A ‘Terrifying’ Time for the Stones : Cable TV: Rock ‘n’ roll’s bad boys go live on pay TV tonight at Atlantic City. They may be good but can they draw an audience like wrestling?

Tonight’s Rolling Stones concert on pay-per-view television is being dubbed “Terrifying,” and that may well be the mood now that the Stones’ “Steel Wheels” tour of North America is drawing to a close.

It’s not terror at the thought of doing a live concert on television, of course, but that Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and the boys are finally going to have to count all the money they’ve earned over the last 3 1/2 months, a take estimated to be well over $100 million from ticket sales, sponsorships and merchandising.

The concert, featuring one of the biggest names ever in rock, also will serve as another test of the viability of live concerts on pay-per-view television. Attractions such as boxing have generally done much better.

Although no one’s giving out exact figures, the Stones figure to make a bundle for tonight’s work at the Convention Center in Atlantic City.

The three-hour concert will be available locally for $19.95 to $24.95 per household (depending on cable company), with a taped repeat for sale on Saturday. With a national pay-per-view subscriber base of 13 million homes and with projections that 2% of that potential audience will buy the show, that could mean a gross of $5.7 million, more than any of their sold-out stadium shows. All in all, a good night’s pay for a good night’s work.

Such scale is typical of the Rolling Stones’ 25-year career, and the only questions some fans may have at this point are how the astounding “Steel Wheels” urban-decay set--340 feet wide and 90 feet high--is going to fit into the Convention Center, and whether Mick Jagger is going to bump his head on the ceiling.

“And if Mick bumps his head (when he strides atop the set on ‘Sympathy for the Devil’), we’ll keep it,” said Lorne Michaels of “Saturday Night Live,” who is acting as executive producer for “Terrifying.”

Although the show will be similar to those on the “Steel Wheels” tour, there will be some special guests, including Axl Rose and Izzy Stradlin of Guns N’ Roses, guitarist Eric Clapton, bluesman John Lee Hooker and one or two “surprises.”

Pay-per-view concerts are still in the early stage. By comparison, pay-per-view wrestling and boxing do three or four times better, “$20-million days without blinking,” according to Scott Kurnit, president of Showtime Event Television, Showtime’s pay-per-view division. “For music, it can’t just be music. It has to be an event, something that is compelling television. Music by itself is not as compelling as a boxing match.”