Jul
21
Merging Gay Adult Into Gay Mainstream
July 21, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Back in April I wrote about the sale of PlanetOut Inc.‘s magazine and publishing business to Here Networks (click here). The deal covered The Advocate and Out magazines, Alyson Books and their related websites, as well as Specialty Publications, the publishers of Men, Freshmen and Unzipped Monthly√¢‚Ǩ‚Äù[2] Magazine having ceased publication as a standalone with its March/April 2008 issue (click here). Late last month (June 29) the L.A. Times profiled Paul Colichman (click here), the owner (with Stephen P. Jarchow) of Here Networks, Regent Entertainment and GayWired.com. I skimmed through the article a few weeks ago and missed something that caught my attention when I took another look at the piece last week. Click here for details…
The profile lays out the facts about Mr. Colichman’s background as well as his current plans for integrating all of his various properties, and notes that with the PlanetOut sale he has also purchased three “adult” magazines (the quotes are theirs) “whose websites link to the e-commerce site BuyGay.com, which sells sex toys and adult videos. Colichman says once the acquisition closes that will cease. ‘We’re not going to be selling those things…That’s not our business.’ He added that he has asked the current owners to remove all adult advertising from the sites.” Further, BuyGay.com will be retooled to sell the other publications.
The concern here is that Men, Freshmen and Unzipped Monthly are obviously gay adult magazines; they accept advertising primarily from gay adult studios. Will Regent Entertainment continue to publish the magazines once the acquisition is finalized, as expected, at the end of August? It’s not clear from his comments in the Times article that Mr. Colichman specifically meant that he doesn’t plan to sell sex toys and porn films online, or whether he doesn’t intend to publish any adult mags at all given he doesn’t want affiliated websites to accept adult advertising (this would presumably put an end to Unzipped Video as well).
I approached SpecPub for a comment, and a spokesperson declined to elaborate, saying “We cannot comment on any aspect of the pending sale.” At press time all three SpecPub websites√¢‚Ǩ‚ÄùMenMachine.com, Freshmen.com and Unzipped.net√¢‚Ǩ‚Äù displayed no outside advertising and linked only to BuyGay.com, which still offers adult products.
(Full disclosure: I’ve freelanced for SpecPub in recent months, and was editor of Unzipped Monthly years ago.)
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LOL I just got a sub for freshman.. hope it does not cease to exist. That would suck.
Full disclosure: I wrote a book, currently in print, published by Alyson Books. Fully a year and a half ago, when my editor was REMOVING MOST OF THE GAY-RELATED CONTENT FROM MY BOOK, I was told “Alyson Books is moving beyond the gay market.”
This is not good folks.
But MEN and UNZIPPED keep sending me renewal notices, and my subscriptions don’t run out until October.
Buygay.com has cancelled all purchases of adult content DVDs. They sent out a mass email to all their vendors a few days ago canceling all new orders and all auto-ships of new content.
The end is near….
Much speculation is leading to great concern here. Out of the two gay network television channels on cable today, anyone who is familiar knows that Here tends to land on the racier, sexier side of things out the two.
Sure, it’s conceivable Here Network does not want to be involved in the direct sale of gay porn. However, I think everyone will agree here that changing the motivation behind MenMachine.com, Freshman and Unzipped Magazine will be an extremely detrimental business move. I’m confident Here didn’t purchase these publications to lose money.
Even if we do lose these, it will allow companies like PlayGuy or all new publications to forge ahead and bring us a new era. One that will hopefully allow newer companies an opportunity to showcase themselves instead of struggling to fight the politics and double standards cemented in place by these publications and their favored studios.
If this does bring about a big change in Queer Media, and we are losing an ally – forgive me for stating the obvious – but it will surely be an outrage! We’ve spent decades as a community building companies like these only to lose out on all of our progress because someone of two corporate white collars insist on enacting their all encompassing vision of what OUR queer media should provide for us.
Recently, I’ve written articles for GayWired.com, a Here owned online publication. If Here features gay porn star actors on their TV shows and they take on gay porn stars as contributing writers for their publications, I would have a very difficult time comprehending why they might decide to distance themselves from ‘us’ in this way.
I met Paul at a Queer Media Conference last May in Los Angeles. Based on the event Here was throwing, it was very clear Here has been trying to educate and nurture denizens of the Queer Media field. They’re trying desperately to commercialize gay cinema and queer arts. You can see both the good and the bad in that.
Before there was ever Queer as Folk or Latter Days, there was Falcon and there was Catalina. I only hope Here doesn’t ignore that. Gay Porn is a vast part of our history and it should not be forced into the closet.
Some good points to ponder Brent and you are correct Gay Porn paved the way for the Gay Media revoulution.
It would be very unfair for us to be left behind now that Big media has discovered Gay Dollars!
You seem to be poised to transition better than most with your mainstream film roles.
I’m seeing parallels between the adult industry and the music industry. Both started out with people who all had an intense passion for something, and then, when it became obvious that someone’s passion was making a lot of money the greedy hands started showing up. Greed killed the music industry and it will kill this industry too. Falcon should be a HUGE example to everyone in this industry; you can’t grow or move a company forward if the only thing you have a passion for or are motived by is $MONEY$.