The Grand Vizier writes: The beauty of the Adult Entertainment industry is that you don’t have to be a genius to make, or to have made a fortune in it over the years.

The thing not so beautiful about the Adult Entertainment industry is that you don’t have to be a genius to be in it and make money… many have. Here lies the problem. The very same “geniuses” seem to be their own worst enemies.

I hear it day in, and day out. Some of you reading this must have heard it too. “DVD is dead”. “Blockbuster is closing, they filed for bankruptcy…”! Let’s just pause there for a second and think… Blockbuster???… (with the exception of an R rated version of a huge budget Adult Film) doesn’t carry XXX rated DVD’s at all. So basically, the downfall of Blockbuster would really only effect one, maybe two XXX companies, as I do not want to sell anyone short of their sales fame.

Blockbuster was its own worst enemy, too many stores, bad rental policies, and might I say… no XXX DVD’s. I know what you’re going to say. “But what about Movie Gallery”?

Another case of being your own worst enemy.

“But they carried XXX DVD’s”, your saying to yourself. Right they did, they absolutely did buy and carry thousands upon thousands of XXX DVD. They also employed some of the most religious bible belt store clerks you’d ever find. Store clerks that would lock the door to the “Adult DVD Room” in the Movie Gallery store during their shift until somebody came up to the counter to request the room be unlocked to shop and get their “jack” on… or “off” so to speak.

Now nothing sounds more inviting then going up to a store clerk to ask him to unlock the “pervert” room. Let’s just say Movie Gallery dropped the ball long ago with fixing that problem. They had it made and let it slip right through their hands. Think about it, in small towns, if John Doe’s car is spotted at an Adult Video shop in bum fucked anywhere USA, a neighbor might spot it and his horrible secret maybe be passed around town like the basket at Sunday mass.

Now if you spot John’s car at a Movie Gallery… hell, John could be renting/buying Pirates, with (Johnny Depp), not Jesse Jane. Hey… Movie Gallery… locks on the Adult DVD room? Really? Nice work, you kept all the XXX DVD safe and out of the hands of potential Renters/Buyers. There’s a trip to Home Depot they should have skipped.

Sometimes, businesses just over-extend themselves, and get too greedy to conquer the market. Even Starbucks took a huge hit recently. Feeling the crunch of being on every single corner you can imagine, and now closing many stores even while selling cups of coffee for $3.00 – 5.00 a cup. Hell, you can make three full pots for less than that at home, but like rats after cheese we all still dropped an average of $25.00 a week grabbing a cup of Joe. Now I doubt like in the Adult DVD biz, Juan Valdez’s camp are talking about the death of the coffee bean.

Recently in an effort to help out the brick and mortar stores large and small across the country one of the XXX producers decided to halt the release of VOD of their new movie in an effort to make people actually have to buy or rent it at a store in order to see it. Kudos to them, maybe more of us should follow.

Or, we could just sit around and go for the quick buck, flooding the market with our movies to every internet company in the world for an extra few grand. Meanwhile torrent sites, and file sharing sites rip, burn, upload and exchange what we have slaved to make. We go through all this trouble to lock, cage, and secure all of our masters back at the office, yet we make it so easy for people to steal and unlawfully distribute and share our footage for free right under our noses. There’s that “genius” factor hard at work again. We truly are in control of our own fate. Don’t get me wrong, there are some who are very smart, I’m just making a generalization.

Maybe its time to wake up and smell what old Juan V. has been growing for years (coffee). I say that cliche, because I get tired of hearing our own cliche’s. Here is one of my faves and pay attention, because the answer lies within. One of my personal favorites surrounds why the adult toy industry is flourishing and DVD is not, okay now pay attention, here we go… “You can’t download a dildo…”.

Go back and please read that last quote again. Shit, I could end this all right here. Cut off the downloads, and make people buy and/or rent your DVD’s. Maybe even postponing the downloads on New Releases for a few months would help.

Jon Bon Jovi had a great article last week slamming Apple’s iTunes, and how single handedly Steve Jobs ruined the Music Industry by making it so simple for you not to head out to your local CD shop to buy what Jon, Ritchie, Tico and the rest of the crew slaved to write, arrange, record, produce, mix, and master down at a Studio that cost them maybe $6K a day to lock out the space for a month or more.

Doesn’t seem fair that Jon and others who have entertained us over the years get a big 99 cents from us because we only bought the one song from their new record instead of how we used to do it. Run to the nearest record store, slam down $13.00 run home, listen to the entire record and figure out after two or three passes hell, there are a few more than just the one song that I’ve heard on the radio that rock.

You know who benefits from an iTunes download? The estate of Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Old Blue Eyes, Frankie (just generalizing again). Yeah unfortunately, they’re not with us anymore, but I know whoever they left behind appreciates that 99 cents you drop at iTunes, if they are so lucky to still be in the positive receiving end of that empire bequeathed to them.

Unfortunately, I’m not one of their descendants, so off to work I go. I have however in the past month bought an actual CD digitally remastered Dino, Sammy, and Frankie to have and to hold. Hell, it’s actually the second copy I’ve owned. I played the last one so much it skips all over the place. I had to replace it.

Is DVD dead? Only if we kill it. How about we water it again and make it grow? I bet your sandwich down at the Lamplighter or Country Deli would taste better during the week without the side dish of Adult DVD death cliches. Me, I’d rather have coleslaw, or Onion Rings.