Bolster Your Bottom-Line

Jeff Taylor | February 2, 2005

With steaming hot porn! At least that is what cable basket-case Adelphia hopes will happen once the company introduces hard-core smut to its customers in LA. No, this isn't your soft-focus Playboy channel stuff. We're talking real honest-to-filth cumshots and orifice-invading action. Or, as what must be one of the most heavily vetted grafs in the history of newspapering explains:

Single-X-rated movies feature nudity, long-range or panoramic and medium-range camera shots, simulated sex and sex between women. Double-X-rated movies show intercourse, oral sex and close-up shots. Triple-X-rated movies feature anal sex and visible ejaculation.

Hello, Los Angeles, you still there? If so, the economics of the move are obvious as cable operators stand to gain handfuls of cash from each PPV selection. Plus the technology of two-way, digital cable makes keeping such content locked up relatively idiot-proof as well as invisible to anyone who does not seek out visible ejaculations.

Harder to figure is the stated goal of "growing" the cable porn market beyond the average viewing time of seven minutes. Nothing to be done there, it is porn now isn't it? Wait, that Medicare and Viagra thing is starting to make sense.....

Comments

|2.2.05 @ 2:21PM|#

We've come a long way since the days when single-X was Marlon Brando having his rectum buttered.

|2.2.05 @ 2:23PM|#

I am so sorry I had to read that.

Gimme Back My Dog|2.2.05 @ 2:24PM|#

Seven minutes? What do they do for the other five minutes?

|2.2.05 @ 2:35PM|#

Holy cow, I think you've stumbled upon the terrible secret of the Medicare Boondoggle. Do the cable companies give a lot of money to Republicans?

Porn is like a license to print money* so it's only a matter of time until the miracle of capitalism makes it as easy to get and inescapable as Freedom Fries. One of those contradictions of conservatism.

*until people figure out how to get it for free on the internets

|2.2.05 @ 2:35PM|#

Thank you very much, B.P.

I thought that the x-rating system was pretty much a bogus "urban legend" type of thing. Are there really XX rated movies? All I've ever seen is X ( like "Alice in Wonderland", which had plenty of naughty stuff ) and XXX ( pretty much everything else ).

|2.2.05 @ 2:52PM|#

Here's hoping east coast cable PPV porn allows the money shot and DPs sometime soon.

|2.2.05 @ 2:53PM|#

I'm accessing this using the Panera Bread Wi-Fi connection. They have a content filter that is supposed to block offensive material. It blocks all of the comment threads at Asymmetric Information on the grounds that they are somehow pornographic. This thread, on the hand, is apparently unobjectionable.

|2.2.05 @ 3:14PM|#

Xavier, it is a strange and wondrous world.

|2.2.05 @ 3:20PM|#

Xavier,

I love your company. :)

The Lonewacko Blog|2.2.05 @ 3:28PM|#

XXXX: features Ron Jeremy
XXXXX: features Tonya Harding

Mark Denovich|2.2.05 @ 4:07PM|#

XXXXXX: features tubgirl

|2.2.05 @ 4:19PM|#

I think those would get a negative X rating:

-XXXXXX

|2.2.05 @ 5:21PM|#

We've come a long way since the days when single-X was Marlon Brando having his rectum buttered.

I seem to recall seeing, er, being told, that he was buttering her up.

|2.2.05 @ 6:08PM|#

The term "X-rated" is a trademark (copywrit?) of the MPAA so unless they get (i.e. pay) to use it or the movies were actually rated by the MPAA, they might get a nice note from Valenti.

That's why porn videos are labelled "XXX-rated" it has nothing to do with the amount or location of bodily fluids being released or which orifice is being filled. They are just avoiding MPAA lawsuits.

|2.2.05 @ 6:28PM|#

Doc, I seem to recall that the MPAA never claimed legal rights to the X rating, because of the controversy (seeming to approve of naughty things, I guess). Once porn movie makers latched onto it, MPAA abandoned the X rating in favor of NC-17.

Phil|2.2.05 @ 6:35PM|#

The term "X-rated" is a trademark (copywrit?) of the MPAA so unless they get (i.e. pay) to use it or the movies were actually rated by the MPAA, they might get a nice note from Valenti.

Er . . . no, this is exactly the opposite of the truth. The MPAA got copyrights for all the ratings except X, which therefore was fair game to be appropriated by porn producers whose movies had clearly never been in front of an MPAA ratings board or any other. And their reasoning was, "Hey, if 'X' means 'naughty,' then XXX must mean 'SUPER naughty!' That'll attract a lot more people."

|2.2.05 @ 7:13PM|#

Yes, the MPAA allowed people to self-rate their films "X," a decision they later regretted.

|2.2.05 @ 7:44PM|#

"The term 'X-rated' is a trademark (copywrit?) of the MPAA so unless they get (i.e. pay) to use it or the movies were actually rated by the MPAA, they might get a nice note from Valenti."

Even if the MPAA had once trademarked the "X" rating (you can't copyright a single letter), trademarks can only be protected as long as the holder continues to use it in commerce. When the MPAA stopped using the X rating (substituting the NC rating for it), any protection it may have had was abandoned.

|2.2.05 @ 11:54PM|#

Who are you, that is so wise in the ways of porn?