I added 100 movies a month as a guess to cover those small producers. If i double it to 200 it's still a long way away from 11,000,

I can go down a list of the small studios and see that most of them produce a handful of movies a year.

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If truth be known, there is probably 250 comps released a month from all various studios, and those are not generally payed as much attention to by ADT or by IAFD or the others, since thier just reused old scenes, and not anything new, but again thier still a release.

Then you have all that amateur stuff too, thier is probably a 100 or more of those released a month from tiny studios and other things, thier still a release too.

I also beleive that when mainstream media talks about the pornography business, that release number includes softcore stuff too. So you have all the playboy and penthouse releases and all those made for cable and skinimax flicks too.

Then you move on and throw the gay porn industry in there, and all those fetish studios and the like. I would be surprised honestly if it was not close to that 11,000 number when all is said and done.

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-T.C.

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I don't know if 14 billion is correct. It wouldn't surprise me to find out either way, right or wrong. I do know that there is porn for sale on every figurative streetcorner in this nation.

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Please keep in mind that we only cover DVD releases. There's a lot of porn released each week that never makes its way to DVD even from the major studios.

A better gauge in my mind is the number of items in the price search database. We started it in March of 2000 when roughly 2,500 adult DVDs were available. Today there are over 42,000 items in the database. (Keep in mind that there are roughly 5,500 asian import titles that we don't list and aren't included in the total.) In 4 years we've added an average of 10,000 items per year.

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The January, 2003 issue had an annual sales and rental charts graph (I have it in front of me right now) which breaks down the growth of porn. (I don't know why the January, 2004 issue did not - I checked).

According to AVN...

YEAR - # MOVIES RELEASED

1988 - 1,250
1989 - 1,300
1990 - 1,275
1991 - 1,575
1992 - 2,200
1993 - 2,475
1994 - 3,224
1995 - 5,575
1996 - 7,852
1997 - 7,970
1998 - 9,096
1999 - 10,196
2000 - 11,156
2001 - 10,800
2002 - 11,303

SALES FIGURES (according to same AVN report)

***This is both new sales and rentals.

1992 - 1.60 billion
1997 - 4.20 billion
2002 - 4.04 billion

***AVN defines their sales numbers as representing video stores and adult stores (no mail order.)

Selena Silver

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Edited by - SelenaSilver on 4/22/2004 5:48:53 PM

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*This comes from Crosswalk.com and is written by Scott Covington and Curt Swindoll who are two VERY influential religious writers/leaders.

-Over 50 percent of evangelical pastors report they viewed pornography last year.

-34 percent of female readers of Today's Christian Woman's online newsletter admitted to intentionally accessing Internet porn in a recent poll.

-Pornography is a $10 billion business - bigger than the NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball combined.

-50 percent of Promise Keepers attendees viewed porn within a week before the event.

-One of 10 respondents to a recent MSNBC.com poll said they are "sexually addicted" to Internet pornography.

-20 percent of the Internet consists of pornographic content.

-300,000,000 x-rated videos were distributed in the US-more than the entire US population - and that was 13 years ago.

-Hollywood releases 11,000 adult movies per year - more than 20 times mainstream movie production.

-One in five children (age 10-17) have received unwanted sexual solicitations online

-1800 percent - pornography growth over the last five years.

Selena Silver

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And I was never talking about imports, Asian or European, was talking about domestically produced adult movies.

i still think it's an exaggerated number but I think it would take alot of detective work to really get an accurate count.

When you say you've added an average of 10,000 movies to the ADT database for the last few years, do you include the date of production? Because I see lots of titles that are older.

well whenever Selena retires from active duty in the porn biz she's going to make a great journalist covering the porn industry. she will be an asset to any publication that hires her.

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Here is what I find REALLY interesting...

1. The adult sales numbers peaked in 1997 with 4.20 billion in rental & sales and there were only 7,970 videos released.

That means the average tape producedd $526,976 in revenue.

2. In 2002 the sales/rentals had dropped to 4.04 billion but the number of releases had skyrocketed to 11,303 (a new record).

That means the average tape produced $368,043 in revenue.

Now... that is a totally inaccurate number. Because of course, MUCH of those sales and rental dollars went to tapes that were produced in previous years. Only some of that went to the new releases.

I am NOT suggesting the tape sold that much, I am merely using it as indicator to point out that MORE is not MORE MONEY.

Margins are lower than they have ever been, profits are harder to come by... and the market is flooded with too many tapes that are clearly inferior to the good product.

Companies with great products like Evil Angel make less money than they should (even though they are doing fine :), because a casual American porn buying market which goes to an adult store 1 x per year picks up the $4.99 tape in the barrel put out by [Self-Editor Deleted the Company Name Referred to Here] based on mere price and nothing else.

Then they get home and complain that all porn is crap. No it isn't - just what they are buying is crap.

The number of tapes released jumps 70% in 5 years and the average revenue drops 30% in those same 5 years.

What does that tell me?

That we have to many producers and too much crap.

Maybe the porn buying public would be better of with a Guy Capo "bloodletting". Lets see what happens if there threatened regulation of this industry does occur.

I tell you what - regulation won't put a solid company like Evil Angel out of business. It absolutely would put [Deleted Again] out of business.

I am totally against governmental regulation in any industry - history seems to suggest that it only makes for ineffeciency and higher costs to the public.

I AM for self-regulation and I do not believe that the porn industry has done that well enough. IF somehow it could pull of that mythical self-regulation???

The bottom feeders would probably be out of business. The number of movies released each year would drop- but the company profit margins would go back up and the resulting quality would make the consumer happy.

What if every release was an Evil Angel or Platinum X Picture quality?

What if the majority of studios had the integrity and workplace environment of a DVSX?

I also find it amusing that the religious right uses these tremendously overwhelming numbers to "prove" that porn must be stopped without stopping to think.... what a minute... if those numbers are so high they might be suggesting that a lot of other people in this country are voting with their wallets FOR porn???

Half this country votes with it's voice and the other half votes with it's wallet.

The problem is that a strong enough voice can take away the rights of a silent wallet.

What are you going to do about that?

Oh, and since this is getting way to serious...

I want to point out that AVN firmly denied that 82% of all porn watched in this country was watched exclusively by bono-one and Skronker; however, they did agree that Den of CAVR.com has probably watched 82% of all porn made since 1848. :)

Selena Silver

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If anything I think 11,000 a year is low. I'm not saying that the industry captures, edits, masters and releases 11,000 per year. I'm saying that 11K+ movie titles are released per year. I would guess that 35% - 50% of these are compilations, re-releases of old footage or simply the exact same movie with a new title and cover distributed by a different company.

Combine the monthly releases of Nymph, Leisure Time, Sunshine and Caballero and there's at least 500 new movie titles per month alone.

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interesting stuff Selena, i would comment but i don't have your energy!

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here's the beginning of the article

New York Times columnist Frank Rich parachuted into the sex biz one year ago, producing a lengthy work whose fictitious numbers have since provided the basis for all future reporting. Luke Ford, a former online chronicler of the industry who is still known as the “Matt Drudge of porn,” commented at the time that “Rich did exactly what many journalists had done before: trotting out tired and unchecked numbers from a 1998 Forrester research study ... and video sales stats from AVN."

AVN -- the Adult Video News -- is the porn industry’s version of Variety, and it estimated in December of 2000 that Americans spent $4 billion on adult video rentals in the first year of the 21st century. That number, and Rich’s extrapolations from it, have been widely quoted as gospel ever since.

Last year, Forbes.com columnist Dan Ackman debunked the figure as "baseless and widely inflated." In a point-by-point deconstruction of Rich's calculations, Ackman cobbled together a estimate for the whole industry (including video, pay-per-view, Internet and magazines) at between $2.6 billion and $3.9 billion.

"The idea that pornography is a $10 billion business is often credited to a study by Forrester Research. This figure gets repeated over and over. The only problem is that there is no such study," wrote Ackman, a lawyer-turned-journalist who had never previously covered porn. "In 1998, Forrester did publish a report on the online 'adult content' industry, which it pegged at $750 million to $1 billion in annual revenue. The $10 billion aggregate figure was unsourced and mentioned in passing."

Ackman himself estimated the video segment at $500 million to $1.8 billion -- much less than AVN's $4 billion. "How Adult Video News gets this number is not clear. We asked Adult Video News' managing editor, Mike Ramone. 'I don't know the exact methodology,' he said, 'It's a pie chart.' Asked to break the figure down into sales versus rentals, a standard practice among those who cover the video industry, he said he didn't think it was available and suggested we call the editor-in-chief, who didn't return our calls."

In rushing to cover a titillating and unknown new subject, Ackman suggested, journalists have left their skepticism at the door. "Many have claimed [the industry] is large and profitable, especially on the Internet. Many of the claims are cut from whole cloth, but are accepted without question by the legitimate press. ... Certainly, self-interested statements by pornographers merit a second look."

AVN executives lashed back at Ackman, defending their figures as "absolutely correct," and suggesting that "people who sit and throw stones and do absolutely no research ... should not be taken seriously."

In an e-mail interview last year, AVN Editor Mike Ramone said: "Ackman had no objectivity, and was out to do a smear piece on AVN in an attempt to save face after being scooped by a major competitor, the New York Times Magazine."

The debate spilled over to eYada.com's Lovebytes show, where veteran actor and porn personality Bill Margold told Ackman: "In an industry predicated on screwing, you're going to get fucked. You honestly expect us to tell the truth about what we're making?"

In an interview last year, Rich says he stands by his figures, which he gleaned after four months on and off the story. "I did a tremendous amount of reporting on this," he says. "I used the Forrester Research figure, and there were larger figures that appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the Economist. I didn't talk to rival research outlets but I talked on background to a prominent research firm I can't name, and I went to companies involved in mass distribution of the products. I'm pretty comfortable with this figure."

He’d better be -- it’s become the de facto estimate in the press and even government. “Statistics are very hard to figure out because the companies which make money are reluctant to give numbers out,” Koppel said in his report. “The best estimate is that pornography makes over $10 billion a year, and it's growing.”

The Times of London stated flatly last month that porn accounts “for an estimated total annual revenue of $10-$14 billion a year in the United States alone. Even the conservative figure, given in a 1998 study by Forrester Research, makes pornography a bigger business than professional football, basketball and baseball combined.”

As for online sales, Koppel was confident to proclaim that “over $2 billion was spent on Internet porn last year.” The National Research Council puts the number at $1 billion. Forrester competitor Jupiter Research, meanwhile, estimated that online porn revenues this year would only be a paltry $230 million, according to the New York Daily News March 25.

Whatever the number, it’s tempting to think that this business is growing exponentially, behind closed doors, making thousands of failed dot-commers and tech-savvy strippers millions of dollars. Not so, says porn legend Ron Jeremy.

continued here ....... http://eng.ricn.ru/press/material/163/

Edited by - *Mutt* on 4/22/2004 7:54:17 PM

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"What's a rimjob?..It's when you put your legs behind your head and someone licks your ass!" - South Park,Bigger,Longer,& Uncut

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1) The AVN sales and rental charts are not accurate, not reliable, and have no consistent methodology and no statistical validation. They are NOT, however, pure fiction. They are an honest effort. There WON'T ever be an accurate adult sales or rental chart until the entire industry agrees to the expense of a tracking system, which they will never do.

2) The annual AVN charts that serve as the source for most news stories that cite the number of releases, the dollar size of the business, and other statistics about porn are in the same boat, EXCEPT for the number of new releases. That is a reasonably accurate figure, based on various sources like release lists, catalogs, tapes sent for review, compilation lists, lists sent to amateur sources, and so on. The number could be off by as much as 10%, but it is extremely unlikely that it is off any more than that.

3) The actual size of the adult entertainment business is a good subject for a master's or Ph.D. thesis. It is probably not as high as the top estimates of $14 billion, but it is undoubtedly well over $8 billion and may be as high as $11 billion. This would include the following: direct sales of video and DVD (which includes both mail-order and the Internet), wholesale sales of same, retail sales of same, rentals of same (which includes all pay-per-view and satellite services in any venue), direct, wholesale, and retail sales of adult sex toys, apparel, and novelties; all phone-sex services; subscription and newsstand sales of adult publications (magazines, newspapers, advertising revenues in giveaway sex-oriented publications, books, photosets, etc.); adult clubs (topless and strip clubs); and all Internet sex-related sales, including sales of goods, services, membership fees, advertising revenues, and the like. It excludes all prostitution, massage parlors, and illegal activities, and it also arbitrarily excludes any and all adult trade and award shows.

4) If you define the term "a regular consumer of adult entertainment" with these parameters, as being someone who does the following with the stated frequencies:

a. rents more than one adult video (or PPV) per month;
b. purchases more than four adult videos per year;
c. subscribes to an adult magazine;
d. buys an adult magazine from a newsstand or retail store more than four times a year;
e. is a paying member of an adult website for more than one month;
f. buys adult products other than media - i.e. sex toys, novelties, sexual apparel or apparatus - either direct or retail, more than four times a year;
g. uses a paid remote sex service like phone sex or webcam or paid Internet chat more than four times a year;
h. advertises a sexual product of service in a public forum;
i. attends an adult club more than four times a year;
j. ever does personal or business entertainment in an adult club.

I think most would agree that these criteria are relatively strict definitions of "regular consumer". Of course, they are arbitrary; anyone is free to construct their own definitions and to do the research. Well, according to my own research, some 62% of American adults fall into the classification of "regular consumer of adult entertainment". This suggests some very interesting conclusions.

One - considering that most polls consistently show that between 25 and 30% of American adults say that they have strong moral objections to adult entertainment as I've defined it and therefore never use it, the market penetration of adult entertainment (no pun intended) in what could be regarded as its potential market is astonishingly high, on the order of 80%. Adult entertainment marketing is ubiquitous and effective, if not sophisticated.

Two - Do the math! What does it cost to buy four videos or DVD's, buy four magazines or sex toys or strip club cover charges? How much do people spend per usage on phone sex, webcams, private chats, lap dances? If you are INCREDIBLY conservative, the average cost of all of these is $50. If our putative "regular consumers of adult entertainment" ALL voluntarily limit themselves to my threshhold numbers, we're talking about over $8 billion per year - and we know that it doesn't stop there. Suppose my 62% is off by even half? - which it isn't, it's no more than 6% off by chi-square assessment - then all you need is an average amount spent of $100 instead of fifty. I don't know about you, but I spent over $1,000 on sex toys, bondage gear, and sexual apparel alone last year - and I have a pretty big collection I got for free reviewing toys for AVN's Hardwares section. I spoke at some length to reporters and fact-checkers from Forbes - former West Coast senior editor of Forbes Penelope Wang and I were college friends - and I disputed their figures and their methodology. Other articles for which I served as a source, such as the Business Week article on porn (the famous Nina Hartley cover), are better. As for Frank Rich, he isn't worthy of comment in any fashion whatsoever - he only knows his own political agenda.

JP

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Most of the reporters I've read or heard protect themselves from inaccurate statistics by saying, "an estimated..." or "somewhere between..."

Salena: you've sure done your homework. Odd that you bring the "Christian Right" into the discussion. Do you subscribe to their newsletter as well?

I'd like to weigh in as one who only buys product on-line now. The little shops are overpriced and they smell of urine.

Gizzards

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That means that when checking out rentals I usually end up with one of the girls checking out my tapes/discs. Since the the shop pays well many of the girls have been there for a year or more and know me by sight.

Even after renting porn for 20 years it still bugs me to take a a video titled "Rip My Ass!" to a cute girl at the register to rent...

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If it were your urine we were talking about here... well, that would be different.

Ever notice how when you're browsing the "racks" in a store you avoid eye contact with other customers? And if some guy tries to start a conversation, you just want to cut it short and get out.

Yeah, buying on-line is so much nicer.

Gizzards

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I think that it's as close to a sure bet as you can possibly make, that the industry (including bookstores, strip clubs, massage parlors, etc) vastly under reports their earnings and profits.

CC

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--monstar rawx

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