January 13, 2005 5:47 AM

Mortal sin or home entertaiment? No, silly; it's a dessert topping AND a floor wax....

COLUMBIA HOUSE PLANS PORN CLUB

No respectable businessperson will admit to being a pornographer. Still, when you consider the size of the market, you couldn’t blame those same respectable business people for wanting their piece of the pie.

There is no doubt that sex sells. What I don’t know is if that fact qualifies as exploitation or simply a manifestation of a basic human drive. We all want it, we all think about it, but does what we have really meet that need? It appears that Columbia House is about to try to find out. I can hardly wait to see the magazine inserts…. ;0)

Columbia House, famous for its “12 CDs for a penny” record clubs, will launch its own adult video club with Playboy Entertainment at the end of this month. The service, called Hush, will sell pornography through direct mail and a Web site.

While 50-year-old Columbia House is eager to cash in on the $12 billion porn business, officials are pretty hush hush about Hush.

“This will be a separate subsidiary,” said Jim Litwak, senior vice president of marketing at Columbia House. “It will be completely separate from Columbia House, and will not be marketed to current members. We are not using Columbia House at all, and are not talking to existing members; this is a separate business and deal.”

Columbia House, the nation’s largest direct distributor of DVDs and home video, will handle distribution, while Playboy, which has an adult direct-mail list “in the millions,” according to Litwak, will handle marketing.

Litwak added that his company estimates that total adult video sell-through and rentals total $5 billion a year.

There are a thousand and one cheap jokes that I could toss off here, but I wonder if that is the most appropriate response. I have nothing against pornography personally; it’s a matter of personal choice. Some folks read, some listen to music, some view pornography. Whether that is a good thing or not I’ll leave to intellects more nimble than my own.

I do wonder, though, what it says about us as a society when pornography is one of the biggest growth industries out there. I’m not saying that I have any answers, but I’m curious. Could it be that not many of us are getting laid nearly as often or as well as we’d like, or is there something more basic at work here? If anyone would care to unburden their thoughts on me, feel free.

blog comments powered by Disqus

Technorati

Technorati search

» Blogs that link here

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on January 13, 2005 5:47 AM.

Perhaps Goebbels knew what he was talking about was the previous entry in this blog.

And he seemed like such a nice Fascist is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

Contact Me

Powered by Movable Type 5.12