision’s vice president of marketing, said the company plans to add channels for CCTV subscribers. In Southern California, Falcon Cablevision serves the communities of Big Bear and Lake Arrowhead along with Malibu.

CCTV, which has a franchise agreement with Thousand Oaks extending through 1991, serves a four-square-mile area of the city near Lynn Road and Wildwood Avenue.

Offers 23 Channels

It offers 23 channels for $11.75 a month and three movie channels, each for an additional $11.95 a month, Wilt said. CCTV earned $387,000 on revenue of $900,000 last year, he said.

CCTV has two general partners, businessman Brian Corbell and Conejo Cable Corp.

Conejo Cable’s investors include Baldwin-United Chairman Victor Palmieri, and Deane F. Johnson, former managing partner with the Los Angeles law firm of O’Melveny & Myers.

Palmieri was chosen to run Baldwin-United in 1983 after the company began reorganizing under federal bankruptcy laws. Johnson has been a top executive with New York-based Warner Communications since 1981, when he was appointed to its four-person office of the president.

The estate of the late actor William Holden also has a stake in Conejo Cable, Ehrlich said.