Acute Angles |
Among the things our public servants are most zealous in protecting us from
are sex and drugs – especially sex, an endeavor in which they’re wholeheartedly
supported by public opinion. Strip clubs and adult bookstores are being forced
to close, and a commissioner of the FCC is asking the agency’s enforcement bureau
to investigate whether the ABC “Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show” violated decency
regulations. A respected California cardiovascular surgeon who purchased three
Las Vegas strip clubs to help finance his medical research was compelled to
sell them by the adverse publicity in the news.
In 1999 the owner of a chain of video stores in Utah County was prosecuted
for selling obscene material and faced the prospect of bankruptcy and jail because,
in addition to Disney classics he also sold films about the sexual adventures
of nurses. He had better luck than the cardiovascular surgeon. His attorney
happened to get an idea while looking out of the courtroom window at the Provo
Marriott Hotel, sent an investigator to the hotel to record all the sex films
that a guest could obtain through the hotel’s pay-per-view channels, and obtained
records on how much of them people were buying from their cable and satellite
providers. He found out that the people in Utah County, which boasts of being
the most conservative area in the nation, were especially large consumers of
the same videos that prosecutors labeled obscene and illegal. And far more of
them were getting their adult movies over the air or from cable than from the
video stores. It took only a few minutes for the jury to bring in a verdict
of not guilty on all charges.
The case of the cardiovascular surgeon and the video store owner illustrate
the wide gap between perception and reality. On close examination, it turns
out that there’s far more to sex than meets the eye. Some of America’s largest
and most respected companies are making vast sums of money from the videos and
films that were available at the Provo Marriott. General Motors, AT&T, Time
Warner, EchoStar, Liberty Media, Marriott International, Hilton, On Command,
LodgeNet Entertainment, the News Corporation are among the companies that have
a big financial stake in adult films, either directly or through their subsidiaries.
The companies say they’re responding to a huge personal need, that there’s a
growing American market that wants pornography in the home. They say that despite
the fact that this material isn’t marketed, revenue-wise it’s one of their biggest
moneymakers.
Modern technology is mainly responsible for bringing sex as a spectator sport
into the financial big leagues. In the past, someone would have to go to the
seedy parts of town to find hard-core adult films or bookstores. Technology
changed all that. First came the VCR. A single film, “Deep Throat” generated
more than $100 million in sales. The adult industry’s decision in the early
1980’s to release their videos in the VHS format is credited with killing Betamax.
There are now nearly 10,000 adult movies made every year, and record and video
store chains stock up to 500 titles in their erotic category.
Cable and the internet expanded the erotic movie market dramatically. The
bread and butter of the internet’s early years were raunchy pictures, exchanged
and downloaded by countless computer surfers. In the early days, up to 80 percent
of all the internet traffic was adult related. The originators of this material
were responsible for a number of technical innovations, from streaming video
to shopping cart software. With the internet and pay-per-view cable, now it
isn’t even necessary to go to the video store One of the reasons for the explosion
of the adult entertainment business is the anonymity – the ability to get adult
content discreetly and in the privacy of one’s own home. It’s easier to order
pornography into the home than pizza. Now there’s porn software for hand-held
computers, so one doesn’t even have to be at home to view it.
Twenty percent of all American households with a VCR or cable access pay to
watch an explicit adult video – and half of them pay to watch frequently. Sex
is one of the few things that prompt large numbers of people to disclose their
credit card numbers on the internet, and the sex channels are among the few
internet operations that actually make money. About one in four internet users,
or 21 million Americans, visit a sex site at least once a month and some of
the more popular web sites attract over 50 million visits a month.
In hotels, the pay-per-view sex films generate far more money than the beer,
wine and snacks sold in the mini-bars. In some hotels, 85 to 90 percent of all
profits from in-room spending come from the adult film channels.
With all the millions of Americans viewing adult videos and films, creating a $10 billion a year industry that provides huge profits for some of the country’s largest corporations, it’s interesting to note that sex still hasn’t become respectable.