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Recession, free sites hurt porn industry

Posted on: Monday, 10 August 2009, 15:44 CDT

The pornography business centered in California's San Fernando Valley is taking a hit because of a lousy economy and free Internet sites, a practitioner says.

Adult film star Savannah Stern, star of more than 350 hard-core pornography productions, said she has gone from working four or five days a week to one, and that the studios are asking her to take a 30 percent cut from the $1,000 that once was the industry standard, the Los Angeles Times reported Monday.

At least five girls I haven't seen in a while came up to me and said, 'Savannah, are you working?' said Stern, who uses a stage name. I had to say, 'No, not really,' and they all said, 'Yeah, I'm not either.'

Since 2007, revenue for most adult production and distribution companies has dropped between 30 percent and 50 percent, and the number of new films has declined as well, industry insiders said.

It's the free stuff that's killing us, and that's not going away, said Dion Jurasso, owner of Combat Zone porn production company, which he said has seen business drop by 50 percent during the last three years.

Sites such as Pornhub, YouPorn and RedTube attract more users than the TMZ celebrity gossip site and even the top illegal download portal, Pirate Bay, the Times said.

Suzann Knudsen, a marketing director for PornoTube, said the site's owner, Adult Entertainment Broadcast Network, uses the free site to attract customers for paid video on demand.

Source: United Press International

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