"Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night."
--Margo Channing, All About Eve (1950)
Let me begin by asking an obvious question:
Is there any apparent problem with PLAYBOY which should be addressed by change in the editorial content and design of the magazine?
I think the answer to this question is an emphatic, Yes, from both the readers' and the editors' point of view.
I think that from the editors' point of view, there are two important problems:
1. PLAYBOY (the magazine, not the brand) has been portrayed by the media for many years now as being tired, old, out of touch, irrelevant, "your grandfather's magazine". You can't see any media commentary on PLAYBOY that doesn't touch on this, often as the main point of the piece. This is a bad image to have.
2. PLAYBOY is perceived in the industry as not hot: the audience is aging, and it doesn't move well at the newsstand. I believe the reasons for this are quite complicated, but the bottom line is a matter of revenue: advertisers go elsewhere with their ad dollars.
I think this is the impetus of the editors' moves to revitalize the magazine. PLAYBOY now wants to promote the magazine to a younger audience, and just as importantly, to advertisers. Part of this is the measureable goal of increasing newsstand sales. I'm sure there are also more subtle reasons for this, but to me this is the bottom line: PLAYBOY sees the successful competition at the newsstand gaining on their total circulation fast, and is jockeying for position to maintain its dominance. If it is to make gains, win over advertisers, and survive in the long term, it must gain a new audience.
From the readers' point of view, I see these problems:
Add: Divide into old and new
1. The magazine has been virtually stagnant for decades in terms of both layout and content. Where is the evolution, vision, and growth that were so evident in the magazine for its first 15 years? Where is the adventurous, bold content? Pick up PLAYBOY today and you see a magazine that is in many respects identical to what it was 20 years ago; and in some features, 40 and more years ago. No wonder it is perceived as tired.
2. There has been a slow, evident decline in the quality of the magazine over the past 2-3 decades; this is evident in both the editorial content and the artistic design of the magazine. Why doesn't PLAYBOY take a stand on important issues much anymore? Why are the covers formulaic and boring? The covers from the '70s are better than the covers from the '80s, which are better than the covers from the '90s, which... Many see this situation as a great loss. Why have they troweled the gutters for pictorial subjects not even worthy of appearing in PLAYBOY (11/97's Suzen Johnson/Franky Panky, The Woman Who Sacked Kathie Lee's Husband being the most egregious example)?
I believe that PLAYBOY can successfully address these problems by making thoughtful changes in its choice of content and in its presentation of that content. Indeed they have undertaken a huge overhaul of their editorial staff, laying off a large proportion of their editors, some of whom had been there for many years; and they have brought in the big guns by hiring new editors away from prominent positions in competing magazines. In what I have seen so far, I think they have been partially successful; but I think they are still blind to some important issues, and so not only do some of the same problems remain, but they have created new ones.
I would now like to ask, What problems do PLAYBOY's editors think they are addressing? I think Hugh Hefner expresses what he sees as a very significant issue in this excerpt from a TV interview on MSNBC's Scarborough Country, July 24, 2003:
SCARBOROUGH: Now, PLAYBOY remains the biggest player in the men's magazine market. And I'm going to show the audience these facts. With a circulation of more than three million a month, your closest competitor is Maxim, selling 2.5 million. And the classic men's magazines, GQ and Esquire, sell less than 1 million issues a month. And, again, Penthouse, which once thought they were going to take over your market share, is now reported to be on the verge of going under. What do you think it says about PLAYBOY's success and magazines like Maxim's success? What does that say about tastes in American culture, specifically men's tastes, as we go into the 21st century? HEFNER: Well, I think it's obvious for a lot of reasons that there is a certain dumbing down of society. We get our news and information now by sound bites, the briefest kinds of moments on television and radio and on the Internet. And I think the nature of things also is that the younger generation has a shorter attention span. You see that reflected not only in magazines like Maxim, but you also see it in changes that have taken place in PLAYBOY. In other words, readers, by and large, are not as given to a thoughtful, extended periods of time with fiction or nonfiction. I think we're bombarded now by so many different sources of information, that it's kind of pick and choose.
I think this statement amounts to a diagnosis, on Hugh Hefner's part, of what ails PLAYBOY. He directly states that this point of view has resulted in changes in the magazine. I think that the statements that society has "dumbed down" and that people won't spend time reading are potentially very unfortunate beliefs for someone who produces a print publication, especially one of PLAYBOY's traditional quality.
I will not deny that there is some truth in this view; clearly society has changed, clearly there is a type of information overload and also a glut of many alternative options for coming by information that has affected people's willingness to buy print publications. But, if this view is really true, we should all despair because not only is the collapse of our civilization inevitable (this is a matter of ultimate truth), it is also imminent; run for the hills.
Our supposedly dumbed-down America has some of the best institutions of higher education in the world, with more people attending college and completing post-graduate study today than at any time in our history. Where is the evidence of a slowdown of progress? Intelligence and creativity are still valued and rewarded; the faster pace does not come from intellectual slowdown or indifference. People still want to succeed. The younger generation that has been diagnosed with a short attention span is reading the Harry Potter series of books in droves, the latest installment of which weighs in at 870 pages. The movie version of the first Potter book is very nearly three hours; the movie version of Lord of the Rings exceeds three hours. These tremendous media successes do not belie a nation with a short attention span. Find something to capture the imagination and the seeming slowness evaporates.
I would like to present a different point of view, my own diagnosis for what ails PLAYBOY. I believe this shift in view is significant because one's beliefs, one's point of view, very much matter. Change the editors' point of view and you change how they decide to change PLAYBOY.
My thesis is this:
It is not useful to place the cause of PLAYBOY's problems on the outside of PLAYBOY. PLAYBOY must accept and acknowledge that it is itself responsible for the state it's in: it is the cumulative result of editorial decisions made over a long period of time. PLAYBOY is not merely the victim of societal changes, it is an active author of its own decline.
This shift is potentially powerful in a practical sense, for it has this effect:
To see themselves as the source of their current situation empowers them to take a more active role in everything they do. It is inherently passive to see oneself as a victim of outside circumstances, and such a view causes one to become reactive and defensive rather than proactive and creative.
Why is a reactive stance bad? Because it misses opportunities to do something better, to make a unique impact. This is because one's energy tends to be focused on reacting to the outside rather than on something more creative and positive. I would rather see them push out originality, creativity, excitement -- truly rethink what they are doing and why -- rather than reacting to and reflecting what goes on around them.
I think the evidence of PLAYBOY's reactive stance is that much of the renewed PLAYBOY looks more mainstream, more like other magazines, rather than having the more unique identity they had in their stronger days. While uniqueness isn't necessarily the only way to be strong, it does carve out one's niche, and both strengthens one's identity and offers more opportunties to strike a resonance with one's audience. I don't see this happening today; instead, there is a lot of imitation going on; a lot of worrying about the competition; and a lot of missed opportunity.
Hefner essentially said in the Scarborough's Country quote that PLAYBOY needs to adjust itself to today's society. I remember another recent interview where he said (to paraphrase), We do the best we can with the magazine in today's world. Again, the context is how society has changed, and PLAYBOY is forced to react. To me, he is offering what amounts to excuses in these interviews: excuses for declining quality, excuses for a lack of real understanding. By being a reactive victim, they aren't responsible for less than stellar content, or for not living up to their own vision of what they should be; they resign themselves to a pessimistic view of the state of the world. I can't see this view as anything less than a tremendous lost opportunity.