The acquisition of Raging Stallion/Pistol Media by AEBN is having some unintended consequences. Namely that gay studios are flocking to the competition unlike at any time before.

There's a buzz beginning about TLA's slow pay/no pay of several studios, and the company has missed royalty payments to studios in its VOD program; a no-no in the online world. AEBN and National A-1 have both made prompt payment a standard feature of their programs.

The juggernaut in gay, mainstream and porn DVDs appears to have some significant cash flow issues, may be

At the predictable-down-to-the-minute GayVN awards, Raging Stallion AEBN won everything, including the lovely shoes worn by Mr. Mapa. Not that anyone expected a different outcome, but one note worth mentioning: Ricky "Stubby" Sinz as best top. Who knew 4 inches will get you an award in San Francisco!

And then there's Michael Lucas. Grabbing the microphone. Saying something stupid. Not letting it drop there. Stop me when I've said something new.

Inching towards its inevitable future, Falcon again advertises bareback in its weekly email (Feb. 27 edition). After attempting to claim its pre-condom movies to be bareback last April in a printed mailer, they seemed to quiet down some (and, well, after the departure of Todd Montgomery, said to be the initial driving force behind the studio's foray into raw porn). But, it's a recession, and sales have slowed.

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Almost everyone in the industry knows that the so-called "merger" of Raging Stallion and AEBN is in actuality a takeover of the studio.

Director and Legend in his own mind Chris Ward has had a wild ride in the porn biz. His fast dealing ways have finally caught up with him. His outsized ego was always a problem for him, and he made decisions not based on sound business practice, but on extraneous factors such as whether he could screw a competitor. Not to be cruel, but what goes around comes around.

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Yes, they stuck their head further up their ass.

It seems that the bareback genie has been put back into the bottle, at least as far as the awards go. It seems the barebackers couldn't give a shit, and the condom nazis weren't going to tolerate it.

So the rumor going around now is that the 2010 awards will include bareback videos but require testing.

Models who start their own studios are, of course, a dime a dozen. For every Kristen Bjorn, Chip Daniels, and yes Michel Lucas (ugh), there a dozen others who fall by the wayside.

Sure working on the set can be fun! It's those other pesky details of websites, paysites, distributors, and hangers-on that can turn porn into drudgery.

Colin O'Neal has certainly found out the hard way as his deal with Raging Stallion crumbles before our eyes. His World of Men line of movies is currently being pimped out by Raging Stallion at an 8-dvds for $99.99 special. For the mathematically challenged, that's only $12.50 per movie.

Raging Stallion has flooded the market with similar product, and is finding out the hard way that sometimes, more is actually less.

News that the GayVn awards will accept bareback content has leaked out as the marketing for the event begins. The question on everyone's lips was "Would Chi Chi actually hand out an award to a bareback film?" How could she!!!

Ah but the devil is always in the details as it seems that Miss Larry will be hand picking the nominees herself based upon whether HIV testing was performed on the set. Several bareback companies such as HDK and Puppy have made statement about testing and serosorting of models, while most have said nothing publicly. How Miss Larry will determine this is anyone's guess. But I don't expect an onstage handshake between Chi Chi and Paul Morris anytime soon.

There's little doubt that the International porn empire known as Eurocreme is going through some tough times, but it was in a sense inevitable. The key to understanding ECs current and future situation is to examine the events that were out of their control, as opposed to the consequences of their own actions.

Built through a merger series of production and distribution businesses, EC tried to industrialize porn production with a high volume/low margin strategy that relied on several factors.

A) International Market
B) Continuous product flow from both Eastern and Western European sources (in-house, contracted, distributed)
C) Successful Integration of Smaller Businesses into a Larger whole (studios, distribution, retail, web)