From: Alfred Urrutia rampagingsloth@yahoo.com, 14 Nov 2002
Subject: Future of PLAYBOY
I, too, don't give a shit about cars that I can *afford* or keg parties. I mean, not in PLAYBOY. Why not then just put average girls in the pictorials? If the women are the hottest in the world then so should everything else be. While I do enjoy the more adolescent aspects of life I don't feel that PLAYBOY should shift to that view exclusively. There's room for both.
From: Brad Hodges <brad461@earthlink.net>, 29 Jan 2003
Subject: Challenges
I do hope that PLAYBOY tries to remain relevant as a journal of some sophistication, which Maxim lacks entirely. Let's not throw the intelligent writing out with the bath-water. Okay, so I'm unlikely to see John Updike's fiction again in the pages of PLAYBOY, but I also don't want to see "10 ways to get back at your boss."
[Or "how to pick up women at a funeral"? —plw]
From: Dan Stiffler <calendar-girls@adelphia.net>, 04 Feb 2003
Subject: PLAYBOY: Your Father's Oldsmobile?
PLAYBOY must not condescend to its audience. Enough magazines already do that. The details of sophistication change with each generation but the attitude doesn't.
PLAYBOY should be your father's '49 Merc: chopped, lowered, with lake pipes that rumble sex.
From: Dan Stiffler <calendar-girls@adelphia.net>, 05 Feb 2003
Subject: PLAYBOY: Your Father's Oldsmobile?
Mark Tomlonson <tomlonson@wmich.edu> wrote:
Mark> Good idea, unless you want a mass-circulation number to take to advertisers.
I have complete confidence that there are at least 3-4 million sophisticated males in this country who are either reading PLAYBOY now (and hoping for the best in the future) or who would read the magazine if it regained some of its former substance and aesthetic. Our nation is not devoid of culture and sophistication. It wasn't in the 50s and it is even less devoid today. The democratization of education is a wonderful thing.
Mark, your comment suggests that advertisers are only interested in the "quarter-educated." If all we do is watch FOX TV (the channel that carried PLAYBOY's venture into reality TV this last summer), then I suppose we might have that impression. But TV land is full of advertisers who have made investments in cable channels that appeal to the sophisticated audience. And last time I checked, The New Yorker, Harper's, and The Atlantic—magazines that PLAYBOY used to associate with—are still selling ads.
From: Brian Sorgatz <bsorgatz@hotmail.com>, 13 Mar 2003
Subject: Change
I can grudgingly accept changes in visual presentation if I have to, but I cannot accept the notion that PLAYBOY will never regain the sophistication it once had. "Keeping up with the times" shouldn't mean dumbing down.
From: Brian Sorgatz <bsorgatz@hotmail.com>, 17 Mar 2003
Subject: Simple solution...two magazines.
Even if more sophisticated articles don't help PLAYBOY's circulation, they can't much hurt it. The intellectually disinclined will ignore that stuff but not be repelled by it.
From: Dan Stiffler <calendar-girls@adelphia.net>, 15 Apr 2003
Subject: Changes
The only demographic that I am interested in is the one that cares about "living life to the hilt" with sophistication and urbanity.