Adelphia to offer hardcore porn movies

updated 12:52 p.m. ET Feb. 3, 2005

GREENWOOD VILLAGE, Colo. - Adelphia Communications Corp., the nation's fifth-largest cable TV company, will begin offering hard-core adult films on pay-per-view on Friday in its Southern California market.

The programming is being introduced in response to subscriber demands, Adelphia spokeswoman Erica Stull said Wednesday.

Adelphia said the new hard-core programming, which will be supplied by Playboy Enterprises Inc. and New Frontier Media based in Boulder, Colo., will also become available in other cities.

Five years ago, Adelphia dropped Spice, a soft-core pornography channel, from cable systems it acquired in Southern California because company founder John Rigas considered such programming immoral.

Since then, the company filed for bankruptcy protection in 2002 after Rigas and others were accused of cheating investors out of billions of dollars. Rigas and his son Timothy were convicted of conspiracy, bank fraud and securities fraud. Sentencing is scheduled this month.

The films, in the video-on-demand service, can be restricted through parental control.

Adelphia, based in the Denver suburb of Greenwood Village, has 5.3 million subscribers.

Adelphia closed bidding on its assets Monday but has yet to set a deadline on whether it will sell itself or emerge from Chapter 11 as a stand-alone company.

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