Playboy Doesn’t Play in Santa Clarita

How upright and virtuous is Santa Clarita?

So virtuous that the local cable television company has decided to cancel the Playboy Channel next month, citing a lack of interest.

Only about 500 customers out of 27,000 subscribe to the service, said Shirley Aronson, general manager of King Videocable Co.

Interest in the programming, which features nude men and women participating in simulated sex between 5 p.m. and 3 a.m. nightly, has slowly waned during the past 10 years in the community, Aronson said. This is the same city where last year some residents objected to billboards that touted a rock ‘n’ roll radio station as “Better Than Sex.”

“Santa Clarita is just a family-oriented community,” Aronson said.

The channel also was taken off the air in Burbank at the request of church and community groups in 1988, said executives of Sammons Communication, which operates cable television in Burbank.

But executives of the Playboy Entertainment Group, which produces the programming, contend that the demand for programs such as “Secrets of Making Love to the Same Person Forever” and “Intimate Workout for Lovers” is growing, particularly in bedroom communities such as Burbank and Santa Clarita.

“Couples want to watch these programs together,” said Jim Nagle, a Playboy spokesman.

Nagle said the reason the number of Santa Clarita subscribers dropped 50% from about 1,000 four years ago is that King Videocable has refused to aggressively market the Playboy Channel.

When King Videocable was bought by Rhode Island-based Colony Cable this year, Playboy was informed of the company’s concerns about erotic programming, said Mike Fleming, vice president and general manager of the Playboy Entertainment Group. No one at Colony Cable could be reached for comment Monday.

And in Burbank, Sammons Communication took Playboy off the air only because it had to eliminate one of four huge satellite dishes from its small headquarters in Glendale, Fleming said. The firm chose Playboy because of community pressure, he acknowledged.

“It’s one thing to remove Playboy due to content concerns, but it’s another to publicly rationalize the decision by saying Playboy . . . lacks appeal,” Nagle said.

In Santa Clarita, cable TV subscribers will have more programs to choose from after King Videocable takes Playboy off the air on Aug. 12, Aronson said. The company is replacing the ribald channel with three new ones: The Weather Channel, Mind Extension University and Lifetime, a health and fitness channel.