Bangkok Haunts

want. But if you want it, we offer a wide range of programming that is available in the market we’re in.”
    Hotel chains have made similar decisions when, this year, several groups urged them to get rid of the adult pay-per-view programs that are in nearly 60 percent of all middle-to high-end hotels. Only one chain, the relatively small Omni Hotels, chose to remove the sex films.
    “What we noticed was that early on, the content was R-rated, but then it migrated rather quickly to really raunchy stuff—just hard-core porn,” said Jim Caldwell, the president of Omni. “I thought: What are we doing? We don’t have topless waitresses in the restaurant.”
    Mr. Caldwell said more than 50 percent of all guests were buying the sex films. “The anonymity is the big thing,” he said.
    Omni’s decision to remove pay-per-view sex videos from the company’s 15,000 rooms will cost the company more than $1.8 million a year, Mr. Caldwell said. But he said he had received phone calls and letters of thanks from 50,000 people—more than for any other corporate decision.
    Much larger hotel chains, like Marriott, which calls itself the world’s largest hotel management firm, with nearly 300,000 rooms in the United States, and Hilton, with 290,000 rooms under its control, have not made changes.
    Some critics said Marriott, run by several prominent members of the Mormon Church, though not affiliated in any way with the church itself, should drop its adult movies, given the stand against explicit sexual materials that Mormons have long taken. But company officials said they were mostly franchisers, and could not make unilateral decisions for the hotel owners who paid to be a part of the Marriott chain.
    The two companies that provide hotels with pornographic films are both traded on Wall Street and have enjoyed big run-ups in their stock prices over the last few years. The leader, On Command, based in Denver, is worth more than $400 million, and its principal owner is Liberty Media, controlled by John C. Malone, the cable and telecommunications magnate who sits on the board of AT&T and recently agreed to buy up to 15 percent of the shares of Mr. Murdoch’s News Corporation.
    The chairman and chief executive of On Command is Jerome H. Kern, a former New York corporate lawyer active in civic and volunteer causes, serving on the board of New York University and as a director of Volunteers of America in Colorado.
    On Command would not discuss how much money it is making on adult films. But in its annual report, the company said it was generating $23 a room each month for the 835,000 hotel rooms it reaches. The company goal is to get into an additional one million hotel rooms. Analysts say at least half the revenue comes from adult films. The company recently began offering all-day erotic television to hotel customers, for a single price of $15.99.
    “Talk about your captive audience,” said Mr. Asher of Vivid. “I’ve heard that in some hotels, 85 to 90 percent of all profits from in-room spending comes from adult channels.”
     
    The Money Factor
    Big Profits Now, Bigger Ones on Way
     
    While the big companies that deliver sex films to homes and hotels will not talk about how popular explicit sexual materials are, the makers and distributors say the volume is enormous. And court testimony and documents that were made public in the Peterman case also offered some insight into the profit potential.
    “Despite the fact that this material isn’t marketed, revenue-wise, it’s one of our biggest moneymakers,” said Peggy Simons of TCI Cable, in court testimony in Mr. Peterman’s case. TCI, controlled by Mr. Malone, has since been bought by AT&T.
    “When we talk to the companies one-on-one, they tell us we’re great, that we’re a huge moneymaker for them,” said Mr. Asher, whose company owns the Hot Network, which is available in 16 million homes. “And by the way, I tell my biggest customers—don’t say you ever met me.”
    In trying to take public his company, which now does about $80 million a year in sales, Mr. Asher said, “The biggest problem I have is the image of the adult business. People think it’s run by the mob, or a bunch of guys with gold chains. I grew up in Paris, Illinois. I have a master’s of business administration degree.”
    The Hot Network portrays people having sex in a variety of methods—what the company calls “widely accepted sexual activity”—and prohibits scenes of violence,