Inside The Porn Business | American Porn

FRONTLINE

Pornography is edging its way from the margins into the mainstream -- partly with the help of some of America's biggest and most respected companies, but mainly because pornography is the entertainment of choice for millions of Americans. Here's a look at who's profiting from porn, who's consuming it, and what the insiders say about its future.



		A look at some of the big companies making easy money from distributing adult films, the controversies surrounding their involvement with porn, and the difficulties in tracking hard information about pornography's revenues.



		Entertainment-industry analyst Dennis McAlpine offers an overview of porn's economics -- from pay-per-view to the Internet to adult-video production -- and a closer look at how legitimate companies, like hotel chains and cable and satellite TV operators, are profiting from pornography.



		See the answers to that question, compiled from a national survey, and a range of other data on America's consumers of pornography.



		In these excerpts from their extended interviews with FRONTLINE, Sam Agboola and Danni Ashe of Danni's Hard Drive, Larry Flynt and Jim Coles of Larry Flynt Publications, and Bill Asher, president of Vivid Entertainment, one of the country's largest sex-video production companies, discuss the economics of their business and their visions for its future growth.



		Ashe is the founder and CEO of Danni's Hard Drive, one of the most popular porn sites on the Internet. Her site offers only softcore pornography and does not feature any female-male sex. Here, Ashe discusses her audience, what she offers them, and how she is planning for further growth in her business, which she expected to make $8 million in 2001.



		Asher is president of Vivid Entertainment Group, an adult-video production company. Vivid, which produced 80 new films in 2001, spends up to $100,000 on its features. Its films are distributed via cable and satellite pay-per-view channels, on VHS and DVD, and online. Here, Asher discusses Vivid's customers, the company's biggest future growth area, its interest in going public -- and whether Wall Street is ready to jump on board.



		"Rob Black" is the name Robert Zicari uses in the pornography business. Together with his wife Janet Romano (known as "Lizzy Borden" in the business), Zicari owns Extreme Associates, which produces low-budget sex videos that are considered extreme in their depictions of sex and violence. As of February 2004, Zicari and Romano are awaiting trial on federal obscenity charges. In this interview, Zicari criticizes the mainstream industry's adoption of the so-called "Cambria List" (created by Paul Cambria, an attorney for the porn industry), which specified various sex acts that should not be depicted if porn producers want to stay out of trouble with the U.S. Department of Justice.

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