Last week, Jonathan Berr wrote in Daily Finance about the decline of Playboy's market:
But the world has changed. There is a huge supply of free adult content on the internet. Loads of publications including Maxim and Blender are competing for the young male demographic. This leaves Playboy with a very bleak outlook.
Playboy reported yet another dismal quarterly earnings. For the quarter ended March 31, the Chicago-based company reported a net loss of $13.7 million.... Revenue declined to $61.6 million from $78.5 million a year before....Overall, the stock has tumbled more than 72% over the past 5 years....
In a cost-cutting move, Playboy recently moved its editorial staff from NY to Chicago. It is now considering raising its per-issue price or cutting back on publication.
Over the past few decades, Hefner has dodged bullets ranging from government prosecutors to criticism from feminists. The fight against irrelevance may be his toughest battle yet.
To be fair, recent media financial struggles aren't limited to Playboy, with the internet playing a large role in the changing markets...
Other media outlets recently revealed to be going under include the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Ann Arbor News, PC Magazine (all moving to online-only formats), the Boston Globe, magazines such as Portfolio, Blender, Hallmark, Domino, JPG, Country Home, CosmoGirl!, Cottage Living, and Oprah's O at Home.
Even the stalwart Christian Science Monitor has taken a beating after a century of publications, changing from a daily to weekly format and utilizing daily email updates for readers.
Comments:
Certainly don't feel badly for Playboy and a lot of the newspapers in trouble are liberal rags. Also a steep decline in viewers for MSNBC and CNN while Fox news continues to grow.
Posted by: Joanne at May 19, 2009 4:59 PMGee:
I feel so sorry for Hef, that pathetic dirty old man who is in part responsible for much of the moral decline in this country and hence, the abortions as well.
May he find Jesus Christ soon before he has to face the God of Heaven.
Posted by: HisMan at May 19, 2009 5:33 PMHe holds a large part of the responsibility of the moral decline around the world.
Posted by: Joanne at May 19, 2009 8:16 PMJoanne, I sure don't find any sympathy is Communist News Network or MSLSD losing ratings either. I've always got Fox on!
Posted by: heather at May 19, 2009 8:23 PMI'm hearing bad news about California right now.
Posted by: heather at May 19, 2009 8:31 PMI think Playboy is a symptom of the times. The free love was disappointing. 25% of the population got free std's. People sure don't need the magazine any more. I thought the feminista mind would stear more from a sexist magazine but they lasted a while. Many girls Hefner thot wanted sex really wanted a man/husband. he couldn't offer that.
Posted by: xppc at May 19, 2009 8:37 PMI'd be excited about the decline of playboy if it wasn't accompanied by the boom of online porn... cheaper, easier to get without others knowing, and more depraved. :(
Posted by: Paul at May 19, 2009 9:36 PMPaul, agreed. Playboy isn't half as lewd as some of the crap they put out today. It's just getting more perverted and even sicker!
Posted by: heather at May 19, 2009 9:59 PMxppc, you're right. I think they also wanted some of that $$! {The Hef Girls}
Posted by: heather at May 20, 2009 7:32 AMI am still mourning the loss of Domino, and the superior Blueprint before it. :( No room in my heart to grieve for Playboy.
This subject is related to one of my bigger problems with porn, which is that it has almost like a tendency to desensitize the viewer and thus that it must, necessarily, become more and more shocking to stay financially viable. There is something almost sweetly vanilla about older porn as compared to the things people watch today. I actually know more than one "third wave feminist" (to use the cliche) who came full-circle -- started out being pro-porn or at least porn-neutral, because it's what women who are secure in their sexuality and in the sexuality of others "do;" but eventually came to be at least tentatively anti-porn because so much of porn today incorporates degradation as an expected aspect of sex. In that case it's not an opposition to porn itself that changed their minds, but rather an inability to reliably find porn that is geared towards lovingly, inclusively titillating images instead of towards treating degradation of one gender as titillation for the other.
Eh, oh well. I'm still ticked about Domino.
Posted by: Alexandra at May 20, 2009 8:03 AMI've always got Fox on!
Posted by: heather at May 19, 2009 8:23 PM
That is painfully obvious from your posts.
Posted by: Hal at May 20, 2009 10:28 AMHal agrees: Heather's out-foxed him!
but perhaps Hal is painfully oblivious to fox news.
Jon, lol! He's an undercover watcher. I'll bet.
Posted by: heather at May 21, 2009 8:30 AMmaybe he's infiltrating extremist networks
Posted by: Jon at May 21, 2009 10:18 AMHal's a mole, I'm sure. Moles dig holes like foxes, but you can't trust them.
Posted by: Jon at May 22, 2009 12:06 PM