Some Thoughts on Porn:

Rob Long’s always entertaining radio commentary Martini Shot has this brilliant insight about pornography a few weeks ago….

Pornography is a bellweather. People in search of dirty pictures blaze a trail of technology, which people in search of less dicey things – like Chinese guys lipsynching, people putting Mentos into Diet Coke, my funny cat, here we are at Carlsbad caverns, whatever — follow, a year or two later. So if the pornography business is always a few steps ahead of the rest of the entertainment industry — in distribution and business model — why not check in with it and see what’s up? What’s up are online revenues, to almost $3 billion. What’s down are DVD sales, by at least 15 percent. What’s up are individual brands — porn stars like Jenna Jameson creating their own branded content and what’s down are production costs, a consequence of the fragmented, tighter margin business. In other words, what’s going on in the pornography business is what’s going to be going on in the rest of the entertainment industry in two years: costs pushed down; online distribution; individual brands eclipsing studio brands, like Tom Cruise buying MGM; smaller, more decentralized production and distribution. Everything, really, that you might expect.

• Category: Media Matters