Playboy will no longer feature nude women in its print edition

So... the print edition is basically done?

"I just buy it for the articles"

Was this reported by The Onion?

So they're going to stop doing the major thing that attracts customers?

In other news, Olive Garden is no longer going to sell Italian food.

Say it ain't so, Hugh.

Maybe this story was meant to be published on April 1.

Considering no one gets paper porn anymore, unless you collect specific magazines, I'm not sure what they could do otherwise. I'm not sure you can get it at normal magazine outlets anymore.

I had forgotten how pretentious Playboy could be. Here is what Hugh Hefner wrote in the first issue:

“If you’re a man between the ages of 18 and 80, Playboy is meant for you,” he said in his first editor’s letter. “We enjoy mixing up cocktails and an hors d’oeuvre or two, putting a little mood music on the phonograph, and inviting in a female acquaintance for a quiet discussion on Picasso, Nietzsche, jazz, sex ...”

I was just discussing Nietzche last week week with Tiffani at The Flight Club.

We had an oral debate of what's good vs bad.

Not brilliant! They might as well stop publishing the print edition! Why would you read a copy of Playboy that is all of the pretentiousness and none of the nudity?

It's probably been 30+ years since I've seen a copy. So I think I'll survive.

Have subscribed since 1983; I have enjoyed the nudity AND the articles. Both in one spot is what made PB unique and why I paid money for the magazine. For me w/o the naked babes it will no longer be PB and I will no longer need it on my pile of reading material. One less subscriber here. Things change.

Can't believe this is not fake. Hugh has good taste in women except for his obsession with fake tits but I never thought I'd live to see this day.

So Playboy is going to become another Maxim, strange

WTF?

Hef is a plastic dinosaur caricature of himself. The world has passed him by, why print it at all?

Surely this is an April Fools joke six months early (or late)! I have perused Playboy off and on for nearly 50 years, ever since I found my Dad's stash in the late 60s, both for the naked hotties and for the great authors (but certainly not for the half-baked "Playboy philosophy"). Playboy magazine without naked women has no raison d'etre.

I saw the story on CNN.com. I wonder how much they pay the honeys nowadays to show their tits.

In other news – I'm no longer attracted to black women – what is the world coming to?

I was very surprised at first but after a minute or two it made sense – just one more business disrupted and made somewhat obsolete by the internet – hard to compete against free and I'm sure Playboy has fairly high production costs.

I get playboy. I got an email awhile back that was offering magazines for an extreme discount. I believe I paid $3.50 a year and bought the max, 3 years.

I think this is a move so they can now sell in places that normally didn't allow such magazines sold. So now, playboy will be on the shelf next to maxim, complex, GQ, etc.

It's official, Heff is suffering from advanced senility.

I can't imagine them turning a profit with this business model. Why not just stop printing the magazine and focus on the other aspects of the business. Post the articles online, keep selling as much merchandise as possible with the playboy logo and maybe look at reopening the Playboy Clubs as full on strip clubs. As we PLs know, while the internet can replace looking at naked women in magazines, it can't replace the intimate contact that you get at the club.

Guess both Hugh and the magazine have lost their erections?

Pretty much the end of western civilization was my first response. But I haven't bought a copy in decades. I think their logic is good--there's a market for articles, but not for porn. Still, a little bit of my past has been lost.

I'm surprised they are still going to publish. I guess they think they might get a bigger market going for the maxim crowd. I was also surprised to hear they took all nudity off their web site. I hope they still have nude playmates on tv. I doubt the playboy web site will be considered work appropriate where I work in my lifetime if that's what they hoped for.

Then, of course, what is the point?

I'm not renewing. From what I've read about it, it seems like economics is forcing their hand. US subscriptions continue to fall (down from 3 mil to under 800k). Struggling to sell ad space. US edition loses money. The entire company would be loosing money without international revenue. The company is dying if no changes are made, but they are also killing off the thing that makes PB special. Not optimistic they will survive as "another maxim."

Playboy will file for Chapter 11 before the end of 2016. It will be sold to some foreign investor who will keep Hef on in some emeritus capacity, but removed from daily management. It will then become a bi-monthly or quarterly publication. (They publish 10 issues a year now.) After slogging through two years as a weak imitation of GQ, Maxim and other similar publications, it will close. The effort to reopen the Playboy clubs has already failed. When was the last time guys lined up at a public event to pay to meet or get a photograph with the Playmate of the Month/Year?

In this economy, younger men do not need a magazine reminding them that they cannot afford the overpriced snazzy gadgets, clothes and exotic cars featured in Playboy, nor do they have to rely on the publication to see hot, naked women. SCs, LDs, escorts and online hook-ups have made access to hot women a lot easier than 50 years ago, even if it's largely an illusion.

Playboy is "cleaning up" hoping to get back on the regular magazine racks in bookstores, Seven-Elevens and shopping malls, leaving the ghetto of "adult interest" sections in general interest stores. The magazine used to pay top dollar to women who posed nude. Now, these models and would-be actresses have many options for their services and, because of declining readership and loss of advertisers, Hef cannot afford to pay the big money. Getting rid of nudes and relying on "glamour" poses is a desperate plan to reduce costs for models and stem the decline. It just won't work, because no one will buy or subscribe to a PG-13 version of Maxim.

Once a business cuts back on its main product--here the nude centerfold--in order to save costs and survive, it hastens its decline. GM dumped Oldsmobile and Pontiac before filing for Chapter 11. All of the major airlines cut customer services and added fees--no meals, baggage charges, rebooking flights, seats with leg room and, a flirtation with charging for using the lavatory--before filing for bankruptcy protection. Playboy has only so many places to cut costs during this decline. Dropping nude photographs, reducing the publication schedule and replacing great writing with recycled travel articles, will not save it. (Gore Vidal, William F. Buckley, Arthur C. Clarke and Ian Fleming used to publish in Playboy. More than one James Bond novel was serialized in Playboy before being published and, later, converted to a hit movie.)

Sad to see the decline. Sadder to see it fade away.

Call me morbid but I have a sneaking suspicion Hef is dying and this is a way to say it. Weird, but that was my first thought. Playboy at one time was relevant and does have fantastic articles but the nudity is pretty tame by today's standards. At first the magazines were pretty much at the same level then the others pushed the envelope. Playboy's nudity was little more than artistic nudes. Not to mention Playboy was always the respected one. The Playmates were wholesome (real or imagined, this was their image). Playmates often got jobs as legitimate models and actresses and not often porn stars (though there have been a few). However much of it was an illusion. I lived not far from one of the most popular Playmates of all time and I've heard stories of her having been a lingerie model and doing extras. No idea if true but wouldn't surprise me. The point being that men don't want that for masturbating in most cases if they can get hardcore porn for free.

Welcome to the digital age. A few years back, I saw at least one hotel starting to wean their guests away from the customary USA Today waiting for you at your door in the morning. The welcome letter said that guests get free online version of USA Today, and that paper copies are available at the front desk. Translation- "We've got better things for our employees to do than deliver your paper to your door. If you really want a paper copy, you can get your ass down to the front desk and get it yourself."

There was a stretch of years where I bought subscriptions through PCH in the hopes that jolly Ed would come knocking on my door with the multimillion dollar check in hand. After his death, I just lost interest in it. Yes, I got PB mainly for the pictures, but also for interviews. Naked centerfolds and interviews with the likes of Trump, Putin, Jimmy Carter, etc. was a combination that was hard to beat.

@Super Dude- I think you might be right about Playboy going Chapter 11. When you start messing with the main reason people buy your magazine, things go downhill from there. Cutting costs can only take you so far. Holding the opposing team to fewer points isn't going to help if you don't score some points yourself. To paraphrase one airline executive: "Cut enough cheese from a pizza, nobody will want to buy it."

I never thought I'd see this.

if you dropped from multimillion readers to a now meager 800k, what makes you think barring nudity is going to bring up those numbers. Hugh ol' buddy, I know you're old now and don't give a fuck what happens in the world anymore but you're burning bridges with your employees and the few remaining readers you have left fast. I was born in 91 so I can't say I honestly purchased a magazine off the rack (didn't stop me as a child from looking at a ripped out page randomly strewn across a rained up floor though ^_^), but I knew it's what all the guys looked at. I hope he enjoys retirement at any rate.

I wish organized porn sites would go this route. The companies need a reality check for being so racist. But a strange world is a strange world.