Breaking the iPhone Barrier
In 2009, the web became virtually littered with hardcore mobile applications that could be downloaded from their developers’ sites, through carrier decks in Europe and via certain third-party mobile content facilitators, gay adult companies leapt across the line separating mobile adult content from mainstream digital distribution. Athletic Model Guild, a pioneering gay porn company that arose in the 1960s, became the first to break the barrier in June with its softcore images application, AMG Brasil Boys. The company successfully navigated Apple’s convoluted approval process in order make the app available in Apple’s iTunes online store. AMG followed up in July by placing in the store a second app, AMG Beefcake.
JustCircuit, a decade-old magazine devoted to covering the events that compose the gay social calendar, also saw its iPhone app approved for the iTunes store in July. The self-titled calendar, gossip, news and images updater provides users with more information than the magazine’s every-other-month publication schedule allows.
The rule that iTunes apps must be both ultra-softcore and compelling has kept more than one adult company—hetero and gay—from even approaching Apple’s censors with their mobile products. Breaking through Apple’s Berlin Wall-like approval process provided gay content purveyors with access to a much larger, devoted-to-iPhone audience that has demonstrated not only a willingness to buy ancillary products for their devices, but also an enormous curiosity about all things even mildly salacious.
Although companies like CzechBoys.com and Male Spectrum have reported success with their hardcore mobile products—both featuring explicit images presented in a game format—the distribution and revenue opportunities presented by iTunes’ popular platform offer developers not only a financial boost for future efforts, but also opportunities to attract new customers to their more explicit core wares.
Merging Traffic
Mergers, acquisitions and tight partnerships became big news in 2009, not only between competing gay companies, but also between gay and hetero product lines.
Of course, headlines and blog postings erupted with a vengeance in February when primarily hetero video-on-demand network AEBN acquired its first gay adult studio, Raging Stallion, and the associated online empire, Pistol Media (parent company to affiliate program GunzBlazing). Although the merger of AEBN with gay adult VOD network NakedSword in 2007 seemed to sneak up on people with the notion that hetero companies were serious about making inroads into the gay side of the biz, the acquisition of a major gay brick-and-mortar operation by what until then had been an exclusively virtual powerhouse set headlines and blogs ablaze with speculation about the future of adult entertainment.
Commentary ranged from predictions that gay movies would wither in the hands of straight folks who didn’t understand the market to suggestions AEBN was attempting to “pull a Google” in adult by acquiring everything that wasn’t nailed to the floor. The real story probably lies somewhere in the middle: By merging with a large hetero company known for its innovations in cyberspace, Raging Stallion boosted its financial ability to continue producing the kind of big-budget features for which it has become known. For its part, AEBN acquired a popular brick-and-mortar gay label around which to base an aggressive expansion into the gay market. Gay consumers, known for their loyalty and willingness to spend chunks of disposable income on porn, are an attractive market segment for hetero companies increasingly subject to the whims of distracted, conflicted and—well, let’s just say it—stingy consumers. AEBN spent the rest of the year turning former affiliate competitors—NakedSword and GunzBlazing, for example—into allies.
In October, the pendulum swung in the opposite direction, as hetero brick-and-mortar powerhouse Private Media completed its deal to acquire gay online VOD network Sureflix, parent company of Maleflixxx. Private specifically cited “the lucrative gay market” as its reason for pursuing the prize.
Revenue incentives also played into the formation of a new strictly LGBT print and broadcast giant, Here Media Inc., when Here Networks LLC, Regent Media and PlanetOut Inc. merged in June after a long courtship. The marriage combined Here’s expanding cable-television operation with PlanetOut’s troubled online empire and Regent Media’s traditional publishing presence. Also keeping things strictly on the gay side were strategic partnerships, if not outright mergers, between ethnic studios Rockafellaz and Flava Works, DVD studio COLT and online affiliate program Buddy Profits, and talent-management firms FCF Agency and FabScout.
Murder and Mayhem
On the mean streets, 2009 played much like a televised police procedural drama, with one popular performer seeing release from prison, twins sentenced for burglary, a hot commodity sent up for his role in a gruesome debt-collection scheme, a former insider losing his freedom for life as the result of a lover’s quarrel, and a pair of escort-performer-producers consigned to the big house for the grisly murder of a rival.
Gay-for-pay performer Mark Dalton returned to society in February after two years of serial incarcerations on drug and domestic violence charges. Immediately he began seeking on-stage appearances, and in June announced a willingness to return to film.
Taleon and Keyontili Goffney, whom the media dubbed “the gay-porn burglar twins,” were sentenced in July and August, respectively, after committing a series of rooftop burglaries in Philadelphia. In a spectacular example of parenting by example, their mother was accused of serving as a lookout during her offspring’s escapades. Taleon Goffney, who performed as “Teyon” on a number of ethnic websites and pleaded guilty to masterminding the crime spree, will serve 3-8 years behind bars. His brother, who often performed with “Teyon” as “Keyon,” was sentenced to two days in jail plus four years’ probation because unlike his identical twin, Keyontili Goffney had no prior criminal record.
GAYVN Award-winning performer Nickolay Petrov in February was taken out of circulation for 20 years when his alter-ego, Edmon Vardanyan, traded a lengthy prison term for the $5,000 he said he was paid to intercede in a bizarre family dispute that nearly turned deadly. Vardanyan was convicted of committing four brutal attacks on an immigrant couple as part of an unsuccessful attempt to secure repayment of a debt.
Timothy Boham, better known as gay adult performer Marcus Allen, rode his family dispute all the way to a life sentence when he killed the male lover he met while working as an escort. Reportedly motivated by a desire to relocate to South America with the $400,000 he expected to find in the dead man’s safe, Boham never will be eligible for parole. Testimony from his mother, sister and a former girlfriend sealed his fate.
In March, a grisly murder mystery that held the gay adult industry spellbound for more than two years came to a resolution when Harlow Cuadra narrowly escaped the death penalty for murdering Cobra Video owner Bryan Kocis. Both Cuadra and his former lover and partner in crime, Joseph Kerekes, were sentenced to life without parole after Kerekes pleaded guilty to and Cuadra was convicted of charges they nearly decapitated Kocis and then burned his body in what was characterized at alternating moments as a contractual dispute over performer Brent Corrigan and a jealous rage over a lover’s infidelity.
This article originally ran in the December 2009 issue of AVN.
See also commentary by Tom Hymes, Dan Miller and Sherri L. Shaulis on 2009’s big news stories, plus Tony Lovett’s top 20 sex toys of 2009.
