Tci Plans To Shed Subscribers

Tele-Communications Inc. may not be the nation’s biggest cable company for long.

Leo Hindery, TCI’s president, has unveiled a strategy to shed 4 million of the company’s 14 million subscribers to help reduce its debt of about $14.4 billion.

That would place it behind the nation’s No. 2 cable company, Time Warner Inc., which has about 12 million subscribers.

The effort will come through partnerships with cable providers that dominate their particular markets, Hindery said Thursday. His comments came as TCI announced it would place systems with 300,000 subscribers into a partnership controlled by Falcon Holding Group L.P.