NL- I was happy to see that it was done with a slant toward us instead of the usual hatchet jobs. This wasn’t in depth reporting though. I’d call it more a main course of Digital Playground (And co-owner Samantha Lewis is pretty hot, btw) with a quick side of Joanna Angel, Joy King, & Steve Hirsch with a "heroic" Max Hardcore for dessert.
Porn – The Business of Pleasure
By MikeSouth from MikeSouth.com
I watched the CNBC special and was oddly surprised. Partially by the lack of any any honest verification of what was presented as fact, but mostly by the fact that it was biased…..Towards us.
They trotted out the old horse shit numbers, 13 billion dollars a year, blah blah blah. A porn made in Porn Valley every thirty six seconds, and something like 38,000 dollars a second being spent on internet porn. then they g on to talk about how porners have fallen on hard times blaming it mainly on “tube sites” and” filesharing”. Steve Hirsch remarks about the piracy issue as though it is the responsibility of someone other than him and his company to police the internet for people posting his content.
They also trotted out the usual suspects, Wicked, Digital Playground and Vivid and Jesse Jane. Who all pretty much stuck to the script.
they overlaying tone was that of women in the industry and as such you would have thought that Samantha Lewis runs Digital Playground, Joy King runs Wicked and there are few if any men left in power in porn. No mention at all of Ali Joone or Steve Orenstein. The only company with no female representation was Vivid., they let Steve Hirsch do the talking there.
They did a segment with Jesse Jane “back home” in Oklahoma where they come to the errant conclusion that top girls in the biz make 30K a month. That’s a very wrong fact, top girls in porn can make that in a week feature dancin, not counting all the other avenues for making money.
The surprises were a pretty kid glove treatment of Max Hardcore and his, at the time, upcoming trip to Club Fed and the common sense approach Joy King used in her lengthy segment. Joy is good.
The truth for all to see moment came from Steve hirsch, who said that porn has been around since the days of cavemen and it isn’t going anywhere.
Here’s a link to the video segment:
http://www.mefeedia.com/entry/porn-business-of-pleasure/20754421
LOL — yea, it was rather like an hour long info-commercial for Digital Playground and the ‘brand’ of Jesse Jane!
Long ago that canal has become the Fox of the Left, any XPTer would have been more critical and inquisitive.
But on a more serious-minded track, CNBC did a surprisingly sloppy job with the special (considering they’re a reputable business channel). Sure, it wasn’t as biased as the infamous ABC piece years ago (where Sawyer got Belladonna to cry), or as sleazy as whenever Fox News does stories about porn (you got to love the ‘fake outrage’ the host deploy even as they’re running the same salacious clip of Jessica Drake in a tight-fitting tank-top hitting on the pool boy for the 10th time for those at home who are tired of looking at the host/guest).
Yet what WAS the theme/point of the CNBC’s special? Porn is kind of evil…but hey, there’s lots of women running companies and creeps like Max Hardcore are behind bars so let’s rejoice in the fact young women are the fastest growing demographic watching porn?!
Huh?! Say what Mainstream Media doing an hour long piece about porn hosted by a woman who looks like Asa Akira’s big sister?
I’m not even in the Porn Industry, and yet I know that a figure such as “13 billion” in annual revenues is total bullshit. In fact, a few years ago Forbes magazine had an article disputing such numbers (and if memory serves me right, pegged it a more reasonable amount such as a few billion). Likewise, AVN did an article roughly two years ago about porn talent salaries.
You’d think CNBC could have done a few google searches for this kind of info.
Likewise, why even interview a director like Robby D if he’s not going to show his face on camera (and/or if he hides it like he did, then do a follow up on his ‘hidden lifestyle’ — talk to the wife, ask him how they copes with a double life, et cetera). They oddly did this with one of the female execs, but when it came to Robby D, they just skipped to the next half-naked hardbody.
As for Max, and I know I’ll be in the minority on this, I felt they did a fair treatment of him and his current woes. Granted, they left the salacious stuff out of it (alleged physical/mental abuse, his own alleged drug problems) and focused on the case that put him away — obscenity and the selling of porn in certain states/counties that have banned its distribution. Plus, the Cambria List was mentioned to give even more context to how Max found himself in the cell he now occupies.
In relation, they also made the point that Hustler followed Penthouse and Playboy (as if to say, that while Flynt had to fight for existence, he might have simply found himself in legal hot water more due to trafficking in satirical ‘shock value’ than looking to make a stand for pornographic ‘free speech’).
For me at least, the most fascination moment was when they asked Flynt’s lawyer from those past battles, if he had seen Max’s movies and if he could support them. Even if the answer was somewhat boilerplate lawyerspeak, he responded that he had not, but heard enough to have a sense of the content, and that while they might be utterly depraved….you take away Max’s ability to make those movies and tomorrow the Feds are shutting down the fluff porn Adam & Eve make.
It was also quite comical to think of Shylar Cobi having to surf the internet all day looking for stolen Vivid content. You’d think with Vivid making so much bank off of their lame remakes and silly stunt casting, they’d be able to hire a few out of work IT guys. What kind of sweat-shop is Hirsch running!!!
Hey who saw me? I was on t.v. for a few seconds taking a picture of Max Hardcore when I was shooting for POONTALK . com
Speaking of POONTALK… I’m back, taking pictures again starting tonight so stay tuned!
See now this is what I took away from that show…who was the HOT guy in the first porn segment that was filming…shaved head, tattoos on his left arm, gray t-shirt! yummm!
Robby D is an ass.
Kay, maybe Scott Nails?
Vivid does not care about piracy. Their whole catalog can be found online for free (probably why their affiliate program has been abandoned and runs on auto-pilot). Out of the big companies, Digital Playground definitely has someone monitoring tube sites, because you won’t find much of their product on them (they aren’t doing very well at keeping their stuff off torrents or pirate message boards). Shane’s World / New Sensations / Hush Hush has Nate to do their detective stuff. Evil Angel is pretty much cannibalized (and one of their directors sent me a crazy email) to the core, just like Vivid. Other notable.companies that are cannibalized – Zero Tolerance / 3rd Degre, Smash, Kick Ass, Wicked, Club Jenna. And all the companies releasing their classic movies had better check vintage-erotica-forum for their products and D & C those guys, because it is becoming quite a prominent piracy board for classic porn (until last year, one of the reliable sales niches). Or better yet, stop being cheap, get some software and stream those movies yourself so you can keep the profit! Get smart people, stream your stuff and only make the collectable quality stuff into DVDs.
kay, rics is right, sounds like Scott Nails. His personality matches the fine exterior.
What’s the deal with Scott Nails? I’m hearing his name a lot lately.
But why don’t the big companies who have the money and resources do anything to stop the piracy or attempt to stop it? I just don’t understand why. Have any of them given an answer? It’s like leaving your front door open and allowing the neighbors to come into your home and steal your stuff. You then mingle with these thieves and have them over for dinner knowing fully well of their crimes. But you turn a blind eye and allow the stealing to continue.
Why did Steve Hirsch drop his lawsuit months ago? You don’t see this being done in Hollywood or the music industry to the extent it’s being done in porn. Is it because the bigger bosses who have the cash will always make money regardless and they just don’t care? They can get more performers and continue on the same cycle still making money. Do they want their competition out of the way and that’s why they don’t do anything? When everything is said and done with, only the already rich will be left?
Scott rose to the top of the male talent list very quickly due to his looks and personality. He’s like the Robert Redford (when he was attractive a long time ago) of the male performers. He doesn’t perform full time anymore, but if he wanted to come back, I believe he’d work almost every day.
None of the big companies understand the internet with the exception of New Sensations (because the owner himself founded their affiliate program). They don’t like the internet (definitely a generational thing, because they did not grow up using PCs) it takes away from DVD sales. I’ve never gotten an answer from a company about piracy, but was told by a guy that works for a famous director that owns his own company that the guy felt that nothing could be done about the downloading. And that conversation was 3 years ago. One of the directors over at Evil Angel is going crazy about the torrents. Anyway, there are tons of different things that can be done f*ck with the torrent crowd, but don’t expect porn dvd companies to ever catch onto it.
Maybe Vivid couldn’t afford to continue the lawsuit. That documentary was interesting. Five or 10 years ago, Vivid would have made sure that their talent was heavily featured, but Digital Playground took the opportunity and ran with it. Times change so quickly.
Do Scott Nails no longer lives in LA? He moved to Arizona with Lacy Heart? Are those two together?
CNBC a serious business chanel? They are a joke to the business community! I mean, have liberal media type cover business is like having them cover guns or religion, they will never ever get it right.
Scott does live in AZ. I don’t know if he is still with pretty Lacie.
CNBC at Youtube has been Promoting this one like mad and I saw it on the “Most watched” Page a LOT in the Last few days since it aired.Kinda cool to see it in the mainstream without all the Pointy fingered folks going “Ooooh ..PORN BAD!!”