For a while now, Playboy’s profits have been in the toilet. No one really cares about the magazine anymore, and I’ve heard rumors that the subscription part of Playboy.com isn’t really raking it in. The answer might be a rebranding effort, possibly taking creative control out of Hugh Hefner’s hands. While Hef has handed over big chunks of his Playboy empire to other people (including his kids), Hef still has a huge say in what happens to and within his magazine. And… you can sort of tell. There are parts of Playboy that seem very dated and out-of-touch, especially in this era of internet p0rn and all of that. So what’s the answer? How does one rebrand Playboy? The answer seems to be… less nude photos? What the what?

Last month, Cory Jones, a top editor at Playboy, went to see its founder Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Mansion. In a wood-paneled dining room, with Picasso and de Kooning prints on the walls, Mr. Jones nervously presented a radical suggestion: the magazine, a leader of the revolution that helped take sex in America from furtive to ubiquitous, should stop publishing images of naked women.

Mr. Hefner, now 89, but still listed as editor in chief, agreed. As part of a redesign that will be unveiled next March, the print edition of Playboy will still feature women in provocative poses. But they will no longer be fully nude.

Its executives admit that Playboy has been overtaken by the changes it pioneered. “That battle has been fought and won,” said Scott Flanders, the company’s chief executive. “You’re now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. And so it’s just passé at this juncture.”

For a generation of American men, reading Playboy was a cultural rite, an illicit thrill consumed by flashlight. Now every teenage boy has an Internet-connected phone instead. Pornographic magazines, even those as storied as Playboy, have lost their shock value, their commercial value and their cultural relevance.

Playboy’s circulation has dropped from 5.6 million in 1975 to about 800,000 now, according to the Alliance for Audited Media. Many of the magazines that followed it have disappeared. Though detailed figures are not kept for adult magazines, many of those that remain exist in severely diminished form, available mostly in specialist stores. Penthouse, perhaps the most famous Playboy competitor, responded to the threat from digital pornography by turning even more explicit. It never recovered.

Previous efforts to revamp Playboy, as recently as three years ago, have never quite stuck. And those who have accused it of exploiting women are unlikely to be assuaged by a modest cover-up. But, according to its own research, Playboy’s logo is one of the most recognizable in the world, along with those of Apple and Nike. This time, as the magazine seeks to compete with younger outlets like Vice, Mr. Flanders said, it sought to answer a key question: “if you take nudity out, what’s left?”

[From The NYT]

The Times has more details about the other changes being made to the Playboy brand. Apparently, they’ve already “cleaned up” the Playboy site to make it safer for work. They want to get more social media coverage and the actual magazine “will adopt a cleaner, more modern style,” with the editorials being more “PG-13.” They will add a “sex-positive female” sex columnist. Beyond the nudity, the political and journalism coverage will be much of the same. I’m assuming their 20 Questions and “The Playboy Interview” features will stay the same (because frankly, those features are really good). Basically, they’re trying to appeal to men who not only have a subscription to GQ and Esquire, but the men who read Esquire, The Daily Beast, Gawker, the New York Times and GQ online. The thing is… men are already getting what they need from those other media outlets. Playboy without naked photos just seems… redundant? Is that the word?

Photos courtesy of WENN, Playboy.