Adelphia

Adult programming offer to be limited, cable official says Contrary to what the Carroll commissioners were told in a report Tuesday, Adelphia Cable will not deliver adult programming to its digital television customers unless customers order it, the county's cable coordinator said yesterday. The company will begin offering adult programming next month, but only to those customers who request the programming and pay extra for it, said Carol Shawver, administrator for Carroll's cable regulatory commission.

Fed up with Adelphia Cable's inability to improve its customer service, Carroll County's cable commission will begin fining the company this month. Adelphia has been Carroll's dominant cable provider since last year, when it bought the county franchise from Prestige Cable. Carroll is the only county in the Baltimore area that doesn't have a contract with Comcast Cable. County residents faced technical and customer-service problems with Prestige, local officials said, but they expected better from Adelphia, one of the nation's largest cable providers.

Prestige Cable TV of Carroll County Inc. has been sold, along with the rest of the company's holdings, to a large Pennsylvania cable provider, an official at Prestige's corporate headquarters in Cartersville, Ga., confirmed last night."

In the wake of Adelphia Communications Corp.'s bankruptcy filing, Carroll officials said yesterday that they expect no interruption in service, but they are worried that the cable giant won't be able to pay its franchise fees, a lapse that could deprive the county and its municipalities of hundreds of thousands of dollars. County officials also said the bankruptcy filing late Tuesday could cloud the future of a planned new home for Channel 19, the county's public-access television station.

Responding to Hampstead residents' complaints about cable service, Linda Jenne called Adelphia Cable 165 times between June 1 and June 15. The town's cable coordinator reached a customer service agent three times. That's an unacceptable level of service and a violation of Adelphia's contract, said Hampstead Town Manager Ken Decker. As a result, Decker plans to ask Carroll County's Cable Commission at its next meeting July 12 for permission on behalf of the town to seek damages of $200 a day for the two-week period.

THE MOST interesting American business scandal is unfolding not at Enron, Dynegy, Global Crossing, WorldCom or Arthur Andersen but in upstate Pennsylvania, in a town of 3,000. The collapse of Adelphia Communications, a cable TV firm based in Coudersport, Pa., bears all the signatures of modern financial disgrace - billions in hidden liabilities, outrageous self-dealing by company insiders, a scary stock collapse. Adelphia even committed the ultimate cliche of 1990s corporate hubris, paying millions to put its name on a big-league sports stadium, in Nashville.

The Carroll County Tourism Council and the Harlem Wizards have teamed up for the fourth consecutive year for a madcap basketball game at 7 p.m. Saturday at Western Maryland College. The game pits the Wizards, including former NBA and college stars, against a gang of local personalities who will be targets for on- and off-court pranks. Even the audience is involved throughout the game. "We are delighted that Adelphia [Communications Corp.] has joined our team [as a sponsor]," said Nancy McCormick, Tourism Council president.

Century boys basketball coach George Wunder knew it was only a matter of time before senior Bennett Foelber heated up from the field. Even Wunder, however, couldn't have envisioned his guard's recent torrid streak. Through the weekend, Foelber had averaged 27.3 points over his past three games - about 10 points over his previous scoring average. Included in the surge was a school-record 38-point effort against Thomas Johnson, in which he hit 16 of 31 shots from the field, including four three-pointers.