New York Times article 4/21/2003

[Dan Stiffler]

On 4/21/03 3:08 AM, "Peggy Wilkins" <mozart@lib.uchicago.edu> posted:

> Can an Old Leopard Change Its Silk Pajamas?
> 
> Hugh M. Hefner, seen here recently at a 77th birthday celebration, is
> considering changes at Playboy including allowing its cover subjects
> to wear more clothes.

This just about says it all, doesn't it?  From now on, it will be celebrity
covers.  PLAYBOY meet People.

> 
> To try to spark this May-December romance, the company hired James
> Kaminsky, 41, a former executive editor of Maxim, to update the
> magazine. Although Playboy's subject matter is sexy, the challenge it
> confronts is no different from the one faced by Reader's Digest and
> Good Housekeeping: Playboy needs to make a storied brand with a huge
> readership relevant to a new generation.

Oh, what lovely company PLAYBOY now keeps.  Reader's Digest rings a little
too true, what with the sound bite reviews we now get.  Why doesn't someone
ask how the New Yorker has managed to be "relevant to a new generation"?  Or
Harper's or the Atlantic?  Those are the magazines that used to be mentioned
in PLAYBOY's company--and all have had to face this same generational
challenge.
 
> The current crop of potential readers has been raised with
> pornographic images just a mouse click away, making Mr. Hefner's once
> transgressive pictorials of the surgically enriched girl next door
> seem almost quaint. And nudity in magazines has lost some of its tang
> at a time when Christina Aguilera recently posed for the cover of
> Rolling Stone wearing nothing but a well-tuned guitar.

Saw the cover.  Liked the cover.  So now, how will PLAYBOY outdo that for
its 50th anniversary cover?  Have Christina hold a blow-up rabbit head?
 
> Mr. Kaminsky, who said he grew up reading Playboy, was not brought in
> to reinvent it so much as to modernize its look and make the
> institutional voice more contemporary. As part of that effort, the
> magazine will depart more frequently from its tradition of total
> nudity so that it can entice celebrities to pose for its covers.

More proof that the future of PLAYBOY is tied to celebrity.

> 
> Playboy's far-flung empire of television, video and licensing depends
> on keeping the core identity of the brand intact. In fact, last year
> the entertainment division, which produces cable and video
> programming, brought in $121.6 million in revenues, compared with
> $111.8 million for the publishing division. That was the first time
> the ancillary businesses produced more revenue than the
> publication. The $32.4 million in profits from the entertainment
> division dwarfed the $2.7 million the publishing enterprises made.

There is nothing wrong with this.  Profit is key and the wider potential for
profit margins is in non-publishing.  A quality magazine can drive the
margin even wider and that might be a good thing.
 
> The magazine is becoming a hood ornament on the larger
> enterprise.

I doubt David Carr meant this as anything other than a reference to
PLAYBOY's current irrelevance, but the metaphor is apt.  However, I also
don't see this as a bad thing.  Many of the classiest cars have recognizable
hood ornaments.  Think Jaguar, Mercedes, and then think those George Petty
hood  ornaments of the early 50s, the same time that PLAYBOY was launched.
The challenge is to make sure that the rabbit head does not go the way of
the Packard but, instead, the way of the Mustang.

> The revenues from publishing may not be what keeps Mr. Hefner in silk
> pajamas, but according to Christie A. Hefner, chairman and chief
> executive of Playboy Enterprises and the daughter of the founder,
> Mr. Hefner cares desperately about the success of the magazine he
> invented.

The word I kept tripping upon here is "desperately."  I wished that Ms.
Hefner had not used that word.  I am afraid, myself, when I read that word
in the context of PLAYBOY.

> 
> "To a certain extent, the magazine has been respectable and well done,
> but it has really been in the back seat of the businesses of the
> company," she said. "He is deeply motivated to help make Jim successful."

So this is about Jim?
 
> Mr. Hefner chose Mr. Kaminsky to replace Arthur Kretchmer, the
> editorial director who had been with Playboy for 36 years and is now
> retiring, because he knew the magazine was in need of a hip
> replacement. But Mr. Hefner will assist in the procedure. "He is not
> an absentee landlord," Mr. Kaminsky said. "He works every day on the
> magazine."

Tell me "hip replacement" is not a pun.

> Many of the magazine's charms are by now anachronistic. The magazine's
> cartoons seem dated, but in a poll readers ranked them as the No. 1
> reason they liked the magazine. The centerfold's "turnoffs" have
> remained remarkably unchanged over the years -- Miss June, for
> instance, has no time for "egotistical, materialistic and superficial
> people" -- but imagine the howls if those insights were dropped.

David Carr trying to be clever.
 
> "Certain iconic parts of the magazine I will be slow to screw around
> with," Mr. Kaminsky said.

Brian deconstructed this sentence on the PML and I, too, find it revealing.
First, Kaminsky does not use the subjunctive "would"; he uses the future
"will."  Second, "screw around" with icons?  Third, if the dismissal of the
PMOY from her cover is any sign, "slow" has already arrived.
 
> Mr. Kaminsky, who said he was hired last fall as a "change agent,"
> brought in two other editors from Maxim, and wants to bring some of
> the lad magazine sensibility and energy to his current assignment.

Energy is a good idea.
 
> "There have been more changes in the last three issues than there were
> in the last 10 years," he said, adding that Mr. Hefner was embracing
> change and "has yet to play the owner card."

Hubris.
 
> The front section of the magazine, Playboy After Hours, had been
> somewhat disorganized and topically dated. Under Mr. Kaminsky, it has
> become a modern magazine section with well-turned infographics, quips
> and off-the-wall charts.

Gosh, in three months the magazine has gone from being "dated" to "modern."
 
> A discrete, recurring fashion section has been mandated and a new
> crop of photographers has been brought on board.

No mention of the fact that this was one of the magazine's first regular
sections. 

> Sarah Kozer, a
> bachelorette whom Joe Millionaire did not choose, comes in for even
> more exposure in the June issue than she received as part of the Fox
> reality television series, highlighting a source of C-list celebrities
> who can generate newsstand sales out of prurience or curiosity.

Calling it as it is.
 
> But Mr. Kaminsky is determined to make Playboy a place where women who
> already have careers will appear. After all, Marilyn Monroe, Raquel
> Welch, Sharon Stone and Bo Derek sat for sessions with Playboy in the
> past. A celebrity wrangler has been retained, and Mr. Kaminsky wants
> the magazine to compete for cover shoots.

So fire part of the art department and the fiction editor and then hire a
celebrity wrangler.  Could this get any more depressing?
   
> "The simple truth of the matter is that the reader would rather see a
> hot pictorial of Britney Spears that might not be completely nude,
> rather than a nude pictorial of somebody's cousin," Mr. Hefner said.

Well, it just got more depressing.  As Brian notes, this is a very
disturbing statement.  Hefner built his empire on that cousin, thank you
very much.  This lack of respect for his playmates--and, to be honest, for
his readership--suggests that the magazine will feed more and more at the
trough of celebrity.

> Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler, says that Mr. Hefner, in spite of
> his iconic status, does not know who he really is. "It comes down to
> this: Hef thinks he is publishing Time or Newsweek," Mr. Flynt
> said. "He has never been able to come to grips with the fact that he
> is a pornographer."

This may be true.
 
> Mr. Flynt says that Mr. Hefner needs more explicit sexual matter to
> compete at a time when the Web is rife with sexual content.

This is undoubtedly false.  Flynt would love to see PLAYBOY even more
closely identified with his empire because Flynt will win that battle.  In
some crucial ways, he has already won.
 
> "They have to decide what the new cool looks like," Mr. Golin
> said. "They don't have to invent it, but they have to seek it
> out. Hugh Hefner didn't invent the sexual revolution; he just
> collected it into a lifestyle."

The "collected it into a lifestyle" line is catchy, but "they have to seek
it out" is the key phrase.  Golin, a former editor of Maxim, is saying that
the "new cool" has not been found yet.  If that is the case, Maxim doesn't
have it either (you don't have to seek very far to find a Maxim).  This
redesign is going to take some imagination--something beyond scoring the
latest C-list celebrity.
 
> The assets of a mass market magazine -- a significant legacy, a huge
> list of subscribers -- can become impediments to change, said Richard
> B. Stolley, senior editorial adviser at Time Inc. and the founding
> editor of People magazine, who was also part of the unsuccessful
> effort to revive Life magazine.
> 
> "I think that you have to change because you have no other choice,"
> Mr. Stolley said. "But how do you change something as established as
> Playboy? Very slowly and carefully."

Good advice.

> 
> Mr. Stolley said there might be a place for a reinvigorated Playboy to
> find readers.
> 
> "Everybody in the industry talks about where the Maxim readers go when
> they graduate from that magazine," he said. "The laddie magazines have
> gotten young men to read in numbers that they did not before. As they
> get older and more sophisticated, maybe that's a place where Playboy
> could position itself."

Absolutely right idea and the absolutely right language.  Eventually the
lads will "graduate" from Maxim.  They will, indeed, get "older and more
sophisticated"--and that is just the audience at which PLAYBOY has targeted
its magazine since the beginning.

Did anyone interview Stolley for the "hip replacement"?  After all, he was
the founding editor of People, a magazine with a weekly circulation about 10
times that of PLAYBOY.

regards,

Dan Stiffler