Omni Hotels Drops Porn, Reaps Rewards

A few years back, Omni Hotels removed porn from its entertainment system. The results, reports James Harder, were bags of supportive mail and an increase in movie-rental profits…

Hotels were among the first publicly held companies to profit from porn, networking their rooms to provide a flow of X-rated movies. It’s a route almost all now are taking — except for Omni Hotels. Even with the lure of big profits, the privately held Omni decided to stop offering pornography from its entertainment system. “As a father of two sons, I was uncomfortable with the late-night entertainment available,” says Omni’s owner and chairman, Bob Rowling. “We didn’t want to generate revenue on pornography.”

As a result, Omni went to work several years ago to remove the adult channels and movies networked into its rooms. “It was actually more difficult than we anticipated. There was a lot of profit in those movies,” Omni Vice President for Marketing Peter Strebel tells Insight. And the entertainment companies that provide the movie channels for hotels were not interested in offering a system for Omni that excluded porn, fearing a dip in profits. “After heavy negotiations we did find a company,” says Strebel, striking a deal with LodgeNet, which agreed to exclude the adult channels they offer in other hotels. By shutting out the pornographic movies, the Omni chain of 80 hotels was able to add to its family movie offerings — and has in fact experienced an increase in movie-rental profits.

“Every day mail gets hoarded into this office. It’s almost like Christmas,” says Strebel of the more than 50,000 letters of encouragement the hotel has received since banning the video pornography…

From James Harder, “Porn 500 – blue chip connections to porn industry”, Insight on the News, 1/8/01, available at FindArticles.

See also:

CleanHotels.com: A network of lodging facilities that do not offer in-room, ‘adult’, pay-per-view movies
Our primary purpose is to provide a service through which friends like you can book a room for your vacation, business trip or meeting with the expectation, first, that you and your family or associates will not be exposed to pornographic movies and, secondly, that you will be supporting a facility that cares enough about the wellbeing of its customers not to make harmful pornographic movies available.

Corporate Self-Restraint at Leading Domain-Name Exchange
Afternic is a reseller of Internet domain names. Today they announced
that they will “no longer accept domain names that promote hate, sex,
obscenity or self-destructive behavior, such as substance abuse,
violence and gambling.” Afternic explains:

…The Internet, much
like the early days of television, is still a new frontier. We believe
it is up to the industry leaders–and we include Afternic here–to step
up and determine what constitutes professional standards and practices.
We take this action in the interest of socially responsible corporate
behavior and hope that it leads to further healthy industry dialog and
discussion on the topic.

Sony says ‘no’ to porn on Blu-ray Disc
The choice of which high-definition disc format to use was “kind of
made for us, so everything we are replicating right now is in the HD
DVD format,” said Robby D, a director at popular adult film maker
Digital Playground Inc. “As far as I understand, Sony has said to the
replicators that if you replicate adult, you’ll lose your license.”

Major Corporations Profit from Porn
The profits from porn movies and phone sex flow through several
“blue-chip” American corporations. These include Holiday Inn, Marriott,
AOL Time Warner, Comcast, EchoStar Communications, DirecTV, Adelphia,
Cox Communications, Charter Communications, Cablevision Systems and
AT&T. If you own shares in these companies, you might consider
discussing the matter with their shareholder relations departments, or
simply selling their shares.

Gail Dines Presents: Pornography and Pop Culture (explicit)
“I want us to remember who Howard Stern is… He was last year, the
second largest paid entertainer in the world, behind Tom Cruise. He
made $302 million last year… I’m just going to take you through, a
little bit, who supports him… I want you to see how pornography and
pop culture are intertwined economically. In August 2005 Howard Stern
revealed on his show that he had signed a deal with In Demand Networks
for an on-demand subscription to his show. This was In Demand’s first
premium video offering…

“Now In Demand is the nation’s largest
pay-per-view distributor, reaching over 50 million households. It is
owned, in part, by TimeWarner and Comcast. TimeWarner also owns HBO,
which, of course, regularly features pro-pornography documentaries,
late at night, that normalizes pornography. TimeWarner also owns WB
Network, which did a reality show with Ron Jeremy, the porn star,
whose…hundreds of movies include…White Trash Whore, Black Babes in Heat, and Girls of the Third Reich… He’s on the college circuit, lecturing… He’s coming to Simmons, across the road to me…and they’re paying him $12,000…

“WB
is the first network ever to employ a porn actor on a regular basis.
TimeWarner also owns Sports Illustrated… It also owns Warner Books,
which is just publishing a new book by this magazine, Boink.  Now Boink
is the BU porn magazine which features ‘provocative pictures of real
college students from around the country, by students, for students.’
You can, by the way, look for it in a bookstore near you in February
2008. The woman who is the editor of Boink got a six-figure advance
from TimeWarner…”

Comcast
is the nation’s largest cable company… In 2002, Comcast pulled in $50
million from porn programming alone. Comcast also owns E!
Entertainment, which regularly features shows hosted by Jenna
Jameson… [H]er bestselling book was published by HarperCollins [How to Make Love Like a Porn Star]…which
is owned by Rupert Murdoch…[who] has a major share in DirecTV,
[whose] subscribers spend over $200 million a year in pornography.”