New York — Porn has always been a flourishing business, but with the set of the recession people are looking for ways to save money even in this area. Just ask Time Warner Cable, which blames some loss in profits on free Internet porn.
AllThingsD reported Friday that Time Warner Cable’s video-on-demand business, which includes its adult film library, dropped a third in its second quarter profits — down 13.5 percent, or $14 million — due to customers’ preferring free alternatives.
“One of the things going on with VOD is that there’s been fairly steady trends over some time period now for adult to go down, largely because there’s that kind of material available on the Internet for free,” said Glenn Britt, CEO of Time Warner Cable, according to the earnings call transcript. “And that’s pretty high margin.”
As the entertainment industries have been grappling with for years now, it’s hard to compete with free.
Although Time Warner Cable was hit with the revenue drop, an analyst told The New York Post that Apple could potentially come out on top with transactional video-on-demand — topping 50 million rentals in 2011.
“There’s no reason why the Internet cannot replace cable or satellite or even (over-the-air television) transmission of content,” a Wedbush Morgan Securities analyst told the Hartford Courant. “When the Internet as a TV platform really takes off, it will strain the cable companies’ current business model.”
Related Links:
http://tinyurl.com/3h9f8ju (AllThingsD)
http://tinyurl.com/3rxuvzo (Time Warner Q2 Report)
Photo by flickr user Je@n, used under Creative Commons license
