Producing Playboy

[Donna Tavoso]

While not an expert on all of Playboy's production, I am willing to
share my knowledge from working in the industry and there.  I can tell
you that Playboy has a slightly different skew to it's production than
other magazines.

On average Playboy has 2.6 to 2.9 million subscribers and then they
print the newsstand numbers over that based on how well they think it
will sell.  So you were pretty close with 3.5, but sometimes the
number is higher and it's a huge risk because what doesn't sell gets
returned and it is just money down the drain for the company.  So a
miscalucation can be costly.

Peggy wrote:
> How much of the cost of producing an issue of PLAYBOY is shouldered by
> the ads, vs. other income sources?

By other sources do you mean newsstand and subs - while they play a
factor in the bottom line revenue or the magazine - they goal is for
the advertising revenue of the book to exceed the cost of producing
it.

> Is there an explicit relationship between incoming ad revenue and the
> number of pages?  Say that PLAYBOY ends up with fewer ad pages than
> expected for a given month.  Does this mean they have to reduce the
> number of planned pages, maybe by cutting a feature?

Yes and no -- there is a minimal book size for the magzine, regardless
of how many ad pages are sold, the magazine never has fewer than that.
However, every month there is an ad goal and edit pages are based on
that, sell under and something in edit gets cut, go over and something
gets added.  However, the magazine won't go below its minimum book
size.

Something that is unique about Playboy is its ad to edit ratio - in
most magazines at best it is 40% edit/60% ads -- Playboy's ration is
usually the reverse 65% edit/35% ads -- that stays the same even if
the number of ads go up -- as you may expect this makes the magazine
much more expensive to produce, since the ad pages in a round about
way actually pay for the edit pages.

> What if advertisers refused to buy pages in PLAYBOY?  Would this cause
> the magazine to be unable to go to production?  I remember hearing
> that LIFE magazine originally ceased publication due to advertising
> difficulties.  That is just amazing, given the iconic status of that
> particular magazine.

If all the advertisers pulled out of Playboy I don't know if the
magazine would survive -- I don't think that's really a reality.  From
what I remember about LIFE, the reason they were losing advertisers is
that their newsstand and their subscription numbers had dropped so low
that they couldn't get advertisers.  Everything is linked together,
that's whay I'm always harping about how important newsstand is and
why change has to be made slowly so not to upset the core subscribers
-- if there were big sudden drops, and advertisers started pulling the
magzine could face a domino effect -- although I truly believe it's
unlikely in Playboy's case, I just think that it's important to be
aware of how inter-related everything is.

> I am thinking of these questions for a couple of reasons:

> - Recent suggestions that the magazine photography become more or
> less explicit (which will certainly affect ad revenue). 

As I have already stated, being more explicit would only be
determental to the magazine, being more creative i.e. doing more photo
shoots in unique settings, out of the studios the way the foreign
editions do would be very beneficial.

> - Personally I would like to see the magazine expanded, offering more
> content.  Recent issues seem very short, and I was wondering how much
> of this is an issue of needing sufficient backing funds for producing
> the magazine.  Would increased content require increased ad support,
> or could the cost be offset in other ways?

I think the editors would like more as well -- but as you guessed
increased edit content would require increased ads.  And increased ads
are going to come when the media community sees the magazine as more
viable -- and yes that means selling more on the newsstand (despite
other statements here, the subscriptions for the magazines are
actually its strength) but in today's market advertisers see newsstand
growth as vitality, so while some may write that Sarah only sold
marginally better than last year's June issue, if that means the
magazine shows a 10% growth on newsstand that will be a good thing
(and while it may not directly offset what she got paid, whatever that
was, the perception is one of vitality) -- I don't agree with the
media communities' obsession with newsstand sales, I can't understand
it and I work in the industry, I would think you would want the
consistent reader, but that's not what is true today.  As an example,
America Media hired Bonnie Fuller away huge growth on the newsstand,
which in turn upped their ad pages.  I know some here will say that
those are tabloids or entertainment magazines, but I share the
information because Peggy asked about how the magazine worked and US
Weekly's success on the newsstand is unbelievable and is something
that Playboy is striving for.  The buzz around success, brings more
success and that is what will ultimately bring advertisers to the
table.