Just after announcing his plans to acquire Cablevison by French owned Altice,  CEO Patrick Drahi announced at a Goldman Sachs investor conference he’s looking to make changes and cuts to the company.  “I like to pay as little as I can,”  he said to the investors and “It’s not about how many customers you have, it’s about how much money you make.”   He wants  to bring European cost structures to the U.S. cable industry.  The traditional cable bundle is under attack, as streaming services from Netflix, Youtube, Hulu and many others are digging in to cable’s bottom line.

“There’s at least $300 million in corporate overhead that can immediately be deleted,” one conference attendee said.  Drahi said a no-frills management philosophy that pointed to the possibility of layoffs, or at least a broad restructuring.   “I don’t need the guys who are top top top, just guys who are good enough,” he said to the crowd. “We’ll cut salaries so that we can run for the long term, not the short term.”

Drahi will be looking for a wireless phone company to bundle with Cablevision’s phone, cable and internet services.  Cablveision is currently owned by  James Dolan, its chairman and CEO, and the son of the company’s founder, Charles Dolan.  He has been criticized in recent years for focusing too much on the ownership of the Madison Square Garden,  New York Knicks and New York Rangers, among other sports franchises and ignoring Cablevision.  “Cable is not going to be a family business any more,” said Shahid Khan, chairman of Mediamorph, a media industry software and data provider based in New York but owned by major corporations.

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