Midnight Owl Video

[Bobby Z]

In the thread at http://www.midnightowlvideo.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=7714, I posted a list of Playboy-related news topics that had gotten some attention in mainstream media during the previous month. I decided to try and see if I could make that a monthly post on this message board and see if anyone is interested in reading it. For this first post, I will just cover the February topics not covered in that previous post.

1. The Playboy Jazz Festival in June will feature performers including Chick Corea, George Benson, and Manhattan Transfer. As usual, Bill Cosby will be the MC.

2. John Mayer has been trying to restore his reputation by apologizing for comments he made in the interview in the March issue of Playboy.

3. As part of a year-long celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Playboy Clubs, Playboy will hold 50 parties in 50 cities in one night.

4. Playboy Enterprises' loss for the 4th quarter was not as bad as last year's corresponding quarter. However, ad revenue for the 1st quarter is expected to be down due to the fact that the January and February 2010 issues were combined into one.

5. Apple Computer removed thousands of "objectionable" applications from its App Store, but kept the Playboy app on sale.

6. Louise Glover, Playboy's Special Editions Model of the Year 2006, received a suspended jail sentence for assaulting another woman in a nightclub.

7. Playboy was one of 24 magazines that failed to meet their rate bases (i.e. failed to sell as many copies as they had told their advertisers they would) in the second half of 2009. Average sales were just over 2 million compared to a rate base of 2.6 million. However, Playboy has reduced its rate base for 2010 to 1.5 million.

Well, maybe March will be more interesting.

[ROTY]

So the company is still bleeding money (just not as bad as they first thought), and yet someone thinks it's a good idea to throw fifty parties across the country in one night for a group of night clubs that haven't drawn a dime in years now? Hey Hef, how's that dementia thing working out for you?

[Bobby Z]

Here's my summary of Playboy news for March 2010, in no particular order.

1. The next college conference to have its women featured in Playboy will be the Pac-10. Tryouts are ongoing.

2. NFL players participated in the Playboy Golf Scramble then went on to party at the Playboy Mansion. Apparently there was a minor controversy over the fact that Ken Hamlin of the Cowboys missed the first day of voluntary off-season workouts to be at the Playboy Mansion.

3. For the first time, Playboy Bunny outfits will be sold to the public through retailer Ann Summers.

4. 2K Games has licensed vintage Playboy content to be incorporated in its upcoming videogame "Mafia II."

5. Ashley Dupre (best known as the call girl in the Eliot Spitzer scandal) will be featured in a pictorial in the April issue. Her hair briefly caught on fire during the shoot.

6. DirecTV is suing Playboy for allegedly failing to give it terms as favorable as those offered to any other distributor, as required in their contract.

7. An Oregon state legislature wants to ban prison inmates in the state from receiving Playboy and other magazines classified as soft porn (hard porn is already banned in the prison system).

8. DUI charges against Miss May 2009, Crystal McCahill, were dropped. Instead, she pled guilty to running a red light and was fined $100.

9. Scott Smith has been let go as editor of Playboy.com due to "creative differences."

10. Sarah Silverman said in her Playboy interview that the former lead singer of a 1980s band praised her N-word jokes, and while not identifying the singer, she said, "After that, I stopped believin'," implying that it was Steve Perry of Journey. Perry has denied that he used the N-word in the conversation when he met Silverman.

11. Time Warner Cable showed the Playboy Channel for a couple of hours on two children's channels.

12. Playboy is in talks to open a new casino in London.

[BigChris]

The Playboy Golf party was televised on Facebook and I watched about an hour or so and was annoyed too much and shut it off. The girls looked WAY too skanky and too many of the golfers were dressed like Hef, that annoyed the hell out of me. This is yet another example of Mansion parties losing their class and as a result, their allure.

[ROTY]

Bunny Outfits
Does Playboy really think that selling "official" Playboy bunny outfits is going to do anything? The bunny outfit is pretty simple just to make and has already been a staple of Halloween and costume parties for like 30 years now. On that, they should have left well enough alone.

Ashley Dupre
Playboy should really go out of their way to promote Dupre as a newspaper advice columnist and not a political call girl. It would make things seem a bit more alluring to many mainstream people who may not know or who may have already forgotten just who Ashley Dupre is. You walk by a newsstand and see "Call Girl Poses Nude" on the cover and you aren't as likely to have your curiosity peaked as you would "New York Newspaper Writer Gets Nude."

DirecTV
What the hell is up with DirecTV? I have never heard of a company in television having this many problems, and after a while you can't point the finger of blame at the other party. In 2001 it was their falling out with the WWF, earlier this year there was that lengthy battle with the Versus Network, and now Playboy is getting sued.

I know Playboy isn't exactly top of the hill any more, but considering Playboy owns pretty much all of the porno channels available save for Hustler TV and the handful of TEN channels still available, it might be best to leave well enough alone. I'm not expert, but you lose four or five of your erotic networks and I'm pretty sure that's not good for business.

Prison Ban
I say ban them. You are in prison to be punished, not to sit around and look at naked woman. Reading Playboy is a privilege, not a right.

Scott Smith
Wow, that didn't take long at all. I'm not quite sure what the creative differences were since I noticed no change whatsoever at Playboy.com. Perhaps THAT was the creative difference?

Time Warner
You know, it's one thing to have porn pop up for a few seconds during the Super Bowl or on different channels, but to have Playboy pop up on children's TV for two hours, that might just be good grounds for a class action lawsuit right there. Especially considering that Playboy has started showing tons of hardcore material that shouldn't be consumed by the eyes of little kids under any circumstance.

Unfortunately, so many people still think that Playboy TV is just a few risque shows with some naked flesh thrown in that they will probably laugh this off as not that big of a deal.

London Casino
What better thing to open with a flat economy than a casino...

[midnightowl1]

A few days ago I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about Playboy. I wish I would have kept this article now. Its something I would have kept in the past. I'm on spring break right now from both schools and am trying to get rid of the clutter in my house. I have a ton of old Wall Street Journals around because I pay a lot for that newspaper so I refuse to recycle them until I've had at least a chance to read over them. A couple of days ago I read an article (the article had the Marge Simpson cover next to it so it couldn't be that old) that stated that the magazine, because of dropping subscriptions and advertising, was the only part of the company that was actually losing money. That implies that their internet operations and Playboy TV (or at least their cable operation) are making money. The article also said that they were handing over much of the responsibility for publishing the magazine over to some other company. Playboy would still be responsible for the editorial content but the other company would apparently take over the selling of advertising, distribution, and things like that. This information is months old by now and many reading this might already know this but I thought I'd post it anyway under Playboy News.

[ROTY]

[quote="midnightowl1"]A few days ago I read an article in the Wall Street Journal about Playboy. I wish I would have kept this article now. Its something I would have kept in the past. I'm on spring break right now from both schools and am trying to get rid of the clutter in my house. I have a ton of old Wall Street Journals around because I pay a lot for that newspaper so I refuse to recycle them until I've had at least a chance to read over them. A couple of days ago I read an article (the article had the Marge Simpson cover next to it so it couldn't be that old) that stated that the magazine, because of dropping subscriptions and advertising, was the only part of the company that was actually losing money. That implies that their internet operations and Playboy TV (or at least their cable operation) are making money. The article also said that they were handing over much of the responsibility for publishing the magazine over to some other company. Playboy would still be responsible for the editorial content but the other company would apparently take over the selling of advertising, distribution, and things like that. This information is months old by now and many reading this might already know this but I thought I'd post it anyway under Playboy News.[/quote]

So let's look at basic business and marketing 101...

Your network and websites are doing good, and your magazine is not doing so hot. You blame the internet, even though that would suggest free porn trumps pay-for-porn yet people are obviously paying for the TV and websites so that's out.

This is where you use the network and the site to promote the magazine more than you do now. Playboy TV has so little to do with the magazine right now that some may honestly have forgotten they still publish a magazine.

They do Zinio subscriptions online, yet they don't go out of their way to market them. I got a subscription through Zinio only because B&N contacted me and suggested, based on my purchase history, that I might be interested in a digital subscription.

If you have something doing poorly and something doing well, you use what is doing well to help sell what is doing poorly. It would be like a guy owning a football team and a baseball team in the same city. If the football team has low attendance and the baseball team has good attendance, then you go out of your way to give people showing up at the baseball games reasons to go out to the football games so they can experience it.

This isn't rocket science.

[Bobby Z]

Here's my summary of Playboy news for April 2010, in no particular order.

1. Hef contributed the last $900,000 needed for a conservation group to preserve the ridge surrounding the Hollywood sign as parkland (as discussed in another thread on this board).

2. Playboy hired Christopher Pachler, an executive at Sony Pictures, as executive vice president and chief financial officer, to be responsible for strategic planning, corporate and business development, and financial operations.

3. A new documentary about Hef, "Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel," is playing film festivals and will go into release this summer.

4. Hef announced that Kate Gosselin would not be in Playboy and said he didn't know why she was on "Dancing with the Stars" because he didn't even think she was a celebrity. (However, I have not found any articles that referenced the allegation that Playboy made an offer to Gosselin to pose nude last fall.)

5. Several media sources noted that Ashley Dupre, best known as the call girl for ex-New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, posed for the May issue of Playboy.

6. Playboy announced its Top 10 Party Schools. The University of Texas ranked #1.

7. Matthew Fox of "Lost" was the Playboy Interview subject for the May issue.

8. Playboy continued to audition college women at various campuses for the "Girls of the Pac 10" pictorial.

9. Kim Kardashian said in an interview that she regrets having posed for Playboy.

10. The Wall Street Journal did a feature story about devoted Playboy merchandise collectors who are disappointed by the expansion of Playboy merchandising.

11. Tanya Beyer, Miss February 1992, was arrested on drug charges.

[midnightowl1]

[Bobby Z]

I just realized that I forgot to do the Playboy News Summary for May 2010, so here it is.

1. Playboy announced plans to open a safe-for-work web site, TheSmokingJacket.com.

2. Playboy Enterprises reported a $1 million loss in the first quarter of 2010. However, this is better than last year, when they reported a $13.7 million loss in the first quarter.

3. Playboy Enterprises announced that they are hiring in their new media and social networking departments, but cutting jobs elsewhere.

4. Tiger Woods' mistress Rachel Uchitel will pose for Playboy, but not fully nude.

5. The June 2010 issue features a 3-D centerfold of Playmate of the Year Hope Dworaczyk.

6. Playboy announced that it will open two Playboy Clubs in Macau, the first by the end of the year. (Macau is basically the Las Vegas of China.)

7. Russell Brand's 20Q in the June issue received some media attention, seemingly more than the interview with Michael Savage in the same issue.

8. The Shannon twins have been kicked out of the Playmate house adjacent to the Mansion, reportedly for inviting their boyfriends over.

[ROTY]

Wait they got kicked out for having their boyfriends over? How is that not getting Hugh Hefner all sorts of bad publicity? I thought he kicked them out for drug use or something more illicit. That is probably the most blatant form of a double standard ever from a man who is known for having a good many of them, and if this is true he should be absolutely ashamed of himself (as if he doesn't have a laundry list of things to be ashamed for already.)

[Bobby Z]

Well, according to Karissa Shannon, it was not that their boyfriends came to the Playmate House, just that they were being seen out in public with their boyfriends:

http://www.popeater.com/2010/05/17/girls-next-door-shannon-twins-move-out/

[BigChris]

[ROTY]

Good point.

[Bobby Z]

Here's the Playboy news summary for June 2010.

1. Playboy Enterprises announced that it is restructuring to become more of a brand management company. They are cutting an unspecified number of jobs and expect that these changes will save $3 million per year. However, there will be an initial restructuring charge of $3 million.

2. Playboy held 50 parties around the world to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Playboy Clubs.

3. Reportedly Kelly Brook, the British model and actress, has accepted a $500,000 offer to pose nude for Playboy.

4. Olivia Munn has published a book titled Suck It, Wonder Woman! The Misadventures of a Hollywood Geek in which she describes her experience posing for Playboy last year. Although her contract provided for a non-nude pictorial, she reports that she was repeatedly pressured by the photographer and stylist to pose nude during the session.

5. There was some attention to the anonymous article in the July 2010 issue, "Rogues of K Street: Confessions of a Tea Party Consultant," to the Cameron Diaz interview in the same issue, and to the 20Q with Stephen Moyer.

6. Playboy is suing the rapper Drake over his use of a sample on his song "Best I Ever Had." The sample was allegedly taken from "Fallin' in Love," a #1 hit in 1975 for Hamilton, Joe Frank and Reynolds, who recorded for Playboy Records.

7. Jessie Lunderby, a corrections officer in Fayetteville, Arkansas, could lose her job with the sheriff's department for posing nude as a Playboy Cyber Girl of the Week. She has been placed on administrative leave.

8. The upcoming zombie-themed videogame Dead Rising 2 will include some licensed Playboy-related content.

9. Marlene Hall, the police chief at UNC Charlotte, resigned her position. For some reason, some of the media coverage of her resignation mentioned that she had once posed for Playboy (in "Girls of the Southeastern Conference," September 1981). However, her Playboy appearance had been reported in 2006, soon after she was hired as the police chief.

10. A report said that Vienna Girardi from "The Bachelor" said she was going to pose for Playboy for $250,000. However, a Playboy spokesperson said, "This is the first we’ve heard of Vienna Girardi appearing on the cover of Playboy. ... We are not in negotiations with her and have not made her an offer.” Girardi herself posted on Twitter that this was just a rumor.

11. A rumor went around that Justin Bieber's mother, Pattie Mallette, was going to pose topless for Playboy for $50,000. However, her spokesperson said she had not even been approached by Playboy and was not interested in posing.