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Philadelphia had the highest proportion of cable-television piracy among eight cities checked last month by investigators for Home Box Office. HBO said it checked 30 bars and restaurants here during the Nov. 23 bout between heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield and Philadelphia's Bert Cooper, and found 12, or 40 percent, showing HBO's fight coverage without paying for it. The pay-cable channel declined to identify any of the establishments, pending...

BEVERLY HILLS, CALIF. - For months now, I've marveled at the courage of HBO's programmers, who took on "Game of Thrones" - an enormously complex serialized fantasy based on a series of best-selling books by George R.R. Martin - without even knowing how the story ends. Turns out, though, that the fact that Martin has two books to go in his seven-volume "A Song of Ice and Fire" wasn't much of a problem for HBO programming president Michael Lombardo, because he hasn't read the first five.

Comedian Andrew "Dice" Clay, who will unleash his new HBO television special, The Diceman Cometh, on New Year's Eve, cites Elvis Presley as a major influence on his career. "What I learned from Elvis, who I've studied since I was a kid, was image, crowd control and timing," said Clay. Having acquired his first leather jacket at age 5, Clay now proudly owns about 100 leather jackets. And, yes, Clay even looks like the King. Clay is known for his unique, uncensored style of humor, drawing his material from personal observation and hands-on experience on the streets of New York.

There are several thousand video pirates in this city, sitting smugly in armchairs and watching illegal TV, contend attorneys for Home Box Office affiliates. They plan a counter raid today. At a press conference this morning at the Bellevue Stratford Hotel, officials of the entertainment cable franchises were to announce the second phase of a plan to crack down on those who get HBO signals for free and deprive affiliates of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Each of the video pirates identified through private surveillance will be sent a letter ordering them to take down their illicit microwave antenna receivers, said attorney Kelly Tillery, who is acting as local counsel for the region's affiliates, ACS Enterprises of Bensalem, Bucks County; Home Theatre Inc. of Bryn Mawr, Montgomery County; and Video Consultants Inc. of Wynnewood, Montgomery County.

The twin titans of pay-cable television, Home Box Office and Showtime, seriously collide tonight for the first time in the fall season, as both offer two hours of original prime-time programming. HBO wins by a margin that approximates the 31 lengths by which Secretariat, one of the greatest of racehorses, won the 1973 Belmont Stakes. Between 9 and 10:30 p.m., HBO will present Criminal Justice, a raw, gripping and compelling telemovie seriously examining how justice is dispensed in our contemporary court system.

Did you know that a Monday Night Football game would run more than a half- hour shorter if the commercials were eliminated? Fans could watch a whole game and still get to bed before midnight if the advertisements were absent. How much this might increase the productivity of American workers on Tuesday mornings is a matter for conjecture, but an occasional professional football game without commercials seems to be a possibility. Home Box Office, which runs no ads, is considering bidding for a few games when the network contracts with the National Football League expire after this season.

Mary Chapko says she saw the small dish attached to her television antenna when she bought her two-story Tacony rowhouse almost three years ago, but "thought nothing much about it. " Last week, all that changed. Chapko became one of more than 7,000 Philadelphians who received letters notifying her she must dismantle the pie-plate-sized dish and pay a $300 "out-of-court settlement" to the Home Box Office Affiliate Group, a local pay-television service. The letters stated the demands are "not negotiable" and if not complied with by Friday, the HBO group intends to sue them in federal court, where they could be fined up to $10,000.

Negotiations are still ongoing, but it appears Bernard "The Executioner" Hopkins, who for years has complained of being overlooked and underpaid, finally is about to join the Millionaire Boxers Club. Lou DiBella, senior vice president of Time Warner Sports, confirmed that Hopkins, the long-reigning International Boxing Federation middleweight champion from North Philadelphia, is close to signing a two-year, five-bout contract with HBO that potentially could be worth tens of millions of dollars.

Following the big-screen success of movies led by Platoon, the Vietnam War will advance onto the little screen tonight in Vietnam War Story, the pilot for a possible series on Home Box Office (HBO). Vietnam War Story is composed of three 30-minute stories packaged into a 90-minute dramatic special, beginning at 9 p.m. on the cable service. It is an anthology with different actors and characters appearing in each story. Vietnam War Story is the first show created by Nexus Productions, a partnership of actor and director Georg Stanford Brown and his wife, Tyne Daly, renowned for her acting work as the latter half of Cagney & Lacey.

"A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down," trilled Mary Poppins in 1964, back before there were any lesbians. In 2000, HBO uses naked movie stars and hot sex to make its lesbian movie palatable to a wide audience, or at least to one that includes a large voyeur contingent that might not be interested in the feelings, politics and concerns of gay women. Written and produced entirely by women, If These Walls Could Talk 2 premieres Sunday at 9 p.m. It has a strong roster of stars, even by HBO standards: Vanessa Redgrave, Sharon Stone, Ellen DeGeneres, Michelle Williams from Dawson's Creek, and Chloe Sevigny from Boys Don't Cry and other serious, offbeat indie flicks.

THE WEIGHT OF THE NATION. 8 and 9:10 p.m. Monday and Tuesday, HBO. By Ellen Gray Daily News Television Critic WOULD YOU PAY someone to tell you that you may need to do something about your weight? That's essentially what HBO subscribers will be doing this week if they tune in for "The Weight of the Nation," a four-part documentary on the consequences and challenges of the obesity epidemic that the premium cable network developed with the help of experts from Institute of Medicine, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institutes of Health.

IT MAY NOT BE the biggest entertainment story of the day, but people who care . . . care a lot . HBO's "True Blood" returns June 10. New faces in the bloody mix include "Law & Order: SVU" star Christopher Meloni , Scott Foley , Kelly Overton and "General Hospital" star Carolyn Hennesy . The first episode of HBO's new Aaron Sorkin -penned series "The Newsroom," starring Jeff Daniels , Dev Patel , Jane Fonda...

Sarah Palin 's admirers are lashing out against HBO's Game Change , a political drama about the 2008 presidential campaign, saying it is a biased and malicious smear of the former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate. The film, which stars Julianne Moore as Palin, is an adaptation of the book by journos Mark Halperin and John Heilemann , which already has drawn fire from Palin's camp. Trailers for the film show Palin, who ran for veep on John McCain 's ticket, as a whiner who complains about her advisers and mumbles that she misses her kids.

LUCK. 9 p.m. Sunday, HBO.   PASADENA, Calif. - "Does anyone mind if I take my shoes off?" rasped Nick Nolte. No one did. And it was off to the races with the four horses in the lead of HBO's track-based drama "Luck": executive producers David Milch ("Deadwood," "NYPD Blue") and Michael Mann ("Heat") and stars Dustin Hoffman and Nolte. And five journalists who were just hoping not to get thrown. Yeah, five on four. It's not how I usually do this job, but maybe HBO was playing by movie-star rules.

THE FINAL electronic undressing of Flyers coach Peter Laviolette occurred in the hallway outside the home manager's office in Citizens Bank Park. One HBO technician began removing some kind of transmitter gizmo from its designated hiding place, presumably on Laviolette's belt. Then another guy came for the microphone, tangled a little in his clothing, that had recorded the coach's every word - three letters, four letters, more letters. Laviolette shared a laugh with them, then made sure to shake the hand of one of the camera guys lurking there outside of the rooms that Phillies manager Charlie Manuel and his coaches usually inhabit.

So just who is this Chris Lilley anyway? That's the question many American viewers are going to be asking, for better and for worse, with the premiere of the 12-episode miniseries Angry Boys. The talented Melbourne comedian/ actor/ writer/ director's latest project gets a prime HBO slot beginning Sunday. Lilley has made waves before with We Can Be Heroes (a.k.a. The Nominees when it was shown on the Sundance Channel) and the wickedly smart Summer Heights High, semi-improvised mockumentaries about Australian life, in which he played the three main characters, effortlessly disappearing into the skin of a tough Tongan kid and an airhead teenage girl, to name just two. The performer is working on his biggest video canvas yet with Angry Boys, a comedic meditation on testosterone and manhood filmed in three countries (Australia, Japan, the United States)

How much injustice is there in the universe? In our lives? More to the point, how much injustice is there in the entertainment world? Such injustice! Take British actor Idris Elba. Far too many of our otherwise fine countrymen and women are not acquainted with Elba or his extraordinary BBC America show, Luther, now in its second season. Elba, 39, is known here primarily for his amazing turn as a Baltimore drug lord in HBO's The Wire. He's had a few supporting roles in Hollywood pics, most notably in 2009's Obsessed, a Fatal Attractions -esque thriller that had him married to Beyoncé and stalked by Ali Larter.

THE CAMERAS already have started rolling for HBO's 24/7 "Flyers/Rangers Road to the Winter Classic," and the Flyers already have started asking new teammate Max Talbot for advice. Talbot, who signed as a free agent on July 1, was one of the stars of last winter's hit reality show as HBO goes behind the scenes to document the lead-up to hockey's only outdoor game of the season. He played for the Penguins in the Dec. 31 Winter Classic against Washington at Pittsburgh's Heinz Field.

LOS ANGELES - Despite spending more than 40 years in the public eye as the face and voice of the women's liberation movement, Gloria Steinem says she still finds it awkward to talk about herself. "I always feel like I should be doing what you're doing," Steinem says to a reporter with a smile. Instead, Steinem, now 77, is promoting the HBO special Gloria: In Her Own Words , which looks at her life from frustrated journalist to tireless crusader for women's rights. She says she's as uncomfortable being called a leader as she is talking about herself.

BEVERLY HILLS, CALIF. - For months now, I've marveled at the courage of HBO's programmers, who took on "Game of Thrones" - an enormously complex serialized fantasy based on a series of best-selling books by George R.R. Martin - without even knowing how the story ends. Turns out, though, that the fact that Martin has two books to go in his seven-volume "A Song of Ice and Fire" wasn't much of a problem for HBO programming president Michael Lombardo, because he hasn't read the first five.