BBC World Service program The Global Story has released a 26-minute episode examining the business behind online pornography and the role its financiers have played in shaping the wider internet. The episode, published on November 11, 2026, features Financial Times journalist Patricia Nilsson, who has spent six years reporting on the industry and tracing the people who profit from it.
Nilsson speaks with The Global Story’s Tristan Redman about what those six years of reporting revealed — not only about the pornography people watch online, but about how the industry’s money men have changed the internet itself.
The program frames the scale of the subject with two figures: tens of thousands of hours of pornographic content are uploaded to the internet every day, and at peak times, 10 percent of internet traffic consists of people watching porn. Against that volume, the episode asks who is making money from the material and by what means.
The episode runs 26 minutes and is available for more than a year. It was produced by Hannah Moore, with Martine Powers as executive producer, Travis Evans handling the mix, Stephen Bailey and Ben Andrews as technical producers, and China Collins as senior news editor. The accompanying image shows neon signs for adult video in Soho, London.
The discussion centers on the financial networks that sit behind a business most internet users encounter only as a viewer, and on how the pursuit of profit in that sector has influenced the online environment more broadly.