Porn magazine chief faces ruin

[Smegma]

How many people will start thios thread??

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by James Langton
Porn king Bob Guccioni has admitted he is facing financial ruin because of losses from his magazine, Penthouse.

The publisher, 71, may have to sell his New York house - Manhattan's largest - and his art collection, which features works by Picasso, Degas and Renoir, to pay his debts.

He founded Penthouse in 1965, but circulation has tumbled with competition from internet pornography. From a high of five million, it now sells 650,000 copies a month. General Media, the company that owns Penthouse, said last week that it would be unable to meet £10million debts this year. If it fails to keep up payments on a £40 million overdraft, the Bank of New York will take control and may well close the magazine.

Guccioni has used his house and art collection as security for borrowing. Penthouse lost £7 million last year, and his two general interest magazines, Omni and Longevity, both failed.

[Jamdin]

He shouldn't have bought all those paintings...

It's been a long time since I heard of Omni. That was a cool mag...

[Ludedude]

He should have done like Flynt and embraced the internet, not bury his head in the sand.

[Pornwolf]

Very true Mr. Dude. I cant imagine why anyone with a computer would buy a smutrag for $5-$9 anymore.

[funkmaster]

"I cant imagine why anyone with a computer would buy a smutrag for $5-$9 anymore."

... and I can´t imagine that anyone that found thehun.com will ever pay for porn again ...

[FATPad]

Originally posted by Ludedude
He should have done like Flynt and embraced the internet, not bury his head in the sand.

Exactly.

[Rip]

That's too bad Penthouse was a good magazine, like anything though it's all a business, if you're not making money, you have to make adjustments... if you are making money then you need to invest in your business wisely, not just piss it away

the penthouse (web) partnership was a little weak and probably needed a hekuva lot better web savvy management team running it

on the flip side, we don't see what their accounting guys see, and likely they (penthouse bosses) knew this day was coming for a while

[pimpshost]

Looks like he'll be hurting for cash. LOL

[XXXManager]

Well people
The basic fact is that - not many people would like to go out of the way to pay for someting they can get for free. (Unless its real sex - and then I can see why people would pay a bitch instead of banging their same-old-wife )
But to buy a mag for 5 or 8 bux with max of - what 20? 30? 50 pics? where you can get it for free on the net? WHY?
As someone suggested here:

... and I can´t imagine that anyone that found thehun.com will ever pay for porn again ...

Its kind of true. Pay for a site containing 150,000 pix where you can get as much as you can (jerk off) handle for free on a TGP? WHY?
Think about it - it?s like everything that was given for free in the .com era... No company survived. Everybody ? besides maybe the entrepreneurs and their hired-guyz who finished their PHD in business management and wrote the excellent business plans ? know exactly why they all failed and why nobody smart will ever go into business on that grounds (free) again. They understand now that FREE MEANS FREE - MEANS NO-MONEY - MEANS NO REVENUES!
Not in the long term anyway.
And as I come to thinking about it ? what about all the free-porn out there? Aren?t ppl here making money out of free porn? Ye ? no? ye?all post galleries to TGPs (or the miraculous TGP2) and get signups (or affiliation programs) from that traffic. right?
Well ? what makes you think ?our? fate is different from the ?big? buyz fate?
?Well ? we offer value ;) we lure people by free content and convince them to buy ?quality? site-access.? You say.
Ye Ye! Sure. I hear ya.
Remember ? Long term! What about when there is enough easy and accessible free content (I personally believe that is the case eve now)
I don?t say there will be no money at all in a year or two. I?m saying it wont be enough to support this big structure. (there will always be someone who won?t like to go through all the ad-packed free sites and will decide to pay the $25/month)
I recall people say things like ?In four-five years - Only the big guyz will survive? ? Well... I predict (if things goes as it looks now) that this is not far from truth ? at least in the money-making sense. The reason that most ?small fish? (no offense taken ;) right?) will cease to exists is that free-hosts will do so first. Think about it ? they are struggling to survive even today ? making money on your exit consoles, 404s and headers/footers. Do the math (even though bandwidth becomes cheaper) ? I see you sometimes calculate how much bandwidth costs (even you don?t pay for it) and how much you make. Well ? I predict that most free hosts will die and most small activists will wear out. The surviving free hosts will become big. And the surviving webmasters will make less and will have to enjoy it cause money will not be that good incentive ;).
Like one mp3 enthusiast stupidly said, ?if music will be free like it should ? only the people who enjoys making music will stay in that industry and that?s how it should be?. Ye right. Fuck it ? fuck the m/f ? I wanna keep hearing Pearl Jam, Radio Head, Sting, Live, Dishwalla, Creed, Live, Sarah McLachlen and the other folks that will make fuck-all music if they don?t make money. It will be the end of the good-note age and ye ? I do hear mp3s (But I also buy CDs).
So what about porn? Well most of us + even the big free hosts make money from the content of the bigger guyz?, who in the future will be stronger ? earn less and less (as free stuff grows), until it stabilizes on a: more free stuff ? and less profit to each ? even us.
The only way to avert this from happening is to be conscience about the effect of flooding the net with free stuff. Remember ? you are in the musicians/artists shoes now ? not the mp3/hackerz drooling at the record-industry demise.
TGP2 ? also not successful (yet) is a conscience eye-opened move in the ?right? direction (depends who you ask ? but right now its me that is talking) but it?s just a suggestion that you all should inspect.
I know people say, ?Well ? Fuck it. I wont be the first to drop free content. Hell ? I wont stop making money over a ?good cause?, while there are enough young geeks who will continue ? and make that money instead of me?.

I?m not telling anyone what to do ? just ? Think about it. What say you?

[TaDoW]

Yipes! Stripes! Fruit Striped gum!

[TaDoW]

does this mean that good 'ol Grace Hudson over there is out too? 2 years ago she tried to charge me something like $65,000 for a month of 468x60 banner advertising on an exit console... rrrrriiight.

I think it came out to be something like $30 per click ... absolutely ridiculous..