Cable

The Howard County Council tentatively agreed last night to fine Mid-Atlantic Cable Co. $300 a day, beginning Jan. 1, if construction deadlines imposed under a 1988 franchise agreement are still unmet.John C. Norcutt, Mid-Atlantic's general partner, asked for leniency at last night's council work session on his request to extend the franchise agreement to Dec. 31.Mr. Norcutt told the council his financially troubled company has completed 93 percent of the construction it promised in 1988, has offered cable to more homes than promised, and has laid cable for more miles than promised.

The last few weeks have not been happy ones for cable television companies.Not only did the Federal Communications Commission announce that cable rates were being rolled back by 7 percent, but the huge $33 billion merger between the Bell Atlantic Corporation and Tele-Communications Inc. fizzled.Those two events, for the next few years at least, will transform what had been a dynamic growth- and investment-oriented businessinto a more defensive, cautious industry.For investors, the change means that cable shares should not be bought for their own intrinsic potential, but based on how highly their assets are valued by a potential buyer.

DALLAS -- Cable television has grown so big, so quickly, and so broadly, that Charles Dolan, a card-carrying pioneer, falls somewhat short of being designated a visionary.What, if anything, about his industry has turned out differently than he imagined 10 years ago?"Just about everything," said the chairman of Cablevision Systems Corp., who founded the first big-city cable system, in New York City in 1961, and the premium service Home Box Office.It's the same for Bob Pittman, Kay Koplovitz, Robert Johnson and Ted Turner.

Harford County residents will soon have another choice, and potentially a higher-speed one, when it comes to cable television service after a vote last night by the County Council. The seven-member panel voted unanimously to grant Verizon Communications Inc. a 15-year franchise to operate within the county, making it the second major cable supplier to operate there. For years, most residents who wanted cable had to subscribe to Comcast. "We consider this a very positive development," said Councilman Dion F. Guthrie, who represents the southern area of the county.

NEW YORK -- In the first plan of its type in the nation, Time Warner Inc. intends to use its cable-television system in Rochester, N.Y., next year to provide telephone service to residential and business customers in competition with the local phone company.Such direct competition between cable and telephone companies has long been foreseen. But it has not yet occurred for ordinary customers because local utilities have resisted such head-to-head competition and because government regulations have prevented it.But yesterday, state regulators in New York opened the door to local phone competition, reaching a preliminary agreement with the Rochester Telephone Corp.

I LOVE THIS town and will probably remain here the rest of my days. But in some ways, my beloved Baltimore has failed me. Take the area of cable television, for instance. Let's go back a year and a few months, to January 2000. America's No. 1 religious event, the Super Bowl, was playing on network television. Super Bowl XXXIV pitted the Tennessee Titans against the Los Angeles Rams, who play out of St. Louis these days. It was the waning seconds of the game. The Titans trailed by seven points but had the ball.

Harford's cable TV operators would have to answer customers' telephone calls within 30 seconds during regular business hours, restore cable outages within 24 hours and hook up service for new customers within seven business days under proposed guidelines.County Council members reviewed new Federal Communications Commission guidelines, based on the 1992 Cable Act, on Tuesday.As the franchising authority for Harford County, the council has the authority to enact regulations based on the FCC guidelines.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Sega America Inc., a video-game leader with titles like "Sonic the Hedgehog II" and "Streetfighter II: Champion Edition," said yesterday that it would form a venture with the nation's two largest cable TV companies to transmit Sega's games into homes via cable.The service, which is to begin tests this year and would be the first of its type, would eliminate the need for even the quickest of jaunts to the software store or video rental shop.Sega's powerful cable partners will be Tele-Communications Inc. and Time Warner, each of which plans to conduct a 2,000-household test of the service.

Two Essex residents, a 29-year-old man and a 9-year-old boy, today were recovering from injuries received last night when the moped they were riding hit a cable across a driveway at an apartment complex on Fenway North, Baltimore County police said.Police said Mark Watts, of the first block of Fenway North, was riding his girlfriend's moped with the woman's son on the back shortly after 8 p.m. when he attempted to enter a driveway at the Riverdale Apartments in the first block of Fenway North.

Baltimore City Council President Mary Pat Clarke introduced a resolution last night calling on the Board of Estimates to open the market for cable television companies to compete with United Artists Cable of Baltimore.Proclaiming that "the citizens of Baltimore City deserve the consumer-friendly service which competitive systems will offer," the resolution requests that the board solicit franchise applications from potential rivals to the Tele-Communications Inc. affiliate."We welcome the competition," said United Artists General Manager Coles Ruff.