Once-conservative Adelphia Communications Corp. will be the first to offer hard-core pornography in a major U.S. cable TV market, the Chicago Tribune reported.

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Adelphia, the nation's No. 5 cable provider and No. 1 in Southern California, will begin offering triple-X-rated programming to Southern California customers on Friday, the newspaper said.

A spokeswoman said the programming will not be advertised and parents can block it from children's view. The hard-core sexual content will be delivered through video-on-demand technology, the newspaper said.

The move is a radical departure for Adelphia, which stirred controversy in 2000 by dropping the Spice channel because founder John Rigas considered the X-rated content immoral.

However, Rigas and his sons were convicted last summer of looting the company and fraudulent accounting.

Adelphia, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2002, is for sale. New management offered harder-core sexual content to boost the bottom line, the newspaper said.