Pornography in The United States - Economics

Economics

In 1975 the total retail value of all the hardcore pornography in the U.S. was estimated at $5–10 million. The 1979 Revision of the Federal Criminal Code stated that "in Los Angeles alone, the pornography business does $100 million a year in gross retail volume" while "the average pornography magazine sells for between $6 and $10 each". According to the 1986 Attorney General's Commission on Pornography, American adult entertainment industry has grown considerably over the past thirty years by continually changing and expanding to appeal to new markets, though the production is considered to be low-profile and clandestine. The total income of modern country's adult entertainment is often rated at $10–13 billion, of which $4–6 billion are legal. The figure is often credited to a study by Forrester Research and was lowered in 1998. In 2007 The Observer newspaper also gave a figure of $13 billion. Other sources, quoted by Forbes (Adams Media Research, Veronis Suhler Communications Industry Report, and IVD), even taking into consideration all possible means (video networks and pay-per-view movies on cable and satellite, web sites, in-room hotel movies, phone sex, sex toys, and magazines) mention the $2.6–3.9 billion figure (without the cellphone component). USA Today claimed in 2003 that websites such as Danni's Hard Drive and Cybererotica.com generated $2 billion in revenue in that year, which was allegedly about 10% of the overall domestic porn market at the time. The adult movies income (from sale and rent) was once estimated by AVN Publications at $4.3 billion but how this figure was determined is unclear. According to the 2001 Forbes data the annual income distribution is like this:

The Online Journalism Review, published by the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California, weighed in with an analysis that favored Forbes' number. The financial extent of adult films, distributed in hotels, is hard to estimate—hotels keep statistics to themselves or do not keep them at all. A CBS News investigation in November 2003 claimed that 50% of guests at the Hilton, Marriott, Hyatt, Sheraton, and Holiday Inn hotel chains purchased adult movies, contributing to 70% of in-room profits. The income of cellphone porn is low, when compared with other countries. The absence of V-chip-style parental controls largely has kept American consumers from using cellphones to access explicit content. Porn star Ron Jeremy licensed his name to "RJ Mobile", which offers adult content in Britain and the Netherlands.