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Last year alone, the pornography industry pulled in more than $97 billion worldwide.
The numbers are truly eye-opening. The pornography industry makes more money than the total revenues of top companies Microsoft, Google, Amazon, e-Bay, Yahoo, Apple, Netflix and Earthlink combined according to studies done by research company Toptenreviews.
In the U.S. alone, $13 billion was made off porn in 2006. The number one pornography revenue producer is video sales and rentals, which brought in $3.62 billion. Second is internet porn, taking in $2.84 billion last year. And the third leading money-maker for the porn industry in the U.S. is the cable/pay-per-view/in-room sales of adult programming, raking in $2.19 billion in 2006.
It's a dirty little secret that top satellite and cable providers don't want to talk about.
CBS 42 contacted the corporate headquarters of DirectTV, Dish Network, Charter Communications and Bright House Cable to find out how much they make off selling porn to viewers. Charter and Dish Network refused to co-operate whatsoever with the request.
DirectTV would only send us a generic e-mail stating that "adult programming on DirecTV can be viewed only if the customer takes active steps to order or request the programming. It cannot be seen in any form unintentionally - those customers who don't want to see it, won't see it." But, they wouldn't discuss how much money they actually make from adult programming.
Meanwhile, Bright House did agree to go on camera, not giving us any porn revenue numbers, but admitting it is a lucrative part of the business.
"We do know that adult content is there, we do know it's probably popular content, I think guys like Hugh Hefner didn't get rich overnight without the popularity of the content that provides," said Robert Smith with Bright House Cable.
Like DirectTV, Bright House is quick to point out the steps they take to make sure their adult content isn't viewed accidentally.
"We know there's adult content out there, some unacceptable adult content, being a cable provider, we're not able to screen the content that comes in, but we give you an option to screen what comes into your home," said Smith.
As lucrative as the pornography industry is here in this country, the U.S. still ranks fourth in world in highest porn revenues behind China, South Korea, and Japan.
