It's official print magazines are dead

MSnowy · Oct 13, 2015

No more nudity in Playboy

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/13/business/media/nudes-are-old-news-at-playboy.html?_r=0

jcdeboever · Oct 13, 2015

My, things have changed. Makes me wonder what it will be like in 2050.

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astroNikon · Oct 13, 2015

I just read that article too .. I was thinking the same thing.

unpopular · Oct 13, 2015

A few semesters ago I needed a bunch of nudie magazines for an assignment. I ended up reading getting distratced by the articles in Playboy.

I guess it's true what they say after all.

otherprof · Oct 13, 2015

MSnowy said:
No more nudity in Playboy

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/13/business/media/nudes-are-old-news-at-playboy.html?_r=0

I didn't know they had nude photos. I bought it for the articles . . . but seriously they did some great publishing. E.g. in science fiction, they were the first to publish Ursula LeGuin and they published "The Fly." (But they did publish Ursula LeGuin as "U.K. LeGuin" because they didn't think men would take sci fi by a woman seriously.

Designer · Oct 13, 2015

I only read the New York Times for the articles.

Derrel · Oct 13, 2015

Oddly, I saw this last night on the NYT website just minutes after it appeared and there were NO comments. This AM I went back via your link and there were 342 comments! Interestingly, the reader comments are more compelling than the original article and its seven photos. Opinions about the magazine, both the historical Playboy and the current Playboy, are all over the map. Opinions are also very divided on this new business direction plan, the idea of eliminating nudes from Playboy. I was shocked to find that Playboy now has only 800,000 subscribers.

JacaRanda · Oct 13, 2015

Derrel said:
Oddly, I saw this last night on the NYT website just minutes after it appeared and there were NO comments. This AM I went back via your link and there were 342 comments! Interestingly, the reader comments are more compelling than the original article and its seven photos. Opinions about the magazine, both the historical Playboy and the current Playboy, are all over the map. Opinions are also very divided on this new business direction plan, the idea of eliminating nudes from Playboy. I was shocked to find that Playboy now has only 800,000 subscribers.

I found the comment by SK regarding Hustler and "normal looking women" interesting. Posted approx 2 hrs ago.

Derrel · Oct 13, 2015

Yeah, I saw that comment. I read about 200 of the comments. Playboy's women in the 1980's were very often airbrushed pretty strongly, plus all the boob job types became very weird, just very,very weird, and by the mid-1980's Playboy's women were, as a class, very far from what real, everyday women looked like, and I remember there was a lot of talk at that time about what a stupid, unrealistic type of beauty idea Heffner's mag was pushing on a monthly basis. On the rare occasions they would publish photos of a woman with real, natural breasts, it was shocking to see what a REAL woman actually looked like compared against the blow-up doll types they normally featured. Silcone-ized women hold no attraction for me.

I have not seen an issue of Playboy since the 1990's, so I have no idea what the magazine has been doing over the past twenty years or more. I really don't care either, one way or the other, but I think this new business idea might actually help them gain some subscribers, just by eliminating the nudes.

cgw · Oct 13, 2015

What's left of Hefner's empire is a smoking ruin. Playboy's cachet vanished once it stopped being a kind of hip cultural oasis coincident with the world of "Mad Men." The world changed but Hefner's formula didn't.

Derrel · Oct 13, 2015

But as the article mentioned--the Playboy brand/icon/logo still has value in Asia and eastern Europe! lol... How the mighty have fallen!

"Ohhhhh, it's big in eastern Europe!"

MSnowy · Oct 13, 2015

Derrel said:
I have not seen an issue of Playboy since the 1990's, so I have no idea what the magazine has been doing over the past twenty years or more. I really don't care either, one way or the other, but I think this new business idea might actually help them gain some subscribers, just by eliminating the nudes.

I haven't seen a issue since the 90's . Funny thing is I've been on the internet since the 1990's. I think the first day got on the internet the first thing I searched for was naked women. So sorry Playboy it's my fault.

rexbobcat · Oct 13, 2015

It was only a matter of time. First came Penthouse (which surprisingly did full nudity first), and now the Internet.

Why buy Playboy when there are literally millions of equally as sensual, high quality images of naked women online.

Rob5589 · Oct 14, 2015

PB was part of American culture for 4 decades. I grew up with it as did all my friends. But sadly, it's time/relevance has come to an end. If PB thinks it can go the way of Maxim and survive it is sorely mistaken.

RIP Playboy