Know how it is when Howard Stern tells you he's going to be interviewing that hot new porn star about anal sex in the very next segment, and you keep waiting, and waiting and waiting through all the commercials for that very next segment? That's the way it is with the Spice Hot network deal, a deal that seems to have been in the works from the time Moses began cultivating facial stubble.
Califa Entertainment Group is acquiring the network from Spice Entertainment Companies, Inc., and the new president of CEG, Bill Asher, is saying he's ready, but not q-u-i-t-e to make all the announcements that need to be made. Some of which might even piss off a few people, Asher hints broadly, not naming any company names. Asher, formerly of the Playboy channel, is reserving some of the really big stuff for next week.
Be that as it may, the story's been like a classic striptease. "I'm working on a couple of things that should be done by next week," says Asher. "The acquisition will be seamless, though. We have all the same technical facets - the same transponder and playback facilities, so, for all the participating subscribers [Spice Hot is currently available to over 7 million people in the U.S.], congratulations, you got the exact same service but better."
Some of the reasons for delays in making official announcements have been due to the fact that a joint deal's involved. At the same time Califa bought Spice Hot, Playboy bought Spice. The deals are "intertwined by necessity," according to Asher.
"I won't comment why their [Playboy] deal took so long, but ours is simply tied to that deal," says Asher.
Asher says Califa's going to be pumping a lot of money into "dynamite programming," graphics and interstitials. "We think that's the best thing you can offer your distributors and consumers," says Asher. There are exclusive deals with Vivid, VCA, Wicked, Video Team, Metro and Andrew Blake among others. "Before this, there's never been exclusives," Asher's quick to point out. "In general we'll be increasing the number of premiers from 12 to 17 along with the total number of movies available. Besides this, Spice Hot has never had Vivid product."
The programming for the Spice Hot network falls in the parameters of what's known as Double-X.
Asher: "What people have seen before, which is Playboy and Spice, is generally, single-X. Triple X is what you rent in the back of your video store. That's completely uncut. Double-X is what we call the "hot" format. It was created, obviously, by Spice Hot. There's actually a sheet that's attached to the contract that shows the 27 or 28 sex acts that you can show on camera. Triple-X is all of them. Single X, maybe 12. This is 20. That's literally the way you differentiate it."
