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.

Chris Ward was Raging Stallion and vice-versa. While he attracted many talented people into the business, the business failed because it was about one man.

To his credit, Chris was a master manipulator, and he excelled at getting attention for himself. But from his early days at Hot House, Chris often took the path of taking advantage of people. There's a long list of investors, models, creative people, business associates etc who have good reason not to like him. Is it true that Chris screwed Michael Brandon out of his share of the company? If it is, that's just shameful.

It was his stock in trade to get other people to finance his movies, and that ultimately was his downfall. Chris Ward had a similar deal with Adam Male for a movie called Hot Properties. Adam Male was left holding the bag, and at first attempted to close the movie out for $10 per unit (to the public). When they still couldn't get rid of the dead wood they had to resort to giving it away for FREE with every purchase. Don't these people down in North Carolina talk to each other?

The Fat Man truly met his match with the largest distributor in the business. I heard they gave him a choice, give AEBN bareback movies to stream or the whole company. Because by last November AEBN figured out they would never earn back their money from the streaming rights to a porn movie where the guys kill each other.

Not happy with a decent studio and website business, Chris had to pull out all the stops of his movie star fantasies, complete with a Hollywood premiere. The vanity projects, Grunts and To The Last Man, are like a time warp back to Can't Stop the Music starring The Village People. What's next, the construction worker movie? The cop movie? oh yeah, he's already made them. All Chris ever really wanted was to be a feature film director. Then he should have done that and leave the porn to the people that really WANT to be in the business.

If you want to see just how much people actively dislike Raging Stallion look at the comments on gayporntimes.com. Chris is one of the biggest assholes in the biz. He routinely bad mouths competitors without provocation, and he shades the truth to the point that it's impossible to know if he even knows what the truth is.

Some have criticized Raging Stallion for being too narrow in its focus. In terms of playing in too narrow a field, I have to agree with other bloggers and posts that porn is a business of niches. For several years Chris cranked out the product for the niches he was best known for (fisting, manly, hairy). But he was not a true generalist which was required for the kind of company he was trying to build. Chris had trouble getting it up for movies in which he was not personally interested in the type of model or sex act. The one-off dud "twink line" Youthful Offenders comes to mind. Someone needed to explain to him that if the model is over the age of 23, they're not a twink anymore.

In every challenge there is opportunity. Maybe Tim Valenti does really want to operate a studio and DVD distribution business. Good luck with that. More importantly, it may tip the balance of power on the gay side of AEBN. There's a definite split on the bareback issue between Charlotte and SF. Brian Randall's Gunz Blazing affiliate program may fit well into AEBN, as it's a side of the business they don't currently have.

On the other hand, this changes the landscape considerably, as AEBN now has a greater financial interest in some content over others. Every gay studio, especially the direct competitors, Titan & Hot House, will have to reassess their relationship to AEBN.

AEBN prospered in-part by providing a level playing field for all studios. If a Raging Stallion movie is #1 on AEBN (not that that's happened recently), won't people wonder if that's really true, or just AEBN trying to squeeze out the competition for its new baby. If I was Sureflixxx or National-A1, I'd flog that horse for all it was worth, and see if I couldn't pick up a few exclusive studios.