No More Nude Photos at Playboy Magazine

They're going to stop competing with the Internet
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 13, 2015 12:51 AM CDT
Updated Oct 13, 2015 6:03 AM CDT
No More Nude Photos at Playboy Magazine
The first issue of "Playboy" magazine featuring Marilyn Monroe, left, and a boxed DVD set of "Playboy" magazines from the 1950s are shown in New York.   (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan)

Playboy magazine has decided it no longer makes sense to try to compete with an Internet full of photos of naked women. The 62-year-old magazine is undergoing a major revamp and will dispense with nude photos when it relaunches in March, the New York Times reports. "You're now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. And so it's just passe at this juncture," Playboy CEO Scott Flanders tells the paper. The change apparently has the approval of 89-year-old founder and editor-in-chief Hugh Hefner, the BBC reports. The magazine will still feature racy photos of women, but analysts say the removal of nudes will be a big boost for its articles, including serious journalism and interviews, CNN reports.

Flanders tells the Times that the target audience will be young, urban men. "The difference between us and Vice is that we're going after the guy with a job," he quips. The Playboy company now makes most of its money from licensing its brand, and Flanders tells the Times that the magazine loses around $3 million a year in the US, which is a cost the firm sees as an expense for their "Fifth Avenue storefront." The Times notes that the Playboy website became SFW and got rid of nudes last year, which execs say caused traffic to quadruple to 16 million users a month. The age of the average user dropped from 47 to 30. (A major porn site is offering a $25,000 college scholarship.)

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