Media Life Magazine, 9/16/05 - Sex does indeed sell, to repeat what seems to have become the entertainment mantra of our times.

There’s a boom in new channel launches in Europe the likes of which has not been seen since the mid-'90s. And leading the way are adult entertainment, or porn, channels.

While more traditional genres like sports and movies grew nicely, the number of adult channel launches skyrocketed to 27 in 2004 from 11 a year earlier. This year looks set to be another hot one for the genre, with 13 new adult channels launched in the first six months.

“There will continue to be big numbers of launches in this genre,” says Guy Bisson, senior TV analyst at Screen Digest, a London trade publication. “Previously niche genres like adult entertainment and shopping are now entering the big league.”

In fact, there are now 84 adult entertainment channels across Europe. That compares, for example, to 136 movie channels and 124 music channels.

It’s not that Europe is getting smuttier, says Bisson. Rather, it is economics.

Adult channels, he notes, are cheap to launch and tend to make money quickly, he says.

“A lot of them are filmed live in the studio. All you need is a small studio and a couple of girls on a sofa, and that’s your TV show.”

They are pay-per-view, so viewers must cough up money each time they watch, and that means evening after evening of revenue flowing into the channel operator's pockets. The channels have a solid stream of secondary revenue from premium-price text messages that viewers can send in, suggesting what might make the evening’s viewing more appealing.

Adult entertainment channels--like shopping channels, the genre with the second-highest number of launches in 2004--can break even quickly. But, cautions Bisson: “There are launches all the time. Who’s to say that they will all be in business in a year.”

The adult channel launches are just part of what looks likely to be another bumper year in Europe for new channel launches.

After a long period of relative flat channel growth, Europe has now entered a period of sustained boom, according to Bisson, whose research shows that 295 new channels were launched in 2003 and 277 in 2004. This year is likely have more than 200 again. Prior to this boom the highest number of launches in a year was 142.

Bisson believes that the impetus for the current strong growth comes from the cable industry’s triple-play offerings, which bundle telephony, broadband and cable together for one low price. The satellite TV industry can’t create the same bundle, so instead it competes by offering more channel choice.

Screen Digest reports that the UK now has the largest number of channels with a total of 416 targeting the British. France, with 246 channels, is the next largest market, followed by Italy with 206, Spain with 108 and Germany with 93.

This page contains copyrighted material and is made available to better understand pornography, e.g., its effect on society. It is distributed without profit to those who have an interest in receiving the information for research and educational purposes.