Porn 500

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Jan 8, 2001 | by James Harder

"Every day mail gets hoarded into this office. It's almost like Christmas" says Strebel of the more than 50,000 letters of encouragement the hotel has received since banning the video pornography. But Omni's decision to put decency ahead of a sure buck is rare among large corporations.

The Wall Street Journal reported in November that Comcast Corp., Cox Communications Inc., Cablevision Systems Corp., Charter Communications Inc. and Insight Communications Co. all carry the Hot Network, a raunchy porn channel that both AT&T and GM have signed. Owned by Vivid Entertainment Group, the Hot Network quickly is becoming one of the best-selling commodities on cable and satellite television. Available in more than 27 million homes, Vivid now has its sights on the global market. Its programs already are distributed to 40 countries through third-party distribution. Intent on gaining an even larger audience, Vivid executives plan to go public next year, seeking more cash to produce ever more porn. "We want to fill up the pipeline with as much Vivid content as possible," Vivid cochairman Steve Hirsch tells the New York Times.

AT&T acquired its cable business in 1999 when it merged with TCI. In June of this year, it announced plans to offer hard-core programming on its cable systems via the Hot Network. The service is available to 95 percent of U.S. markets. "Our business is to serve a wide range of demographics who have a wide range of programming desires and we strive to meet customer demand," says Steve Lang, a spokesman for AT&T. "I'm sure there are people who are disappointed, but they have the ability to not watch it. We trust our customers to know what's right for them."

The aggressive marketing of porn by such companies as Vivid, GM and AT&T is outpacing even such infamous pornographers as Larry Flynt. In fact, GM sells more explicitly sexual films every year than does Flynt's Hustler empire. And that has Flynt's daughter, Tonya Flynt, concerned. Growing up with the sultan of porn as her father, Flynt experienced the devastating effects of the porn industry and the rapacity with which her father pursued it. She recalls the day he took her into his office, opened a briefcase full of money and said: "Tonya, that's power. That's what I care about."

She says, "He always tried to hide behind the First Amendment and free speech," but it was only to hide business interests in the seedy world of porn. "I'm not sure if the Fortune 500 companies really understand what they're advocating," Tonya Flynt says, "or if they're like my father, and it's all about the money."

Indeed it is about money, says Robert Mercer, senior manager of communications at DirectTV, which is owned by GM. "It [adult content] is a profitable category,' he tells Insight, acknowledging that the GM satellite company offers the Playboy Channel, the Hot Zone and the Hot Network. "The Hot Zone gets a little spicy," he euphemizes, defending the decision to carry hard-core porn: "We do have standards. We don't show violence or underage, that kind of thing" -- by which he presumably means sadism and child pornography.