Penthouse Mobile and Penthouse HDTV for cell phones On November 13, 2004, Guccione resigned as Chairman and CEO of Penthouse International, the parent of General Media at the request of U.K. In October 2003, it was announced that Penthouse magazine was being put up for sale as part of a deal with its creditors. Immediately upon filing, Cerberus Capital Management entered into a $5 million debtor-in-possession credit line with General Media to provide General Media working capital. On August 12, 2003, General Media, the parent company of the magazine, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. While these titles were successful, it is widely reported that the science and health magazines Omni and Longevity cost Penthouse almost $100 million, contributing to its eventual financial troubles. In an effort to raise cash and to reduce debt, Penthouse sold its portfolio of several automotive magazine titles in 1999 for $33 million cash to Peterson Automotive, the national automotive-publishing group. (Many insiders feel that the softening of content may have hurt the magazine. (It does still feature female-female simulated sex, at least on occasion.) While this change allowed the return of a limited number of mainstream advertisers to the magazine, it has not significantly raised the number of subscribers total circulation is still below 350,000.
Penthouse no longer showed male genitalia, real or simulated male-female sex, or any form of explicit hardcore content. The new owners (see below) significantly softened the content of the magazine starting with the January 2005 issue. The experiment attracted a great deal of press interest but failed to generate a significant increase in sales. The magazine's editorial content included celebrity interviews and tackled issues of sexual politics. Fashion photographers (such as Corinne Day of The Face magazine) were hired to produce images that merged sex and fashion. Under the editorship of Tom Hilditch, the magazine was rebranded as PH.UK and relaunched as middle-shelf "adult magazine for grown-ups".
It also began to regularly feature pictorials of female models urinating, which, until then, had been considered a defining limit of illegal obscenity as distinguished from legal pornography.Ī different approach to restoring sales was attempted by the UK version of the magazine in 1997. In 1998 Penthouse decided to change its format and began featuring sexually explicit pictures (i.e., actual oral, vaginal, and anal penetration), beginning with photos from the famed Stolen Honeymoon sex tape featuring Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee. (There were a few times during the 70's and 80's where Penthouse was even ahead of Playboy for subscriptions and sales.) Move from softcore to hardcore pictorials and back In addition, Penthouse attempted to maintain some level of reading content, although usually of a more sexually oriented nature than Playboy.ĭuring the 1970s and 80's and into the early 90's Penthouse was often regarded as the main rival against Playboy in terms of circulation and popularity. Simulated sex, but not penetration or male genitalia, followed then, several years later, male genitalia, including erections, could be seen. Up until 1973, the depiction of female genitalia offered fuzzy portrayals of the pudenda, without the inner labia parted, after which sharper views of the vulva were shown. Almost from the start, Penthouse pictorials showed female genitalia and pubic hair when this was considered by many to be obscene.
An April 2002 New York Times article reported Guccione as saying that Penthouse grossed $3.5 billion to $4 billion over the 30-year life of the company, with net income of almost half a billion dollars.
He was once listed in the Forbes 400 ranking of wealthiest people (982 ). At the height of his success, Guccione, who died in 2010, was considered to be one of the richest men in the United States. Although Guccione was American, the magazine was founded in 1965 in the United Kingdom, but beginning in September 1969 was sold in the United States as well. whose parent company was Penthouse International Inc. Penthouse is owned by FriendFinder Network. Penthouse, a men's magazine founded by Bob Guccione, combines urban lifestyle articles and softcore pornographic pictorials that, in the 1990s, evolved into hardcore.
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