Soft-core porn still hot stuff on cable TV

Jon Weinbach Los Angeles Times 05/10/2010 16:10

There's one sector of the entertainment industry that has not been roiled by the Internet, the economy or ever-changing consumer tastes. Say hello to Hollywood's most stable business: Soft-core pornography.

The oft-mocked genre, which has given the world such memorable fare as "Witches of Breastwick" and "Tarzeena: Jiggle in the Jungle," is more visible — and valuable — than ever, even at a time when hard-core adult entertainment is easily accessible on every media device. Premium-cable TV networks such as HBO, Showtime and Cinemax — the channel nicknamed "Skin-emax" for its preponderance of sexy programming — continue to fill their late-night schedules with low-budget, nudity-filled films, and the adoption of video-on-demand and pay-per-view services has given soft-core content wider play. Several of the premium channels offer prominently displayed inventories of erotic entertainment via VOD, where there's no shortage of choices in the "After Hours" or "Midnight Movies" sections.

Soft-core porn "just keeps going, like a cockroach — you can't kill it," says Marc Greenberg, the 63-year-old founder of MRG Entertainment, the Santa Monica company that's one of the top producers of so-called "soft erotics," the industry term for toned-down pornography. MRG supplies between seven and 15 films a year to Showtime and a handful of movies to Cinemax, for whom it also produces "Co-Ed Confidential," a 13-episode, college-themed sex series that's now in its fourth season. "You're more likely to get your wife to watch my show — it's not so in-your-face," says Greenberg.