Steve Hirsch co-founded and now runs Vivid Entertainment, a multi-million dollar concern that Adult Video News recently extolled as the "most talked about brand in the history of porn."

Vivid is credited with bringing porn out of the closet and into the mainstream and into more bedrooms and hotel rooms than you can shake a remote at.

Before Vivid was founded in 1984, porn was a seedy, 8mm, back-room enterprise. Vivid enhanced the packaging and production quality of its videos and hired buff, beautiful, generously siliconed female stars - the "Vivid girls" - to generous long-term contracts a la the old Hollywood star system. Vivid shamelessly promoted them, and they promoted his films, which started making buckets of money. It's sort of like the way Walt Disney took out the seedy "carney" aspect of amusement parks and cleaned them up to appeal to the masses. That's what Steve Hirsch did for porn. [Did you know that the first contract star for Vivid was Ginger Lynn? It's true. Feel smarter now?]

Launched in December of 1994, Vivid carved out a niche on the softest edge of the hardcore spectrum. Receiving more of it's income from sales to cable TV than any other porn company, Vivid's productions usually feature a story, beautiful women and lush sets.

The world's largest producer of shot-on-film pornography, Vivid shoots four new movies a month, two of them on 16mm film. Expenses for each average $100,000.

Vivid employees about 150 people and will probably gross about $500,000 million very soon. The Van Nuys company produces 80% of the content for the Playboy Channel and bought Spice Hot cable TV in the fall of 1998.

Vivid launched its huge Internet operation in May of 1999, and quickly became one of the industry's big six players. Vivid internet grossed about $25 million in 1999 and about $40 million in the year 2000. Estimates for 2006 range between $75 and $100 million dollars.

Vivid girls earn around $100,000 a year for about 20 sex scenes and a dozen personal appearances. They make most of their money, from $8,000 - $15,000 a week working the strip club circuit.