Porn Valley- Attorney Michael Fattorosi [pictured] was a guest on KSEX this week, and I asked him the status of the network he launched this past January called PrimeTimeUncensored, www.primetimeuncensored.com.
Fattorosi elected to shut down operations temporarily in October. As I mentioned on KSEX, many had originally thought Fatorosi set up the entity to compete with KSEX. Such was not the case.
"After I sat in on a bunch of shows I realized you had a totally different vibe and were going in a different direction with mainstream," I told him.
"Kind of melding it with porn but concentrating on comedy and things like that."
"We basically took a hiatus," reports Fattorosi. "It's a lot to run a law firm, www.adultbizlaw.com and a network. What I wanted to do was take us from a standpoint of being an hourly scheduled showcase like KSEX is and change it into more of a channel-type broadcast. Having people show up at certain times every week is somewhat demanding on peoples' schedules.
"And to be a little more understanding of the people who do shows, the channel broadcast system allows you to update shows at convenience as opposed to having to be there at a certain time every week. We'll be pre-taping and shows will air at a certain time. It'll stay up on archives and everyone owns their own show and has their own page.
"If it's a matter of doing a show once a month, the hosts can do a show once a month," says Fattorosi. "Or if they want to do a show every week, they can do one. It gives more flexibility to those who want to do shows."
Beginning November 3, PTU begins taping on Saturdays.
"That's exactly what we're going to do," says Fattorosi. "Saturdays and Sundays. We'll try to fit it all in on a Saturday and cut shows down to an hour instead of two. That makes it a little more difficult on the show host to keep it flowing. Believe it or not, the longer the show, the easier it is because you don't have to rush through it. But this way it's also easier for us to produce.
"We did a little bit of a survey with all the shows and the PrimeTime viewers preferred it that way," Fattorosi continues. "Most people, quite honestly, watch archives. At least they do on PrimeTime. So a vast majority of the people who were watching shows were watching it like TiVo- at their leisure. They would tune in maybe on a Saturday or Sunday and pick the one or two shows they wanted to see. And what people would do is look to see if there were interesting guests. If so, they would watch; if not they'd go do something else with their day."
Fattorosi says since PTU has been off the air live for the last couple of weeks, he's gotten a ton of correspondence asking when the station would resume regular broadcasting.
"When you're doing something right, nobody ever says anything to you," he comments. "When you shut it down then you get to hear all the complaints. Then you kind of know where you are."
According to Fattorosi, he's going to bring on some new shows and keep most of the old ones.
"For me it's a fun thing to do," he says. "I enjoy it. It's not something that I'm trying to compete with KSEX or take viewers away. What's good for KSEX is good for us. The more networks there are, the more Internet television there is, the more of an audience there's going to be. Think about it. If there was just NBC to watch, you'd do something else if you weren't interested in what it had to offer."
It's mentioned that PTU alumnus Gary Garver is now doing his own Internet show.
"I don't have a problem with that," states Fattorosi. "The more people that are doing this, the more they're going to draw, and the more choices the people have, the more they're going to move towards Internet-based entertainment. It's all the more viewers everyone's going to have."
"So the people who are on the ground floor of it, the better off we'll be," he adds. "So I don't mind. It doesn't bother me. We're here for the long term."
Fattorosi reports that two people who've had shows on PTU have moved up the broadcasting ladder and are selling shows to major networks.
"Johnny Fratto had to leave because he was in negotiations with NBC or ABC- I forget which one- to sell his show. And then Adam Hunter who did a show is being sought after either NBC or ABC. I forget which one went with which network."
"Which proves the theory that sooner or later everyone in the world will have a show," I suggest.
"Exactly," agrees Fattorosi. "No doubt. Because everyone has a web page now. Everyone has a MySpace page. In ten years- what's going to happen, everyone's going to have a YouTube channel. And in two years everyone will be able to post their own videos to their own websites. Why read when you can watch? Why are you going to type in all this information and do blogs when you can do a video blog? People do it now and it's going to just continue to grow.
"As that continues to grow, more and more people are going to be watching this type of programming - to the point where they watch less and less regular television."
