“John was quiet, but he was hard-working and a builder,” Mr. Malone said. “He was definitely good for the growth of the industry.”
Adelphia “was made up of a lot of little systems stitched together and run as cheaply as possible,” Alan Breznick, a cable industry analyst with Light Reading, said in a 2012 interview. “It wasn’t known for great customer service or innovation and wasn’t in the same class as Comcast or Cablevision. But it wasn’t one of the worst, either. It inspired a lot of loyalty because they would go to places that other cable companies wouldn’t go.”
Mr. Rigas’s survivors include his four children, Michael, Timothy, James and Ellen.
Mr. Rigas was revered in Coudersport because he put Adelphia’s corporate headquarters there, hired hundreds of local workers and gave generously to local charities. He was an active member of the town’s Chamber of Commerce and Rotary Club. His arrest and the collapse of the company stunned the community.
At the same time, the N.H.L. stripped him of his authority over the Sabres. But what was especially galling for Mr. Rigas was the turnabout by Deloitte, which had had a long relationship with Adelphia, and by Buchanan Ingersoll, the company’s legal firm for a decade, which refused to represent the family during the litigation. In addition, Mr. Rigas was furious with James R. Brown, Adelphia’s vice president of finance, who pleaded guilty in a deal with prosecutors and became the government’s key witness.
Seeing himself as a tragic hero, Mr. Rigas told USA Today that he felt as if he had been part of the final scene in the western “High Noon,” in which the marshal confronts the outlaw gang alone. “I felt like I was Gary Cooper,” he said. “Because all this time, people are saying, ‘You can depend on us,’ but when you really needed them, and expected them, they weren’t to be found.”
Alyssa Lukpat contributed reporting.

Source: New York Times

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