Recently, much attention has been lavished on the pornography industry–as a business–and many have claimed it is large and profitable, especially on the Internet. Many of the claims are cut from whole cloth, but are accepted without question by the legitimate press.Skepticism is in order, though, because as David Klatell, associate dean of the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism notes, “[Pornography] is an industry where they exaggerate the size of everything.” The fact is pornography, or “adult entertainment,” is as marginal now as it ever was.Take for instance the New York Times Magazine: It ran a cover story on May 18 called “Naked Capitalists: There’s No Business Like Porn Business.” Its thesis: Pornography is big business–with $10 billion to $14 billion in annual sales. The author, Frank Rich, suggests that pornography is bigger than any of the major league sports, perhaps bigger than Hollywood. Porn is “no longer a sideshow to the mainstream…it is the mainstream,” he says.
http://www.forbes.com/2001/05/25/0524porn.html