Playboy Gets It Up $1

By Matt Wood in News on Oct 13, 2005 3:32PM

The old man of porn, Chicago-based Playboy, announced that it will raise the newsstand price of its magazine $1 and promised advertisers less sales. The price increase is only expected to effect teenagers scamming a copy at the corner magazine stand/porn hut and horny businessmen buying copies at the airport, since 89% of of Playboy's readers subscribe and have their copies subsequently stolen by the mailman.

Playboy is still struggling to cope with increased competition from cable TV, lad mags like Maxim and FHM, and porn porn porn everywhere on the interweb. Their circulation climaxed at 6 million in the 1970s, and now hangs limp at a flaccid 3.1 million.

This isn't the first time Chicagoist has heard Playboy whining about their mercantile dysfunction. In August, they announced a boneheaded plan to publish an online version of their magazine--not just the pictures and articles online, but a "virtual magazine" with pages you can turn (for a fee at that), because everyone had been complaining that porn was too easy to get on the web. C'mon guys, you aren't even trying. Lose the creepy, Swinging Hef bit, learn how to use the internet right, and goddamn it, stop running spreads of "The Women of Wal-Mart."