Adelphia Communications is going to start offering triple-x hardcore porn to its Southern California video-on-demand customers. I’m not posting about this because of any personal interest in hardcore porn, or just because I want to get lots of hits from people searching for “casino hardcore porn” or similar terms. Rather, I want to salute the brilliant writing of LA Times staff writer Sallie Hofmeister, who, by cleverly juxtaposing two paragraphs, made a sly point about would-be moralists.
From the LA Times:
The move is a radical departure for Adelphia, the largest cable provider in Southern California and the nation’s fifth biggest. Five years ago, Adelphia stirred a local controversy by dropping Spice � a popular soft-porn channel � from newly acquired cable systems here because Adelphia founder John Rigas considered X-rated programming immoral.Today, the 80-year-old Rigas and one of his sons are facing prison terms after being convicted last summer for looting the company and engaging in fraudulent accounting.
Adelphia, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2002, currently is on the block. During the last year, in an effort to bolster Adelphia’s bottom line, the company’s new management has begun offering softer porn in various areas of the country and, in recent months, has introduced the hardest-core programming in a few markets.
That is absolutely genius. Without saying anything, we get a brilliant social commentary on the fact that the puritanical Rigas, who felt softcore porn was immoral, was himself convicted of looting his own company, hardly the actions of someone truly concerned with living a moral life.
As far as the penetration of hardcore porn into TV, it’s all part of a big strategy to wean people off of (free) Internet porn and onto (pay) on-demand TV porn.
As always, I’m morbidly fascinated by the ways that we use new technology. Sure, some idealist could dream up a way of using this tv on-demand technology to deliver distance education from major universities to students around the country. I’m not just talking about classes in philosophy and history, either: why not have on-demand mini-courses that teach you the rudiments of auto repair or how to play the piano? But there’s probably not too much money in that, so let’s just roll out the xxx porn and roll in the dough.