Robin Byrd

Robin Byrd
Robin Byrd at a party in New York (2010)
Born	(1957-04-06) April 6, 1957 (age 60) New York City, New York, U.S.
Website	robinbyrd.com

Robin Byrd (born 6 April 1957) is an American former pornographic actress and the host of The Robin Byrd Show, which has appeared on Leased access cable television in New York City since 1977.

Byrd was born and raised in New York City, New York. She was adopted. Byrd has never been able to identify her birth parents, due to the unwillingness of her adoptive mother to reveal that information and sealed birth and adoption records under New York state law.

At the time of filming the porn classic Debbie Does Dallas, Byrd was living in New York City, and was still known as Robin Cohen. After taking college classes in marketing and advertising at Baruch College and dropping out as a senior, she attended the School of Visual Arts and worked as a nude model for art classes. Her TV career was launched on cable TV with the Hot Legs Show. She subsequently starred in porn films during the late 1970s, including a role in the mentioned Debbie Does Dallas.

After guest-hosting on a leased access show called Hot Leggs, she changed the name to The Robin Byrd Show in 1977. The show has aired continuously since then, though it now shows reruns rather than live episodes. Each episode features Byrd in her trademark black crochet bikini and white fingernail polish, on an all-red set with a large, heart-shaped neon sign that bears the name of her show. Male and female porn stars and strippers appear as guests and perform fully nude stripteases, sometimes also taking calls from viewers. Byrd and her guests also frequently engage in onscreen sexplay by the end of the episode. Each show customarily ends with all the guests dancing to Robin's recording of a bawdy novelty tune, "Baby, Let Me Bang Your Box".

Byrd and Al Goldstein were in a long-standing legal battle with Time Warner Cable (and its predecessor, Manhattan Cable), which wanted to scramble all adult-oriented content so that subscribers had to send in written requests to view it. In 1978, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals struck as unconstitutional the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) mandatory access regulations under which Byrd and Goldstein had challenged the cable provider's actions, but the U.S. Supreme Court disposed of the case on other grounds.