Playboy's Focus Group of One

"This is one brand that's relevant to 18 through 81-year-olds," says Playboy EVP Scott Stephen, discussing the company's plans for a social-networking site.

Talk about saying more than you intended!

I don't know about 18-year-olds, but Playboy magazine is indeed relevant to one 81-year-old I can think of. His name's Hugh Hefner, and he's the reason it's increasingly irrelevant to everyone else.

Playboy is stuck in a timewarp, and Hefner is the reason. The people I've talked to there are all looking forward ardently to the day when he no longer exercises control over the magazine so it can stop living in 1985.

Playboy did try to modernize a few years ago, when it hired James Kaminsky (as of yesterday, the new editor of Maxim) to make it over. But that experiment ended when Hefner put his foot down. That wasn't necessarily a bad thing at the time -- Kaminsky's laddish edit had a me-too feel, and he didn't seem to get what readers wanted from Playboy -- but now it's reaching the point where any change might be for the better.

Someday, Playboy will emerge from the amber it's been trapped in. Will there still be an audience left to care?