Cheap and Easy: TV Providers Stimulate Sales with Salacious Sex
Satellite and cable providers are aiming to increase revenue
with pornography sales because the economy is just that bad.
By
Erin Brown
The Culture and Media Institute
March 10, 2009
Be careful when channel surfing; you might get an eyeful of
advertisements for pay-per-view porn. But where is the mainstream media’s
warning to parents and concerned customers?
According to a March 9 article on
adage.com, cable and satellite providers such as Comcast and DirecTV, are
picking up their effort to boost sales through adult entertainment and the
advertisements are expected to appear on more “male-heavy channels such as ESPN
and Spike TV.” Though the spots may run in the early morning hours of 2 a.m. to 6 a.m., the mainstream media
has largely failed to report this news.
USA
Today was the only mainstream media outlet that ran the story from Advertising
Age. To date, there has been no other mention in network news of the
controversial content to air on non-adult-themed channels.
Television providers cite the cheap “internet smut” and DVD sales with a
decrease in their pay-per-view pornography sales. “Five years ago, 90% of our
business was DVD,” admitted CEO of Digital Playground, a California-based adult
studio, Ali Joone said. “This year it will probably be less than 60%. And a lot
of the broadcasters, they're putting out the same material out that you can pay
for by the minute on the internet. At that point, the consumer is like, ‘I can
get this for pennies!’”
According to Joone, PPV is almost 100% profit. “90% of the
revenue goes to cable operators,” he said. “They have the lion's share of the
profits.” And while prices on subscription packages for DirecTV and Comcast
continue to rise, pornography prices are dropping.
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