And even Leslie Stahl appears to be enjoying it.
Posted on 11/22/2003 11:59:27 AM PST by tvn
Sunday’s 60 Minutes will look at how cable and direct-broadcast satellite companies profit from "adult" entertainment.
The theme is how "companies you’d hardly expect" are profiting from porn, including such established players as General Motors (through its to-be-sold DirecTV), top cable companies and hotel chains like Marriott.
For over a decade, Comsat used its entertainment subsidiary to supply obscene films, uncensored and unscrambled, to hotel rooms throughout the US, 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. Customers were not billed by film title, which were labeled pornography by the NY Times and Forbes Magazine. This anonymous billing system prevented parents from monitoring the viewing choices of their children. It also meant that businessmen staying in the country's leading hotels were not embarrassed by billing statements that revealed the selection of movies.
Comsat's degraded operation violated federal statutes, which required the corporation to operate "in the public interest." In fact, Comsat became the country’s largest exhibitor of this offensive material, reaching thousands of hotels and upwards of 1 million rooms.
In 1997, faced with mounting shareholder dissatisfaction charging the board with mismanagement, the Comsat quietly ended the business via a stock spin off to its shareholders, thereby avoiding adverse publicity.
The fact remains that its was this US Government sponsored corporation that brought this filth and sleaze to hotel rooms in the US, threatening untold numbers of children, degrading women and attacking fundamental family values. Yet, to this day, no one in the company or at the FCC has ever been called to answer for Comsat’s sordid effort to generate revenues by establishing a subsidiary that became the largest distributor of “adult” films in the country.
And even Leslie Stahl appears to be enjoying it.
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