UCSB’s Media Industries Project Interviews Christian Mann

SANTA BARBARA, Calif.—Evil Angel General Manager Christian Mann sat down with the Carsey-Wolf Center’s Media Industries Project (MIP) to discuss the impact of digital distribution on the adult entertainment industry. Excerpts from the interview are available today on the MIP website. Drawing upon his extensive experience in the industry, Mann provided a series of critical insights into the ways in which adult entertainment has responded to the challenges of the digital era, reflecting on everything from changing delivery methods and evolving business models to battling piracy and learning lessons from mainstream media.  “The Internet has made decades of entrenched power, ownership, and control obsolete, and brought in a whole new group of people who are younger, more technologically savvy, and yet uninterested in the history of [the adult entertainment] business and not necessarily even that interested in the content itself,” Mann said. “It created a group of people who made the kind of money overnight that previous barons took 20 years to accumulate. It was wealth accumulation in hyperdrive, especially in the early days of the Internet.” Mann’s comments join a diverse group of other industry leaders, including studio heads, distribution executives, market researchers, and film and television writers, who all offer diverse perspectives on the ways in which changes in distribution are affecting the media industries. These discussions constitute a core component of MIP’s mission to facilitate dialogue between industry professionals and media industry scholars. Ultimately, the interviews challenge those inside the industry to reflect critically on their business practices and, just as importantly, facilitate online access to perspectives often unavailable to media industries researchers, teachers, and students. You can read about the Carsey-Wolf Center’s Media Industries Project, including additional interview excerpts, on its website. Pictured: Christian Mann with boss John Stagliano