LONDON – Respected financial newsweekly The Economist leads the “United States” section of its Sept. 12 issue with the startling revelation Los Angeles’ adult entertainment industry “is among the worst hit by the recession.”Entitled “The Trouble with Pornography,” the article quotes industry luminaries Nina Hartley, Mark Kernes and Diane Duke, all of whom make strong cases for the current global economic downturn precipitating a phenomenon not seen before in porn: financial flaccidity. In The Economist’s view, content piracy is the primary underlying cause.

“Last year I did a scene a week; this year I do a scene a month,” Hartley told the paper, adding she has not dropped her fees from $1,200 for a “straight boy-girl scene.”

Younger performers often find themselves paid much, much less, according to AVN Senior Editor Kernes.

“If the [San Fernando] Valley [in Los Angeles County] used to make 5,000-6,000 films a year, says Mr Kernes, it now makes perhaps 3,000-4,000,” the article notes. “Some firms have shut down; others are consolidating or scraping by. For the 1,200 active performers in the Valley, this means less action and more hardship. A young woman without Ms. Hartley’s name-recognition might have charged $1,000 for a straight scene before the crisis, but gets $800 or less now. Men are worse hit. If they averaged $500 for a straight scene in 2007, they are now lucky to get $300.”

The recession’s effect on the industry as a whole has been dramatic, according to Free Speech Coalition Executive Director Duke. While American porn producers dragged in as much as $6 billion in 2007, Duke believes revenues are off by 30-50 percent today.

“One producer told me his revenue was down 80 percent,” she told The Economist.

Even worse, Hartley said she does not believe adult entertainment will recover much, if any, of its former profitability or glory.

“The industry will shrink and stay shrunken,” she said.