Bresnan Communications
Photograph by Meet the Media Guruon Flickr.
Currently no ROC employees are union represented. The company reached 400,000 subscribers after purchasing systems from TCI.
Two years later, Communications in Iraq the company merged with MSO TelePrompTer and by 1974 had reached a goal of a million customers. Ultimately TelePrompTer was sold to Westinghouse and after managing the transition Bresnan was determined to create his own MSO and seized the opportunity when he won a bid for five systems in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Bresnan agreed, marking the beginning of a 50 year history as a pioneer in the cable industry. After merging with H&B American Corporation to form H&B American Cablevision in 1968, Cooke made Bresnan president.
Some of its community initiatives include: Bresnan also actively sponsors numerous community and service organizations and events, including the Jackson Hole Film Festival and the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival, and encourages company-wide volunteerism for local organizations in all system areas including Colorado Farm to Table, Montana Special Olympics and many others. William Bresnan was born in Madison Lake, Minnesota the third of four children of Ann and Robert Leonard Bresnan. When Bresnan was five years old, Robert died from tuberculosis leaving Ann to take care of the family working as a seamstress. At 12, Bresnan began fixing radios for his neighbors working out of his home and the local radio shop.
When Poire offered Bresnan the job as assistant chief engineer of the newly minted Rochester, MN cable system, Bill signed on. When the chief engineer of the Rochester system disappeared, Bresnan took over and for the next seven years led a life filled with family and work. In 1965, Jack Kent Cooke purchased the Rochester system and offered Bresnan the position of chief engineer.
Eventually, he was offered a job at the Northwest Radio and Electronic Supply – when Bresnan heard that a cable system was going to be built in Mankato, he set up a distributorship agreement with Times Wiring Cable, the company that supplied the cable. In 1958, Bill, along with engineer Joseph Poire, built the Mankato cable system. Bresnan, in keeping with current industry culture, has opposed attempts to organize unions and the great majority of its employees have elected to remain union free, with many even going so far as to decertify existing facilities.
cable systems for $3.1 billion, organizing them under Charter Communications umbrella. Bresnan re-entered the cable business in April 2002, with the $735 million purchase of former AT&T Broadband Rocky Mountain systems from Comcast. Bresnan died on November 27, 2009, from complications due to cancer. .
In 1994, the company added international operations in Chile and Poland, with the creation of Bresnan International Partners. Bresnan Communications is a privately held American company that delivers digital cable television, including high-definition, high-speed Internet services and digital telephone service to residential and commercial customers in Montana, Wyoming, Utah and Colorado largest MSO with over 300,000 customers in its service area. Bresnan Communications was formed by William Bresnan in 1984, originally operating cable systems on Michigan s Upper Peninsula.
This was the beginning of Bresnan Communications. In 2000 Bresnan communications sold their North American cable systems to Charter Communications. Over the next fourteen years, its operations spread to Minnesota Wisconsin, Mississippi and Georgia.
The most recent organizing efforts at the company s largest facility, the Regional Operations Center in Billings, Montana have failed. The acquisition included some 300,000 subscribers in Montana, Wyoming, Utah and Colorado. Bresnan Communications currently has 1300 employees across its various systems.
When AT&T acquired TCI, Bresnan began to consider an IPO. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) does represent several Bresnan employees in Missoula, Montana and they remain the only Bresnan employees who have elected to maintain their union status. Bresnan Communications focuses on creating strong relationships with both its customers and the community at large.
It is headquartered in Purchase, New York with offices in the four states in which it operates. The Communications Workers of America (CWA) represented several organized Bresnan units through a collective known as Bresnan Workers United.
