# What will it take to fix Playboy **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 24, 2009, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-it-take-to-fix-playboy/518818 "2009-11-24T19:52:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2009, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-it-take-to-fix-playboy/518818/21 "2009-11-24T23:17:45Z")
More catering to the fetishistic set? ---
**Author:** ![DiggitCamara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/df788c/32.png) [@DiggitCamara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DiggitCamara)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2009, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-it-take-to-fix-playboy/518818/22 "2009-11-24T23:29:21Z")
Well, one way to do it would be, like several others have pointed out, to publish truly “next-door” nudes. They might have an angle with classy photography of celebrities. I mean, if every celebrity will appear nude (via cell-phones, or what-not), they might as well preempt the stalkers by choosing the turf, so to speak. And Playboy could start publishing historical nudes (paintings, sculptures, older photographs), just to distinguish themselves from the competition. Or they could stop their publishing arm and focus on video and internet subscriptions,. Then again, maybe they’re just a relic, destined to fail. ---
**Author:** ![aceplace57](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aceplace57/32/3500_2.png) [@aceplace57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aceplace57)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2009, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-it-take-to-fix-playboy/518818/23 "2009-11-24T23:35:06Z")
Playboy nearly went broke in the early 1980’s. Hef’s daughter Christie took control and saved the company by shifting the focus to home videos and starting the Playboy channel. It worked for a long time. Home video brought in a lot of money. I guess Christie ran out of new ideas. She recently stepped down, after running the company for 25 years. I always figured Hef’s sons would eventually take over. His oldest son (from wife Kimberly in the late 1980’s) is about ready to start college. ---
**Author:** ![Justin\_Bailey](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/justin_bailey/32/8792_2.png) [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2009, 11:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-it-take-to-fix-playboy/518818/24 "2009-11-24T23:49:26Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Esquire prints pictures of woman who are undressed but strategically covered, but I don’t think they’ve done an actual nude in many years. I’m pretty sure GQ is in the same position. Undraped but no naughty bits. I’ve seen breasts in both within the last year. It’s getting rarer, but it does still happen. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Q](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/898d66/32.png) [@Johnny\_Q](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Q)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-it-take-to-fix-playboy/518818/25 "2009-11-25T00:19:53Z")
It would have to go for that perfect mix of highbrow and lowbrow. Think The New Yorker with tits. ---
**Author:** ![Happy\_Lendervedder](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/happy_lendervedder/32/8488_2.png) [@Happy\_Lendervedder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Lendervedder)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 12:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-it-take-to-fix-playboy/518818/26 "2009-11-25T00:40:21Z")
1. **Print content**. Show naughtier stuff in the print edition (not hardcore, but…you know what I’m talking about). Also, as others have said, more variety and “naturalness.” 2. **Online content**. Stop charging for online content. There’s too much free stuff online for people to want to give their financial infos to a nudie website (even a reputable one). A popular brand like Playboy would do just fine with selling web ads. 3. **Merchandise**. Target the hipster set (as someone said earlier) with Playboy brand merchandise, including retro stuff and classic cheesecake stuff. 4. **Costs**. Continue to cut overhead. ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-it-take-to-fix-playboy/518818/27 "2009-11-25T01:16:10Z")
Years ago I suggested that they get rid of the pictorals, and become an upscale journal of arts and letters. That might have worked then, but now it’s too late. Magazines and print media in general is in a possibly terminal decline. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-it-take-to-fix-playboy/518818/28 "2009-11-25T01:19:09Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Playboy never stopped its policy of smart and timely articles, interviews, and instructions on how to live The Good Life. What sets it apart from the mags like FHM and Stuff is that it has longer, more in-depth articles, and those mags are Short Attention Span Theater. Which, unfortunately, might be the Wave of the Future, depending upon what younger guys want to read. You mean wave of the present. Even The New Yorker has much shorter articles on average now than it did 25 years ago before the reign of That Woman. Back when my friends and I filched copies from the stacks of our respective fathers, Playboy was a way of bring respectable nudies into the houses of middle class men, who would not want to have the lower class men’s mags delivered. The days where that was required are long gone. Now we can get our real articles all over and our more specialized porn all over. Playboy suffered the fate of most of the general purpose mags like Life and Look. ---
**Author:** ![Omniscient](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omniscient/32/3290_2.png) [@Omniscient](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omniscient)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 1:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-it-take-to-fix-playboy/518818/29 "2009-11-25T01:51:01Z")
I’m a pretty happy Playboy subscriber and I think this gets pretty close to the mark. > [@Happy\_Lendervedder](#): > > 1. **Print content**. Show naughtier stuff in the print edition (not hardcore, but…you know what I’m talking about). Also, as others have said, more variety and “naturalness.” Agreed, and more of it. A current issue of Playboy has about 12 pages with 20 naked pictures in it. I’m happy to look but it’s about 30th on my list of things I care about in the magazine. I like keeping the subscription because I like when they occasionally get a celebrity I care about naked and trot out their section of candids, nip slips and various paparazzi photos. The centerfolds are just too repetitive and boring. If they modernized some of the photo shoots and had a mix of traditional, fetish, theme and high art spreads it’d break things up a bit. They need to stop playing it safe with the content. Have a little fun with it, take a few chances, break the script and just give us a higher proportion of sexy pics…or ditch it all together, nothing is worse than half-assing it. > [@](#): > > 1. **Online content**. Stop charging for online content. There’s too much free stuff online for people to want to give their financial infos to a nudie website (even a reputable one). A popular brand like Playboy would do just fine with selling web ads. Another good one. Get [Playboy.com](http://Playboy.com) entered into every persons’ bookmarks folder. Take over the celeb/hollywood blog world by putting out a lot of content and integrating a lot of user content. Post all the celeb stuff and paps photos, if you’re going to pay celebs to get naked for you stop getting upstaged when one of the flashes a tit for free on the red carpet or riviera. Start expanding the Playboy Adviser concept online with daily content and broader commentary. It could be like mainstream Straight Dope. Got the Forum section involved in real-time political news commentary. In short, they need to take their well established brand ideals and get them online and easy to access. Make [Playboy.com](http://Playboy.com) the preferred portal for the new generation of internet savvy fans. Use the huge catalog of past nude photos and articles as the bait to get eyeballs on your site. Someday this will become profitable and in the meantime it’ll raise awareness of the magazine. Lots of people will still but the magazine with duplicated content just to have something to take on the bus and set next to the crapper. Playboy has for years had sections on cars, technology, politics, pop culture, advice, fashion and shopping. Those sections set trends back in the day. They’ve been largely superseded in everything these days by places like Autoblog, TMZ, Gizmodo, Huffington Post and everything else. Having one brand with credibility and cache on all those subjects could legitimately hope to reclaim a big part of that market if the content was good and having under one big portal would be convenient for users. > [@](#): > > 1. **Merchandise**. Target the hipster set (as someone said earlier) with Playboy brand merchandise, including retro stuff and classic cheesecake stuff. Again, another good one. They can leverage the classic Playboy ideal to aging baby boomers and feast on nostalgia for the 50s amongst the hipster set with their branding. They have to be smarter about it than just crapping out bunny logos though, that was tacky and douchey in the 90s. Even women adore the pin ups and classic art work and that’s an under-served demographic. 1. **Costs**. Continue to cut overhead. [/QUOTE] Don’t over do this one. The magazine needs to stay desirable and they can’t cut too much of their content and quality. People will pay more for a good magazine, they won’t pay anything for a cheap crappy one. Also if you are going to scale up the online presence you need to have quality staff to make it worth while. Playboy hasn’t been primarily a nudie mag in a long time. If they start doing the things they expended to in the 70s again in a modern way there’s no reason they can’t recapture America. Magazines are dying with the exception of niches and boutique stuff. Playboy could be one of those survivors so long as they find a way to keep their brand viable elsewhere and the magazine becomes a bonus product as opposed to the core. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-it-take-to-fix-playboy/518818/30 "2009-11-25T02:27:46Z")
Magazines have content for only one reason: to have something to support the ads. Advertising is the reason that magazines (and newspapers) exist. As soon as the advertising goes, the magazine (or newspaper) folds. That’s why they’re dying. The question you have to answer is not what content would work with readers but what content would draw major advertising. Who is the target demographic for the advertising? Why would any major advertiser spend money to be in this magazine? What does this magazine offer that no other magazine offers? I don’t see any of the suggestions here attracting advertising. Magazines generally have been slimming for years because there are fewer ads in magazines and content is proportional to the number of ads. Trying to get advertising go a magazine that is known for nudes is essentially impossible. Taking nudes out of Playboy is equally impossible. There is no solution. ---
**Author:** ![Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ccd318/32.png) [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-it-take-to-fix-playboy/518818/31 "2009-11-25T02:55:40Z")
I see two problems. 1. Dirty magazines are being replaced by the internet. Unless Playboy can provide better quality or niche dirty pictures, it cannot compete. 2. Magazines of all types are in trouble. It is difficult to imagine a relaunch of Playboy that would not be full of danger. They would be creating a whole new magazine when new magazines are failing by the basket. Easiest solution? Do nothing, keep raking in the cash as long as you can, invest the money in a number of new ventures that play on the corporation’s key competencies. ---
**Author:** ![Ludovic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/7ab992/32.png) [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-it-take-to-fix-playboy/518818/32 "2009-11-25T03:11:30Z")
> [@Omniscient](#): > > Another good one. Get [Playboy.com](http://Playboy.com) entered into every persons’ bookmarks folder. I can’t disagree with a lot of the suggestions for print, even if it would make me even less likely to buy Playboy than today it would at least make money. But I think the Internet is already saturated with free “natural” shots. I think a reliable, free, **safe** , source for airbrushed non-hardcore pictures would net a lot of eyeballs, including mine. Right now I have to search forever for something good (because unlike many, for me, porn does follow Sturgeon’s Law,) and even then I have to wonder if the link will really show what it claims, and will not install a virus. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-it-take-to-fix-playboy/518818/33 "2009-11-25T03:14:44Z")
The one thing _Playboy_ can still occasionally do is get a celeb to pose nude who ordinarily would not. I think _Playboy’s_ one chance at any sort of long term survival would be to focus on that. Get Megan Fox or Mylie Cyrus to show the goods and eyeballs will follow. They’d still probably have to do it online, though. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-it-take-to-fix-playboy/518818/34 "2009-11-25T03:41:17Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > The one thing _Playboy_ can still occasionally do is get a celeb to pose nude who ordinarily would not. I think _Playboy’s_ one chance at any sort of long term survival would be to focus on that. Get Megan Fox or Mylie Cyrus to show the goods and eyeballs will follow. They’d still probably have to do it online, though. But Playboy hasn’t been able to get celebrities to pose nude for years, unless you define celebrity in the same way that I’m A Celebrity: Get Me Out of Here does. There is zero chance that any major star will pose nude for Playboy. Getting them to do so on a monthly basis rates at less than zero. And even if Playboy executives forced the stars to do so at gunpoint, the pictures would be plastered all the internet free before most people saw the actual magazine and so gain them nothing. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-it-take-to-fix-playboy/518818/35 "2009-11-25T03:55:59Z")
Whoops. It’s too late, Playboy. It’s already been done. Link is broken because the thumbnails contain bare breasts. http:// [animalnewyork.com/2009/05/high-end-erotic-mag-bursts-onto-the-scene](http://animalnewyork.com/2009/05/high-end-erotic-mag-bursts-onto-the-scene) > [@](#): > > Undeterred by the constriction and death of countless magazines and confident in the market for smut, Jacques magazine launches their first issue, “an alternative to the vapid men’s magazines of today.” The new luxury erotic mag plans to publish quarterly with a return to pulp’s roots: “edgy opinion, arousing interviews and fiery fiction blended with unparalleled pictorials illustrating the real beauty of real women.” And we all know how they’ve put the internet out of business. You have all heard of Jacques, haven’t you? ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-it-take-to-fix-playboy/518818/36 "2009-11-25T05:06:03Z")
> [@joebuck20](#): > > What will it take to fix Playboy? A time machine. ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 5:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-it-take-to-fix-playboy/518818/37 "2009-11-25T05:21:03Z")
> [@Omniscient](#): > > The centerfolds are just too repetitive and boring. I’ve noticed that when I look at any of the many websites that are collections of nudie shots from around the web, I can always pick out the ones that came from Playboy in a second. They just have a very distinctive and, as **Omniscient** says, repetitive look. It’s a combination of the type of girl they choose, the lighting/set and the airbrushed quality. ---
**Author:** ![joebuck20](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/74df32/32.png) [@joebuck20](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/joebuck20)\ **Post date:** [November 25, 2009, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-it-take-to-fix-playboy/518818/38 "2009-11-25T15:33:53Z")
The aforementioned GQ and Esquire pictorials actually do a lot more for me than Playboy, as they don’t have that cartoonish airbrushed quality to them. That’s not to say they don’t use PhotoShop to do some touch-ups, but they don’t go nuts with it. ---
**Author:** ![AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/22d042/32.png) [@AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AboutAsWeirdAsYouCanGet)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2009, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-it-take-to-fix-playboy/518818/39 "2009-11-26T05:43:58Z")
Adopt as its motto " Doesn’t short out when used in the tub" ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2009, 8:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-it-take-to-fix-playboy/518818/40 "2009-11-26T08:35:51Z")
> [@aceplace57](#): > > I guess Christie ran out of new ideas. She recently stepped down, after running the company for 25 years. > > I always figured Hef’s sons would eventually take over. His oldest son (from wife Kimberly in the late 1980’s) is about ready to start college. Christie’s brother David is the oldest son. [Hugh Hefner - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Hefner#Personal_life) > [@](#): > > Hefner married Northwestern University student Mildred Williams in 1949. They had two children, [Christie](http://boards.straightdope.com/wiki/Christie_Hefner) (born November 8, 1952) and David (born August 30, 1955). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-it-take-to-fix-playboy/518818.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-will-it-take-to-fix-playboy/518818.md?page=3)