It's been the conventional wisdom that even in bad economic times, porn is recession-proof, but apparently this is not the case for Playboy magazine.

http://arstechnica.com/ne...lined.html

"Even porn can’t keep a Playboy’s pockets lined
By Ken Fisher | Published: January 22, 2009 - 07:14PM CT

One of the proverbial axioms of the "publishing world" is that sex sells. Pornography, in particular, is a massively popular business. Indeed, where porn goes, so goes technology. At least this is the oft-repeated claim.

So what does it mean for the universe of print publishing when porn mags are having problems? It means the traditional walls between online and offline publishing need to come down in the stables of many a publishing house, that's what.

Case in point: Playboy announced Thursday that it would be fully merging its online and print-side operations. The best-known of all the skin magazines is reorganizing into a business with focus on leveraging all of its content across three mediums (print, online, mobile). Or, in other words, the content is being developed independently of the medium, which instead is being treated like, well, a medium rather than a genre-based destination. This, it hopes, will help to stop its soon-to-be five straight quarters of unprofitability.

The ubiquity of porn online has made Playboy into a smaller, well, player than in years past. While many have attributed this to the availability of free porn, the paid online porn industry is by all accounts doing well. But Playboy.com has stagnant traffic, and the magazine isn't able to carry its own weight.

Part of what ails Playboy is what is hurting nearly all print publications, including many owned by our parent company, Condé Nast. Sales of ads in print magazines and newspapers are coming down, and have been for a year or longer at many companies. Fewer ad pages, coupled in some cases with fewer readers (Playboy's circulation is not as strong as it once was), means less money. And magazines are expensive to produce—certainly more so than websites, in terms of operational costs.

To make matters worse, many publishing companies ventured into online projects as side projects, and came in late. Rather than take the content produced by its writers and editors, many a print shop treated online like a different publication. Oftentimes they'd have separate ad sales teams, separate editors, separate writers, and separate budgets. And according to many of the editors I've come to know throughout the years, online was less respected, too (but not in all cases).

Thankfully, gone are the days when mag editors can claim that people don't appreciate long, well-written and well-researched content online. While big aggregators with bazillions of updates might rule the day in pageviews, a peek behind the curtain doesn't show them ruling the roost of profits. If the focus over the last 10 years has been quantity, quantity, quantity, I expect the focus is now turning to quality, quality, quality. In such an environment, it only makes sense to pool your best talent.

In Playboy's case, that means combining its content business, and truly treating the mediums as mediums. It may not save them, but it's the best chance that the company has."



Apparently, Playboy has been going through red ink for years, but it has stayed afloat by buying Vivid Video, the Spice Channel, and the Hot Network (which was renamed Spice Too!) It had been making a tidy bit of money through these hardcore porn outlets, but now with downloading thru Bit Torrent and the rise of several YouTube-like free porn sites, even the hardcore porn producers are seeing their profits shrink. On top of that, younger people are replacing their porn habits with social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook. Why watch slutty women doing the nasty and fantasizing about doing dirty things in bed with them when you can hook up with someone on Facebook? As for the PornoTube sites, they are even finding it difficult to make money to stay afloat.

implants=staying afloat

You pretty much said it: why would I buy a magazine or pay to see porn when I can download it for free?