Bob Guccione and Penthouse
The Penthouse publishing empire is crumbling. Penthouse's circulation has dropped from a high of nearly 5,000,000 in the 1980s to 650,000 today. Revenues from Penthouse and spinoff publications Forum, Variations, Penthouse Comix and Penthouse Letters have dropped sharply. Moreover, "Not only is its bottom line sagging beyond repair, the Penthouse name long ago lost whatever allure it may have held, even among purveyors of porn."
New York Observer (Apr 2002)
The New York Times picks up the story about Penthouse's financial woes. Bob Guccione attributes the collapse in Penthouse's circulation primarily to the rise of Internet porn, saying there's "no future for adult business in mass market magazines. The future has definitely migrated to electronic media." The magazine will probably cease publication soon. This long article also details Guccione's many disastrous business decisions over the past three decades.
New York Times (Apr 2002)
Nicholas Urfé ponders the imminent death of Penthouse and argues that the steady decline in circulation is due more to the magazine's failings than competition from Internet porn.
Have you opened an issue lately? Despite the much-vaunted “hardcore” additions (penetration shots and the occasional piss take, oh my), the magazine doesn’t look or feel all that different from its heyday, back in the late ’70s and ’80s. The models still all look like they’re hanging out in the back room of an endless wrap party for a ZZ Top video; the poses and the staged sex still look like bad Vegas floorshows lit by the cinematographer for Caligula; even what new stuff they’ve had, like those grainy black-and-white lesbian shoots they’ve been enamored of lately, still somehow manage to look like something I would have found under my dad’s side of the bed back in the day. It’s stuck, lost, dropped down a time warp, a retro that isn’t working—a former party animal in a bad toupee with a hidebound St. Tropez tan, scratching his chestful of gold and hair and wondering where all the chicks went.
But Nick also thinks the 70s-era Guccione magazines (Penthouse, Omni, Longevity) deserve a bit of nostalgia.
Inexplicably Fancy Trash (Apr 2002)
Debra also comments on the collapse of Penthouse in the form of a song.
Pursed Lips (Apr 2002)
Former Hustler editor Lee Quarnstrom waxes nostalgic about Penthouse and Hustler in the pre-Internet era.
Salon (Apr 2002)
Oliver Burkeman looks back at the early years of Penthouse and its rivalry with Playboy. A former Penthouse editor explains the differences: "Hugh Hefner was a nice, white, Protestant boy. Guccione was a Sicilian and a Catholic. Hefner was bringing in the girl next door, and he was the guy next door with the nice white teeth and the bathrobe. Guccione was the hood on the corner, not talking about the girl next door but about the bad girl in the neighbourhood. He was the first to do pubic hair, the first to do leather and whips, the first to use Dobermann pinschers as props."
Daily Mail & Guardian (Apr 2002)
