No more Simpsons? No more dippy dating shows? No more “American Idol”?

The horror.

Fortunately, that’s not going to happen. Adelphia spokesman Michael Edgecomb says the company has simply switched the Fox and PAX stations on the viewing dial, sending Fox to Channel 4 and PAX to Channel 23.

Apparently a Portland station picked up the Fox network, he says, causing Adelphia to drop its satellite feed for the network and necessitating the numbers change. That happened at about the end of April or the start of May.

Fox had technical problems during the switch, so for about a week there was some confusion and some time off the air, Edgecomb said. People called to complain, some in a panic. During that week, Adelphia viewers missed a Tuesday night edition of “American Idol,” the show that invited viewers to call in and vote for their favorite singers.

“That’s the end of the world; we heard it from them all night,” Edgecomb said.

There aren’t any other current plans to change other channels right now, and besides, Ruben already won.

-Kathryn Skelton
True beauty

This prom season, hundreds of area girls will spend hours making sure they look just so – the right makeup, the right hair, the perfect dress.

But when many of them get their corsages this month, they’ll find a little yellow-green neon sticker that insists it isn’t the dress that makes them pretty because true beauty blooms inside.

“We want to counteract a lot of those really damaging and limiting messages that girls are getting,” said Aileen Fortune, project coordinator for Turn Beauty Inside Out Maine.

Started in 2000 as a national campaign to change the traditional definition of beauty, Turn Beauty Inside Out came to Maine last year. This spring, group members wanted a way to reach hundreds of girls across the state with their message that beauty is about more than looks.

Then they heard about another group’s efforts to place stickers on packs of beer to warn adults that it is illegal to buy alcohol for minors. Turn Beauty Inside Out Maine members decided to try their own stickers.

This prom season, the small oval stickers have been placed on corsage packages at three florists in southern, western and northern Maine. In Auburn, Plantasia Florals is participating.

The 2,000 stickers tell girls that “True beauty blooms inside” and offer a Web site for more information about the project.

-Lindsay Tice
Trendsetter

The Androscoggin County Jail’s installation of an ATM may have started a corrections trend.

Jail officials in California and Illinois this week telephoned John Lebel, the administrator of the Auburn Jail, after reading the story first reported by the Sun Journal.

The local jail installed an automated teller machine in its lobby about three months ago. Since then, prisoners have been using credit cards and debit cards to withdraw cash for bail. They’re doing it at a rate of two or more each day.

The 128-bed jail is the first in Maine to install such a machine. Lebel had never heard of another, he said.

“The guy from California said, ‘You know, that’s a good idea,'” Lebel said. “He was from a jail with 1,000 beds.”

– Daniel Hartill