Cablevision

The Summer Olympics end Sunday, but their impact on NBC and the future of pay-per-view television may not be clear for months.Right now, it's difficult to even sort out the key questions from the secondary issues. What's intriguing, though, are suggestions that NBC's condition is worse than it has been portrayed and that the pay-per-view fallout isn't nearly as gloomy as it has been described.For example, different reports have raised the possibility that NBC's loss on the Olympics could be anywhere from $30 million to $150 million.

In the Region Cablevision cancels Lockheed contract for five satellites Cablevision Systems Corp., the largest cable-television provider in the New York area, has canceled a 2004 contract with Lockheed Martin Corp. of Bethesda to build five satellites for its Voom television operation. Cablevision had agreed to pay $740 million over four years to Lockheed for the satellites and related equipment, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Terms of the cancellation weren't disclosed.

Pledging to highlight the persistent epidemic of AIDS among African-Americans, the NAACP and several corporations will release a series of videos today on the disease's causes, preventions and treatments, NAACP officials said yesterday.The announcement of the release, which is expected at a news conference in Washington this morning, comes as the Baltimore-based National Association for the Advancement of Colored People begins its regularly scheduled quarterly board meeting at a Baltimore County hotel.

Janet Coffey Hollinger, 31, the newly appointed general manager of Prestige Cablevision, Channel 3, wanted to be a rock singer when she was growing up in Danville, Ill., a farming town on the Indiana border."

The cease-fire in the Persian Gulf may have stilled the gunfire, butit has not put an end to the financial struggles facing some families of area reservists and National Guardsmen, some of whom experiencedpay cuts when they donned the uniform for their country."

New positionsUniversal Trading appoints Weingard vice presidentUniversal Trading Technologies Corp., a Columbia-based subsidiary of Ashton Technology Group, has appointed Fred S. Weingard executive vice president of technology and advanced programs. Weingard joined UTTC from the consulting firm of Booz-Allen & Hamilton. A nationally recognized expert and published author in the field of neural networks, he holds two patents in the field and has advanced degrees in nuclear engineering and computer sciences from Cornell and George Washington universities, respectively.

Cable TV rates are coming down.Maybe. Some of them. A little bit. In some communities. Some day.Cable TV operators and the people who will soon regulate them were busy puzzling out the full impact of yesterday's action by the Federal Communications Commission, which imposed price controls on the industry for the first time since Reagan-era deregulation in 1986.Some local companies were already restructuring their packages yesterday in a way that would minimize their exposure to regulation.

Baltimore is getting another chance to bask in a national spotlight, but it's a small one that many area residents will not be able to see.The year-old cable television network fX is originating two of its daily programs, "Breakfast Time" and "Personal fX: The Collectibles Show," from Baltimore today through Thursday and from other Maryland locations on Friday. "Personal fX" offers residents a chance to have potential treasures evaluated in a live appraisal session Wednesday in Fells Point Plaza.

NEW YORK - For about four months early last year, Steve Willett had been looking for a job. The laid-off project manager from Jericho, N.Y., sent resumes, made phone calls and attended networking events. Nary a nibble. After hearing one fellow job hunter say, "I'm a CEO, and people won't even look at my resume," Willett started thinking last spring about how to make himself stand out from the crowd. Which is what led him to think of putting his photo and resume on a 2 1/2 -by-3 1/2 -inch card (the size of a baseball trading card)

Howard County Councilman C. Vernon Gray lashed out yesterday at council Administrator Chris Emery, accusing him of the "rankest kind of insubordination" for supposedly leaking information to a reporter about a questionable fund-raising effort by Gray.The loud, six-minute outburst was a strikingly public moment in a long-running feud between Gray, an east Columbia Democrat, and the council's Republican majority, which appointed Emery.An article in Sunday's editions of The Sun detailed letters sent by Gray asking 50 companies -- including at least one that the council regulates, Comcast Cablevision -- for $1,000 donations to finance his campaign to head the National Association of Counties (NACO)