By Peter Berton

LOS ANGELES – Imagine the beleaguered porn consumer at home, as he flicks through myriad cable TV porn listings. Beyond specifying a niche, the titles tell him nothing about the video’s quality or hotness. How can he make an informed decision?

That was the dilemma Paul Fishbein and Darren Roberts set out to address when they created InsideAdult.com, a website offering a surprisingly broad range of porn-informational web-TV shows that titillate as they educate. The operation also occupies a set slot from 7-8 p.m. ET every Wednesday on Vivid Radio, available on SiriusXM channel 102.

Inside Adult is produced by X3Sixty Network, a division of Plausible Films. Plausible President Fishbein, who founded the AVN Media Network (which he sold in 2010), provided the skinny about the operation to YNOT.com.

YNOT: Inside Adult provides such a variety of original and other programming, it’s a bit difficult to classify the operation. How do you define it?

Paul Fishbein: It’s a consumer hotspot for entertaining behind-the-scenes content about the adult industry. Our programs are designed to educate and entertain consumers while hopefully educating them, so that when they pay for adult content on the web, video on demand, or DVD, they get quality and have a positive experience.

I always tell people that in today’s market, with all the choices, you have to grab the consumer’s attention with entertaining and quality content.

What inspired the creation of Inside Adult?

It started out as a vehicle for cable operators, which it still is. Inside Adult is designed to educate the unknowing consumer, helping him make an informed VOD choice.

We believe the average consumer has no idea what he’s looking at when he sees a list of titles on his VOD menu. It’s also true that many [adult movies] are re-named comps, old footage and cynically assembled collections to capitalize on themes rather than quality.

Why is it important to educate the porn consumer?

If a consumer has a bad experience, he’ll just pay and never come back, rather than complaining that his porn sucked. If you educate and inform (while entertaining) the consumer, he’ll have a better experience and come back for more.

Cable operators also are falling victim to free porn on the internet, so this programming is designed to recommend girls, quality movies, better studios and sites.

What kinds of programming does Inside Adult offer?

Viewers will find more than 200 short-form programs, varying in length from three minutes to 60 minutes, but mostly in the four- to 30-minute range.

Our flagship show, Adult Insider, is a half-hour variety show hosted by Chanel Preston. It has been described as “the Entertainment Tonight of adult.”

Sunny Megatron hosts “Outside the Box,” a short-form sex education series with sex toy reviews, interviews, fetish demonstrations and more. Sunny is also the host of our new show, tentatively titled The Sunny Megatron Show, which will be a series on Showtime soon. The pilot came out great, by the way.

In addition, we have a series of documentaries on the making of adult films, a cute talk show called Seven Minutes in Heaven with Lexi Belle, “Porn Star Secrets” and tons more.

Who is your target audience?

We target fans who already love adult material — and the girls, obviously. We are also targeting the novice who wants to learn about the industry and likes that behind-the-scenes feel that is so prevalent in reality television these days.

What is the site’s financial model?

We earn our revenue from advertising. It’s very low-cost and very targeted.

What sort of viewership numbers has the site generated so far?

Right now, we are averaging 84,000 viewers a month. These are people who actually watch the programming. In December, the viewers averaged nearly 11 minutes on the site.

All 84,000 viewers watched some part of the commercial that precedes each video, as the “Skip This Ad” function begins at the 10-second mark. Plus, the commercials are adult and entertaining, as well.

What about affiliate marketing? Are affiliates part of the picture?

We are studying our affiliate options. At the moment, since it’s a completely free site, we are concentrating on developing partners who want to sponsor our unique programs.

What are your plans for Inside Adult’s future?

We are developing a multitude of television programs for mainstream and adult networks and will continue to grow this specific adult content as the audience continues to grow.

We are currently testing our video blog, which is starting to get nice organic traffic. We will tweak that over the next several weeks and officially launch it soon. It ties right into the InsideAdult.com site.