ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, NJ — “Porn: Business of Pleasure,” billed as a “nothing off-limits [look at] the controversial multibillion dollar industry that aims to please but has been known to offend,” will debut at 9 p.m. ET Wednesday on CNBC.CNBC anchor Melissa Lee served as lead reporter for the project, which according to the network “takes an unprecedented behind-the-scenes look … from the threats to its profitability to exclusive behind-the-scenes interviews with the industry’s biggest stars to the one issue that could bring the adult industry to its knees.”
Estimated to generate more than $13 billion in annual revenue, the adult entertainment industry long was thought to be recession-proof. However, the internet and other technologies have eroded some of the industry’s traditional economic stability, and porn now seems to be suffering along with every other business during the current global downturn.
“The porn industry has changed technology and can be found in millions of homes, hotel rooms and hard drives across the country,” according to an announcement at CNBC.com. “BUT, the business is facing economic challenges. It’s under assault, and not just from the many critics who see it as socially corroding, degrading to women and a risk to the young.”
Wired magazine’s Nick Thompson is one of the pundits Lee interviews during the show. According to him, the adult entertainment industry faces what may be an insurmountable challenge from file-sharers — the same dark menace that continues to plague mainstream movie and music industries.
Lee notes during the broadcast that five of the 100 most-visited sites on the Web are so-called “tube” sites that specialize in porn. Individually, each of the sites gets more traffic than WashingtonPost.com, Match.com or Bank of America’s online banking site. Not even the once-mighty economic engine that is adult entertainment can take that kind of drain forever, especially when policing the tube sites — which will remove copyrighted material when it’s reported to them — adds extra expense to a studio’s bottom line.
The problem these days, according to the documentary, is not a decline in porn’s popularity but in its profitability. To illustrate porn’s general acceptance by society, Lee follows author Michael Leahy, a self-described porn addict who wrote Porn Nation and now tours the U.S. warning people about the dangers of adult entertainment. Lee’s camera catches him addressing a nearly empty auditorium on a university campus.
The documentary’s mostly even-handed treatment of adult entertainment and the people who produce and consume it obviously riles the socially conservative American right-wing. Morality in Media President Robert Peters distributed a statement early Wednesday, in which he once again attempted to tie legal adult entertainment to illegal child abuse.
“Undoubtedly, individuals who create and view child pornography do obtain pleasure from their sordid efforts, at least until they are apprehended, publicly humiliated and sent to prison,” Peters noted in the statement. “Similarly, individuals of all ages also derive pleasure from viewing ‘adult pornography,’ at least until their exposure or addiction to ‘adult pornography’ leads to an ‘unwanted pregnancy,’ a sexually transmitted disease, the loss of a job, a broken marriage or a prison sentence.”
