That said, let the rumble begin.
With an eye on clobbering Playboy, New Frontier Media issued a statement to the press Wednesday morning, claiming victory over the nation’s best-known brand of adult.
"Playboy has shut down all of its adult movie brands, replaced them with complete startup services and expects cable and satellite operators to simply go along,” New Frontier Media CEO Ken Boenish told XBIZ in an exclusive interview. “We think this is a great opportunity for distributors to reconsider their adult strategy and switch to networks with proven performance.”
"We've consulted industry experts and believe that this is the most extensive network shakeup in the history of the multichannel business," he said. “The way we see it, consumers vote with their dollars.”
In truth, Playboy has rebranded its line of Spice channels as the Club Jenna channel; Fresh!, which focuses on fresh faces and amateurs; Shorteez, a collection of short videos; and Spice Xcess, which broadcasts ethnic and fetish niches. The channels launch today.
Playboy’s Matt Kalinowski told XBIZ that his company is looking for a “more dynamic” range of offerings, particularly with its Club Jenna channel, which will have more live broadcasts from venues around the nation.
“Club Jenna has high-brand recognition, and it’s a great content generator for other [platforms] like DVDs,” Kalinowski said.
But New Frontier Media’s Boenish isn’t impressed.
“The Club Jenna channel will contain all archived content, all fairly old,” Boenish said. “Jenna Jameson doesn’t even perform anymore. Obviously, this is Playboy’s way of being more competitive in the marketplace.”
New Frontier Media, however, indicates that the Boulder, Colo.-based company has been eating Playboy’s lunch. Since the launch of its first network in 1998, New Frontier Media says its services have replaced Playboy’s in more than 60 million network households.
Boenish claims no Playboy service has ever replaced a New Frontier Media service in a U.S. cable household. He also claims that its The Erotic Networks division has grown from a standing start in 1998 to over 126 million network households.
“It isn’t a secret that we’ve been competing since our beginning,” Boenish said. “We’ve recently increased market share by 4 percent to 200 percent in certain markets.
"We believe we approach the adult business from a smarter perspective," Boenish said. "Today, we feel that even our competitor has acknowledged this point. We continue to grow, and we continue to get more shelf space from affiliates.”