October 2003 issue

[Peggy Wilkins]

I'm sorry for my long absence here, but occasionally my paid job takes
on some extra urgency for a time and I have to attend to that; I
chose not to think much about PLAYBOY because I knew if i even
started, my job wouldn't get the attention it needed.  So it goes
sometimes.

I do want to note a few things about the October issue.

Checking the masthead, former and longtime Editorial Director Arthur
Kretchmer has reappeared as a Contributing Editor.  Also it appears
that reorganization continues, with Marketing now getting its own
section, breaking off from Advertising.

Dear PLAYBOY has changed its address from Chicago to New York.

This issue's lead article, "Siege at Rainbow Farm", made for
interesting reading, but I was (again, as with August's CSC feature)
put off by two pictures of corpses.  What is it with PLAYBOY printing
pictures of dead people recently?  I find it quite unseemly.  It adds
little to the feature and will be a big turnoff for many people.
Either that or I am really missing something and violent scenes are
nowadays the trendy, in thing.  If that's the case, I hope it will
pass soon.  If I were head honcho there, those pictures would have
been axed to be sure.

I had been looking forward to the Dave Attell feature.  I watch and
enjoy his "Insomniac" show on television, but I was disappointed here
and felt it didn't translate well to the printed page.  This isn't the
first time that a recent editorial feature has come straight from a
television show (August's "CSC" was clearly based on the popularity of
"CSI"), and so now I've been disappointed twice.  The two pictures of
Attell are clearly fashioned after Maxim's style, and make PLAYBOY
look yet again like a Maxim imitator.  I would have rather seen a 20
Questions-style, full page Attell photo to accompany this feature.

I was surprised that the O.J. Simpson Interview introduction didn't
mention that he had been interviewed previously in PLAYBOY.  Did they
forget?  Is it irrelevant?  A mention would have been an obvious way
to promote PLAYBOY's venerable Interview tradition.  I also felt that
the intro text was too short, and that the Interview could be better
appreciated by reading the Playbill paragraph about it which included
some interesting comments by interviewer David Sheff.  Why weren't
those included in the actual writeup?  Most people going for the
Interview will probably miss the Playbill comments.  On a positive
note, the sidebar "O.J.'s Troubled Times" is to me an example of a
good, relevant use of a sidebar and enhances the feature.

I'm still disappointed by the short, blurby reviews.  If some of
PLAYBOY's audience are impatient and can't deal with longer reviews,
why not continue the feature on a second (third, ...) page with real
reviews instead of blurbs?  That way the impatient types could get
their review fix and skip the following pages, while those who would
appreciate some actual content could honker down with real reviews.
Is this too schizophrenic an approach?  It just seems a shame to
disappoint the people who want real content.  I'm one, and my friends
who have PLAYBOY subscriptions are others -- so we do exist, really...
I think that the content is being butchered to cater to a particlar
type of person, to the disappointment of others.  Can't we have it
both ways?  This is a problem that ought to have some sort of workable
solution.

I was happy to see the Skechers ad in this issue, and I hear Tommy
Hilfiger is coming to the November issue with a PLAYBOY tie-in
promotion -- good news, and a definite step in the right direction.

I will forward another comment about the Maxim influence in this issue
separately.

Peggy Wilkins
mozart@lib.uchicago.edu