The Great Porn Depression Of 2006:

Porn pundits have been saying for a long time that it was coming, a shake out that is.

Yes it was inevitable, the supply of porn is in an inconsistant state with demand, and it has been for a long time. It isn’t that demand has dropped, depending on who you ask it either has or hasn’t.

Talking with store owners here in Atlanta I am consistantly told that revenues on sales and rentals are consistant with what they have been over the last couple of years, most expected growth but instead have seen revenues remain steady and they attribute the lack of growth to the availability of porn over the internet.

What has happened is that porn has become so cheap to produce and the distributors cared little if anything about quality that too many people got into it. It seems that all you have to be to call yourself a director is able to spell it on the credits.

But now it appears as though we are ready to implode. Rising talent costs combined with low product prices equals BUST, and I expect to see a lot of companies out of business soon, particularly those in the overcrowded and untalented “gonzo” pool.

Couple that with the wild success of feature driven porn like Adam and Eve and Digital Playground’s “Pirates” and you have what may be the last nail in the coffin for all but a few of the Gonzo companies. Evil Angel for example isn’t anywhere near the power house it once was, Red Light District is stopping production for the summer and porn chicks are already starting to approach directors directly and offering to cut scene rates, just to get work.

The more consistantly successful companies are targeting vertical markets, create more niche specific content but even many of these like inter-racial and MILF are clogged with excess product.

Add to that distributors who routinely attempt to starve out the very companies that they depend on for product by not paying them for six months in the hope that they will go belly up and they can avoid paying altogether are really putting the squeeze on companies who don’t have the leverage to force them to pay on time and I don’t see how many of these guys can survive.

BT Writes:

You know the other thing that strikes me is that porn chicks are just too interchangeable today. At least the current crop. When I was watching porn in my late teens and 20’s Marilyn, Seka, Kay Parker, Lisa D, Samantha Fox, Veronica Hart, Jessie James, Ginger and Amber were distinct personalities. Ditto even more recent chicks like Kylie Ireland and Ashlyn. So many of the Vivid chicks, or the young gonzo porn chicks who are around for six months and disappear, just all look alike, act alike, fuck alike. They’re animated centerfolds.

Obviously there are exceptions like Tera ( who turns me off more, now that I’ve watched Super Group on VH1, but, hey she’s a star), Jessi Jane and Carmen L. But even with them, I think there’s more really smart marketing going on than anything else.

And damn, what’s going on with all the art-school porn by Celeste.

Southern Belles:

Hardly a day goes by that I don’t get an email or that someone doesn’t ask me if I am ever going to resurrect the “Mike South’s Southern Belles” series. truth is I quit doing it because it quit being profitable, but times have changed and I have considered it despite the current porn glut, though I don’t see myself doing so.

John and Steve are managers at two different video stores many miles apart, in Atlanta and I hear the same thing from both of them. That is that they simply can’t get enough real amateur content. Steve says it’s by far his best selling and most requested genre. He begs me to start back with “Mike South’s Southern Belles”

He says “You had a consistant and identifiable character, guys who rent from me saw you as one them, like they got to be in a porn, you are a hero to these guys. You shot girls who were real, your videos were true amateur but with good production value, you know how to shoot that, you know how keep the guys interested. I always watched and listened to your interviews with the girls, even if I fast forwarded through other parts…you could tell they were real because they were real and that was a lot more appealing than just watching her walk in and fuck some nameless guy for a paycheck. Rodney Moore, there’s another guy who understands the genre, the girls may not be the prettiest but they are real and thats the appeal. Nobody is shooting that kind of stuff anymore. Get back to your roots man.”

John agrees, saying that he gets a lot of requests for my Southern Belles on DVD.

As yet what few titles of “Mike South’s Southern Belles” are available are only from my site www.ezmadedvd.com and only for download. Xplor has yet to make them available on DVD although I spoke with Tim Lake at Xplor and he assured me that they will be soon.

John also points out that in his opinion the scene I did with Sana Fey at the rave party is “one of the all time best porn scenes ever shot.”

“It was real” he says and it was a fantasy that every girl and guy pretty much has had and you execued it perfectly, you were years ahead of your time.

None other than RobbyD agrees, he told me on more than one occassion that that scene was what inspired him to get into porn.

But even with all of this back patting the truth is that even if there IS a huge market for it It isn’t profitable for me to make it, Distributors automatically beat you down on the price as soon as it’s labelled “amateur” The production companies bitched that either there weren’t enugh girls or that I was in too many scenes, or that the run time wasn’t long enough or whatever they could to try to get me to make my formula like every other gonzo in porn….despite the fact that Southern Belles was wildly successful. I finally gave up. Sure I had some releases through Avalon and others but the bottom line was they didn’t have the branded name and they weren’t marketed properly, My proff being that Im always asked to revive “Southern Belles” specifically.

So what’s all this leading up to? Nothing I suppose, I just wanted to explain to those who keep asking.