The motelier (usually adorned with an open shirt, gold chain, and white shoes) would alert selected regulars of the nightly screening on a dedicated channel. The stick-flick of the day would be inserted into beta-max at a per-determined time via the motel TV distribution system.
In these more enlightened times, (as MP, Shane "Tugger" Jones well knows) the availability of porn in the accommodation industry is restricted to large hotels. The open availability in hotels is an interesting phenomenon as most folk that check-in to a hotel don't give it a second thought. Hotel guests all seem to accept without question that only a couple of button clicks separates them from an array of hard-core porn.
Unlike most major hotels, motels don't openly offer adult movies as part of their in-room entertainment. There are many reasons for this, including appeasing a broader demographic of guests that stay at motels and the initial capital cost of installing pay-for-view systems, however probably the main reason is that moteliers have a closer relationship with their guests and don't wish to look them in the eye at check-out and discuss dodgy late-night movie habits.
So why do hotels risk offending their guests by offering porn? Simply, because their guests demand it AND it generates huge profits! In the past it has been reported that up to 50% of the hotel guests purchase the material and it has been estimated that between 70 -80% of the hotel's in-room profit come from adult movie viewing.
The hotel industry's dirty little secret is that guest adult movie purchases have traditionally outstripped profits from those pesky overpriced mini-bars...
It is interesting to note that in recent years, demand for adult pay movies in hotels is going through the floor as guests turn to the internet. I'm sure a cursory search of bookmarks on Shane Jones's laptop would reveal all sorts of interesting websites;-)
For a nation that has its fair share of wowsers that are outraged on cue and get easily upset over the availability of choice and burden of personal responsibility, I'm pleasantly surprised that the hotel industry isn't regularly taken to task for "peddling porn".
For moral outrage, we have to look back to the 70s and 80s when conservative activist, Patricia Bartlett who founded the Society for Promotion of Community Standards made regular indignant outbursts. She was a spinster with a vast and enviable vast porn collection that could whip herself into a frenzy after discovering the latest example of naked depravity. Her moral outrage was eagerly anticipated by an amused media of the time.
It is probably a good thing that we no longer have anyone left like Patricia Bartlet to mock in New Zealand and we need to look to the USA for modern-day amusement:
"Hotels urged to drop porn movies
Two leading academics in the United States - Dr. Robert George of Princeton University and Shaykh Hamza Yusuf of Zaytuna College - have released a joint letter to the CEOs of the top five American hotel chains urging them to stop selling pornographic movies in their hotels.
In it, they warn of pornography's grave social consequences, including addiction, exploitation, and loss of self-worth.
The letter does not threaten protests or boycotts, but appeals to the individual consciences of the major hotel CEOs. The letter says in part:
"We write to ask you to stop offering pornographic movies in your company's hotels. We make no proposal here to limit your legal freedom, nor do we threaten protests, boycotts, or anything of the sort.
"We simply ask you to do what is right as a matter of conscience.
"We are, respectively, a Christian and a Muslim, but we appeal to you not on the basis of truths revealed in our scriptures but on the basis of a commitment that should be shared by all people of reason and goodwill: a commitment to human dignity and the common good."
