The Downfall Of Czech Gay Porn Studios

solagt

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Dear community,

Am I the only one who thinks that the quality of Belami, Czech Hunter, Freshmen and in particular William Higgins has deteriorated over the past 2-3 years?

An example:
How did WilliamHiggins go from this
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...to this

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Welcome to the discussion on the current state of Czech gay porn. Your thoughts?
 
This is the funniest thing I've seen in a long time and I agree. In a similar vein, I think that majority of porn is over run with 'anorexic looking femboys with zero body hair', even the so called str8 men are more effeminate than most girls I know.
 
WilliamHiggins because the site owner and creator, William Higgins, died. He mantained a high standard when he was alive. The people who are currently running the site obviously see it as a cash cow and are probably offering very low pay, thus the decline in the models.
 
Am I the only one who thinks that the quality of Belami, Czech Hunter, Freshmen and in particular William Higgins has deteriorated over the past 2-3 years?

I was about to make a similar thread specifically about William Higgins, before realising you beat me to it!

I too have noticed quite a change, which was inevitable following Higgins's death, and I commend the current owners, whoever they are, for keeping the site going in a much tougher climate.

That said, the main changes I've noticed recently:

- access to the old WH site is gone without any announcement that I noticed. Over a decade of legacy content seems to be inaccessible now, I presume indefinitely.

- very little communication about the running of the site. Again, probably inevitable without WH himself, especially given the language barrier between staff and members, but it's a far cry from the days when WH would communicate in detail via his blog about what was happening behind the scenes.

- far fewer model castings. Going back to 2012 or so, there was a new casting video and photoset uploaded every single day. Now it's one a week. That's a huge drop.

- inconsistent quality of models. I actually quite like this in a way - some of the less conventionally attractive guys are my favourites. But it's definitely fair to say that the seemingly endless conveyor belt of stunners is no more.
 
I suspect several major factors have caused this decline.

First, the standard of living seems to have improved significantly in the Czech Republic since it joined the EU in 2004. Check out WH content before then (and even a good few years after) and then compare it to today's stuff: all the 20th century Soviet decor from before has transformed into Westernised Ikea-style modern design, and the cheap threadbare briefs the models used to wear now have Calvin Klein and Armani waistbands. It's fucked up, but a thriving economy/job market is probably bad news for porn.

I'd also argue that the proliferation of the internet, while massively increasing potential customers, actually made it much tougher to recruit models. In those early days of WH, he seemed to have hordes of guys turning up for shoots daily, who would in turn invite their friends and brothers and teammates and fellow soldiers etc to audition and make some easy money. The internet wasn't mainstream yet - this was long before Youtube, and even longer still before smartphones - and I'd hazard that most of these guys did it because the shoots were only being published on this obscure geeky internet thing - no one they knew was ever going to see it. Today, obviously, it's a completely different ballgame.

And now the rise of Only Fans and suchlike further compounds the difficulty of recruiting models. When the studio had exclusive use of filming equipment and distribution, it had total power. Now that every budding pornstar has the equipment (smartphone) and means of distribution (wifi/4G) they can cut out the middle man and keep all the revenue for themselves.

Ultimately there's just no longer the same money to be made from professional porn. You can't subsidise costs by throwing some scenes on a DVD and selling thousands of them around the world, as WH used to do, because who buys DVDs any more? And the rampant spread of tube sites and torrent sites means your content is being distributed for free much more easily than in 2004 or whatever, meaning fewer paying subscribers. Which then affects content.

I do actually think the site today is faring pretty well compared to most of its long-running peers - lots of content still, if not nearly as much as before, and still the occasional stunning guy - but I doubt it'll ever return to the quality of its heyday. It's a real shame they removed access to all that classic content. It might be gone for good.
 
I suspect several major factors have caused this decline.

First, the standard of living seems to have improved significantly in the Czech Republic since it joined the EU in 2004. Check out WH content before then (and even a good few years after) and then compare it to today's stuff: all the 20th century Soviet decor from before has transformed into Westernised Ikea-style modern design, and the cheap threadbare briefs the models used to wear now have Calvin Klein and Armani waistbands. It's fucked up, but a thriving economy/job market is probably bad news for porn.

I'd also argue that the proliferation of the internet, while massively increasing potential customers, actually made it much tougher to recruit models. In those early days of WH, he seemed to have hordes of guys turning up for shoots daily, who would in turn invite their friends and brothers and teammates and fellow soldiers etc to audition and make some easy money. The internet wasn't mainstream yet - this was long before Youtube, and even longer still before smartphones - and I'd hazard that most of these guys did it because the shoots were only being published on this obscure geeky internet thing - no one they knew was ever going to see it. Today, obviously, it's a completely different ballgame.

And now the rise of Only Fans and suchlike further compounds the difficulty of recruiting models. When the studio had exclusive use of filming equipment and distribution, it had total power. Now that every budding pornstar has the equipment (smartphone) and means of distribution (wifi/4G) they can cut out the middle man and keep all the revenue for themselves.

Ultimately there's just no longer the same money to be made from professional porn. You can't subsidise costs by throwing some scenes on a DVD and selling thousands of them around the world, as WH used to do, because who buys DVDs any more? And the rampant spread of tube sites and torrent sites means your content is being distributed for free much more easily than in 2004 or whatever, meaning fewer paying subscribers. Which then affects content.

I do actually think the site today is faring pretty well compared to most of its long-running peers - lots of content still, if not nearly as much as before, and still the occasional stunning guy - but I doubt it'll ever return to the quality of its heyday. It's a real shame they removed access to all that classic content. It might be gone for good.
Excellent analysis, thank you!
 
Dear community,

Am I the only one who thinks that the quality of Belami, Czech Hunter, Freshmen and in particular William Higgins has deteriorated over the past 2-3 years?

An example:
How did WilliamHiggins go from this
View attachment 41858791 View attachment 41858801 View attachment 41858811 View attachment 41858821 View attachment 41858831

...to this

View attachment 41858891 View attachment 41858901 View attachment 41858911 View attachment 41858921 View attachment 41858931

Welcome to the discussion on the current state of Czech gay porn. Your thoughts?

The 3rd Guy in the "To this..." set of shots has potential. I wouldn't say he's completely unattractive.

Men.com over the past few years has hired some of the most freakish looking, sickly, tattoo covered "models". Their ridiculous scenario's/storylines with random women thrown in (non sexual) and their video's are just one big dumpster fire.
 
Just wondering... anyone knows how to access the legacy WH content? There's a particular "airport security" scene that I'm missing. It's two women officers forcing two guys to get it on.
 
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Just wondering... anyone knows how to access the legacy WH content? There's a particular "airport security" scene that I'm missing. It's two women officers forcing two guys to get it on.

The official site used to have an archive of the old site with all the legacy content available to view and download, but it's been inaccessible since some time last year. They didn't announce anything - one day it was just a broken link. Hopefully most of it is backed up online somewhere - it's horrible to think of all that amazing content just disappearing forever.
 
Today's update on William Higgins is a solo video of a model that already made a solo video four years ago. I'd probably give the update a pass if they'd made it a helping hand, or if the model was exceptionally hot, but this guy is unremarkable imo.

Times must be tough if they're bringing back their plainest former models to do introductory solos all over again. The pool of prospective Czech models is really running this dry?
 
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