Cable Tv

When Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc. completes three deals announced in the past two months, it will own more television stations across the country than any other company. The Hunt Valley company will operate 134 stations in 69 markets, reaching more than a third of all U.S. homes with televisions. It will have more than doubled in size in about two years, and that's presuming it doesn't broker any more acquisitions. It still won't own stations in megamarkets such as New York or Los Angeles, but that's part of its strategy.

Baltimore County residents might soon have a third choice of cable television providers. Virginia-based Cavalier Telephone Corp. has applied to the government for a license to offer cable service in the county, a company spokesman said yesterday. The County Council has scheduled a vote Oct. 15 to decide whether to negotiate with the company. Cavalier would become the third major cable provider in Baltimore County, joining Comcast, long the area's dominant provider, and Verizon, which began offering service to parts of the county in the spring.

Cable television subscribers will pay more to stay tuned next year in Baltimore, Baltimore County and parts of Howard County.The 93,500 subscribers to United Cable in Baltimore will see their monthly rates increase Jan. 1 from $16.50 to $18 for the 48-channel service.The company will add three channels, but it also will raise the cost of the monthly Cable Guide magazine from $1.50 to $2, said Marilyn Harriss, a United Cable spokeswoman.Also as of Jan. 1, Comcast Cablevision of Maryland will increase the monthly rate for Baltimore County's 155,000 subscribers to its 37-channel extended basic service from $19.99 to $21.50, said Stephen A. Burch, vice president and area manager.

Business lobbyists and lawyers for consumers sparred in Annapolis yesterday over legislation that would lift court-imposed restrictions on the late fees Maryland firms can charge their customers. Seeking to reverse a Court of Appeals ruling that forced the return of $6.7 million in cable television late fees, business groups have agreed to put some limits on what they can collect as the Senate prepares to debate the issue today. As originally introduced, the measure would have let businesses charge whatever late fees they wanted as long as they were previously disclosed to their customers.

Visit Tiffany Dowling's apartment at Briar Cliff East in Cockeysville and look closely at her telephone. Yes, it looks like a phone, rings like a phone, and when she calls her mom, even sounds like a phone.But there's a difference between her phone and yours: At the end of the month, her bill doesn't come from Bell Atlantic, but from Comcast Corp. For Dowling and 100 or so others around Baltimore, the local cable television company is also the local phone company."It's nice to have a choice," she says.

A planned upgrade of Verizon Communications' utility lines was endorsed last night by the Baltimore County Council, and company officials said they will move in earnest to obtain a license to offer cable television in the county. The license, called a franchise agreement, would establish the areas in which Verizon would offer cable TV, as well as how much of company profits from the operation would go to the county. The license would be obtained through the County Council. A Verizon executive said after last night's meeting that the company intends to apply for a franchise within a month.

WASHINGTON -- The Clinton administration's developing plan to supervise construction of an "information superhighway" encountered a potentially serious roadblock yesterday as Supreme Court justices displayed skepticism over Congress' power to control cable television.The administration's top lawyer in cases before the Supreme Court, Solicitor General Drew S. Days III, faced tough questions at a hearing on the core issue of cable-TV operators' rights under the First Amendment.The case offers the court its first chance to rule on whether cable TV is to be treated constitutionally like newspapers, and thufree of most government controls, or like over-the-air broadcasters, subject to wide-ranging government regulation under federal licenses or local ordinances.

Bell Atlantic in cable TV ventureIn another sign of the accelerating clash between the telephone and cable TV industries, Bell Atlantic Corp. announced yesterday that it would team with a small New Jersey company to provide 60 channels of television over new high-capacity lines to 38,000 homes in Dover Township, N.J.The venture will be the first in which a telephone company has competed head to head against a cable television service.Fleet Finance faces 3rd lawsuitA Georgia judge ruled yesterday that thousands of borrowers may join a new class-action suit accusing Fleet Finance Inc. of unfair lending practices.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court, starting its new term early, stepped yesterday into the midst of the nationwide controversy over cable television companies' right to control the programs that their customers get to see.For the first time in the history of cable TV, the court agreed to spell out the amount of constitutional freedom cable operators have to pick their programming without government controls.At issue, basically, is whether cable TV is to be treated constitutionally like newspapers, free to decide for itself what to publish, or like regular "over-the-air" radio and television, subject to a myriad of government rules on what may be broadcast.

They have their MTV, but they want more.How about Bravo and American Movie Classics? Or Home Team Sports without shelling out an extra $13.95 per month?Insisting the cable television company serving western Howard offers a superior product, a group of dissatisfied eastern Howard residents has united to press Howard Cable TV to improve the quality of its programming and service.The Alliance for Better Cable (ABC), formed in late August, says that Mid-Atlantic Cable of Western Howard County provides better programming at a lower cost, and that Howard Cable TV has been "unresponsive to individual subscriber requests for better service."