Will men actually buy Playboy without the nude images?
It's a question that can only be answered by time, and one that is also moot. For regardless what its male readers think, Playboy magazine has already decided to drop nudity once and for all, saying that it is "just so passe," the BBC reports.
Apparently the decision to revamp the men's magazine was made last month when its publishers, headed by founder and editor-in-chief Hugh Hefner, agreed that easy access to nude images on the Internet rendered the magazine's main attraction as irrelevant, the BBC reported.
Chief executive Scott Flanders was quoted as saying in an interview that "You're now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free." Forbes points out that this rapid rise of digital porn served as a death trap for a paper magazine that once sold 7 million copies at the height of its popularity in 1972. Will Burns, CEO of Ideasicle, writes that with free porn in the picture, men no longer need to grab an issue of Playboy for any kind of sexual gratification. All one does now is Google up their fix and get served up in the search. It's no wonder that Playboy's circulation has dwindled down to 800,000, the report said.
This isn't the only change that is happening. Playboy's website is also following suit and has eliminated all nudity in order to make it more accessible to Facebook and Twitter - a move that has easily quadrupled its web traffic.
BBC also reports that interviews with high profile figures Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X and Jimmy Carter are no longer the norm. And these were what "made Playboy so culturally and politically significant," BBC's Nick Bryant in New York was quoted as saying.
So what else is left for Playboy sans snapshots of naked, beautiful women?
Apparently, a lot, Forbes' Burns says. Now that images will no longer be its unique selling point, Playboy now has the opportunity to focus on its other strength: interesting content.
Burns argues that "Without nude pictures, Playboy's future value will depend on the content that is equally titillating."
Some possibilities, he says, may include writing about modern men that are unhindered by political correctness; write ups that may pass for a user's manual on modern sex for modern males (and the kind of content that may actually tap into the female demographic); or investigations into the science of sexual desires.
Taking such a turn will be dramatic for a publication that has been around for more than 60 years. Since its launch in 1953, Playboy has published notable interviews with iconic figures as jazz musician Miles Davis, Russian novelist Vladimir Nabokov, pop idols John Lennon and Yoko Ono and then presidential candidate Jimmy Carter.
