Playboy Back Behind Closed Doors Where It Belongs

Image by Getty Images via @daylifePlayboy founder and Viagra enthusiast Hugh Hefner plans to dole out $207 million to take the 58-year-old men's magazine private, according to Bloomberg News.

The 84-year-old Hef, who presently holds just shy of 70 percent of Playboy's Class A stock and roughly 28 percent of its Class B stock, will purchase the outstanding stock at $6.15 per share, an 18 percent premium over the Jan. 7 closing price of the Class B stock, Bloomberg reports.  Icon Acquisition Holdings, LP, which Hefner controls, is party to the agreement with Playboy, and has the financial backing of Rizvi Traverse Management, LLC and Jeffries & Co. Playboy's current CEO, Scott Flanders, is expected to retain his position following the transaction.

Hef himself may be holding up, but in recent times, advertising lineage and circulation of Playboy have taken a bunny nose dive. (See "TUOL" posts 4/26/10 & 3/1/10). Playboy debuted in 1953 and went public in 1971.

Portable Playboy: Pleasure in Your Pocket?

Image via WikipediaThe Los Angeles Times reports that for about $300, you can own every issue from 1953 to 2010 of Playboy magazine on a 250GB drive that the magazine claims will fit "inside a briefcase or jacket pocket." Thankfully, not a pants pocket.

The men's magazine partnered with Bondi Digital Publishing to release 650 issues on a USB hard drive. Rolling Stone, National Geographic and the New Yorker are among periodicals that have created digital archives with Bondi.

Playboy on a hard drive. The vigilant staff of "TUOL" has never encountered a straight line it didn't like.

Playboy: Nude-Free Website in the Offing?

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Paidcontent.org reports that Playboy Enterprises, Inc. has plans to debut TheSmokingJacket.com, a Website that folks can safely surf at their office computer because the online content will be bereft of pictures of "nekkid" women.

Okay, faithful "TUOL" readers, now that you've returned from visiting the site and seen for yourselves the "Coming Soon!" notice (make your own joke), you know that Playboy is promising online content that "brings you everything you love about Playboy, men's entertainment, and the Internet"--except for photo spreads of nubile, pneumatic young women who love horseback riding and hate phoniness.

A Playboy Website without nudity?  Wonder if other magazines will follow suit on their online alter egos. Looking forward to Better Homes & Gardens without any photos of homes or gardens, TV Guide sans program listings, and Cosmopolitan without neuroses.

Playboy Issues Multiplying Like Rabbits

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

After a year of gloomy news regarding plunging circulation and staff cutbacks (see "TUOL" posts 3/1/10, 9/1/09), things are looking up for Playboy.

MediaWeek reports that the men's magazine plans to publish 11 issues this year and a full 12 issues in 2011, after previous reports that only 10 copies of the pulchritudinous periodical would appear on newsstands this year. Hugh Hefner's magazine recently outsourced its business operations to American Media, Inc. as a cost-savings measure, and circulation, which peaked at 7 million in the 1970s, hovers around 1.5 million nowadays.

Still, as contradictory as it may sound,  Playboy won't go bust

Playboy Sheds Jobs, Clothes

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The Chicago Tribune reports that Playboy Enterprises, Inc.'s restructuring and outsourcing of operations, such as production of Playboy magazine, could reduce the media conglomerate's 573 employees by half.

Prospective Playboy suitors have not panned out, and its stock is trading at $3.27 a share. The company is expanding its entertainment venues to include a casino in Mexico and a nightclub in Miami, according to the Tribune, amid concerns it may be spreading itself too thin.  It's ironic to ponder that Hugh Hefner's brainchild could go "bust," as it were.

Playboy Sheds Circulation: Top Half of 2009 a Bust for Periodicals

Image by New York Public Library via Flickr

TV Guide lost 10 percent of its readers, and Playboy was close behind, shedding 9.2 percent of its circulation in the first six months of 2009, compared to first-half figures a year ago, leading the bruised magazine industry, which overall experienced a 1.2 percent decline in circulation, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulation (ABC).

ABC reported that for the first half of 2009, grocery store and newsstand sales of magazines plunged from 41.4 million copies in 2008 to 36.3 million copies in 2009, a 12 percent decrease. Combined circulation for 521 consumer magazines went from 343.7 million copies sold in the first half of 2008 to 339.6 million for the comparable period in 2009, according to the ABC.  Meanwhile, ad sales declined by 21 percent at major domestic periodicals in the first half of 2009.

If this keeps up,  newsstand hawkers, the principal suppliers of information to fictional private eyes since Hollywood started making talkies, will become extinct.

New Playboy CEO Seeks to Energize Bunny

Last week, Playboy Enterprises tapped Scott N. Flanders to be its new CEO. Since 2006, Flanders has been CEO of the Irvine, Calif.-based Freedom Communications, the country's 14th largest media company. Before that, he was CEO and President of Columbia House Co., the mammoth direct marketer of music and videos. He also is the former president of MacMillan Publishing, the world's largest computer and reference publisher.

Flanders, a C.P.A. and law school graduate, has a storied track record of increasing revenues at these varied enterprises. In a recent interview with FOLIO Magazine, he blamed the advertising recession for Playboy Magazine's sagging sales. Although, he remains a "big believer in print," he acknowledged that "Playboy is having to shrink to grow in the future." Note to Mr. Flanders--the demographic attracted to the magazine hates the word "shrink." Flanders predicts that Playboy will rebound and characterizes himself as a "change agent" at every media company he has led.

With Playboy trading at $2.84 a share on the NYSE, his initial challenge may be to airbrush the magazine's financials to attract a buyer. Flanders will make his debut at Playboy at the same time as Miss July.