… and porn is wobbling:

AVN Media Network, the most prominent overseer of the business, publishes trade publications for the adult entertainment industry and puts on trade shows. Paul Fishbein, chairman of AVN, is entering his 27th year in the business, “and this is the first time I can honestly say the adult business is not recession-proof.”

“Everybody I’m talking to says the business is down anywhere from 20 to 30 percent,” he explained. “That’s in line with the rest of the economy. People in the retail sector are down anywhere from 10 to 40 percent.”

Brend an Kiley has worked as a child actor in New Orleans, as a member of the junior press corps at the 1988 Republican National Convention, and, for one happy April, as a bootlegger’s assistant in Nicaragua....

21 replies on “When Porn Falls, So Falls the World”

  1. Hmm. I take it less as a sign of impending doom, and more of a sign that like newspapers (and the music industry, and bookstores, etc.), porn’s business model has been affected dramatically by the internet. People can easily get free porn on the internet, so of course in a recession they’ll cut back on their porn budget.

  3. This is not just the recession / depression: porn revenues have been going down in the past three years, mostly due to the fact that 1) overall DVD sales are dwinlding, as DVD is a dying medium and 2) free porn content on the web is plentiful and widely available. Solo, Personality-driven Star Porn sites will still get subscribers. But general porn sites can no longer count on subscriptions – their traditional bread and butter – for income, and must turn to advertisers, which was a limited pool to begin with in this market.

    Meanwhile – peeps still love the porn. In the age of free content, dollar figures do not tell the full tale of consumption.

  5. How do I find all this free porn everyone is talking about. I mean, 30 second clips is not exactly enough…but I’m open and curious to people’s recommendations? pretty please?

  6. Yep, I knew it was bad when the Mustang Ranch in Nevada laid off 10% of its girls back in December. When guys can’t even afford to get laid, the economy’s in bad shape.

  8. “There’s enough free porn on the Internet that, if you don’t care about quality, you can get what you want,”

    That’s a funny line… Is any porn high-quality?

  9. Just wait until the generation of kids who grew up with the internet saturate the market, and the people who actually saw porn in print all die off. I’d bet that next to nobody under the age of 25 pays for porn.

  12. I know when gas prices spiked I had to cut back. The quality of downloadable porn can be good or bad, you just have to be careful. I would rather rent my films. My DVD let’s me zoom in for those juicy bits. All porn companies and their rental and purchase outlets need to do is offer some deals. And get the camera man to hold those penetration shots and spend less time on faces. Geez!

  13. As a reviewer of gay p*rn under three different names for three different outlets, I have for years reviewed a hundred and fifty movies each month. Since the recession, that’s down to as few as seventy-five – and that’s even with me soliciting movies from obscure producers I’ve never heard of before.

    As for Urgutha Forka’s query above (8), “Is any porn high-quality?” Yes, Urgutha, some is. In fact, some of the larger, wealthier companies have been fighting the economy and the Internet by putting out fewer, bigger, better movies.

    I don’t know if it’s permitted on this site to give links to adult sites. If I could, I would direct you to one of my online columns where you could see something of the enormous range of styles, manners, and quality which current p*rn offers.

  14. What if we did live in a world without professionals? No Belladonna? No Chris Strokes? Just ole cousin Larry’s homemade 30 second Xtube?

    Something needs to be done.

  15. I notice that fetish porn, though very numerous, sits on the shelf. I like regular, straight sex. No anal. No tranny’s. No interracial. But the straight sex, men and women (bareback!) films are few and far between. I know the one’s that try to slip in condoms , so fuck you for making your boxes so it looks like they are not wearing them! Loads of other shit that just sits on the shelf. You want to save money film companies? Get to know your customers.

  17. Well, geez, at $50 a movie of COURSE business is down. You can’t afford a $4 latte, you sure can’t afford a $50 movie, no matter its content.

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