Time Warner Cable Bemoans Lack Of Porn Sales, Could Internet Be To Blame?

Posted 08/01/2011 at 11:17am | by Brad Chacos

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People say "You have your mind in the gutter" like it's a bad thing, but the adult video industry has actually spurred on a lot of the technology we now take for granted in the mainstream. Online payment systems? Thanks, porn! Streaming content? Internet users were streaming nude flix a long time before they began streaming Netflix. A lot of modern-day traffic optimization techniques also owe their origins to the skin trade. Soon, we may have something else to thank porn for: higher cable bills.

Sound crazy? That bastion of journalistic integrity, the New York Post, reports that Time Warner Cable saw video-on-demand revenue drop by 13.5 percent over the past year. That adds up to about $14 million. Here's the interesting part: Time Warner Cable prez Robert Marcus told analysts that more than a third of that number came from reduced adult content sales. Congrats, Time Warner Cable customers! You saved at least $5 million on skin flicks last year.

The Consumerist theorizes that people are wising up about paying cash for cable porn rentals and simply tapping into the loads of free porn that you can find on approximately 95 percent of the Internet. While saving that $10 may seem like a great idea in the short term, the Consumerist thinks cable companies may fight back against the lost revenue the only way they can. No, they won't begin offering free adult content of their own (Get your mind out of the gutter!), they'll just raise everybody's bill. What do you think?

(PS. If you're interested in seeing more about how adult video has shaped mainstream technology, check out this excellent PC World article.)

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