Playboy’s future
Hugh Hefner, 84 years old and 57 years long owner of the Playboy enterprises, hosted “Nightline” at the Playboy Mansion in Los Angeles and talked about his big plans that do not include retirement, which he considers to be the first step towards the grave.
Hefner intends to buy back all the shares of Playboy Enterprises held by the public. Playboy has had some hard times over the years: the company’s share value decreased from 30 dollars a share in 1999 to about 5 dollars today and magazine circulation dropped from more than 7 million copies in the 1970s to one and a half million copies. Hefner believes that if he buys back all the shares he will be able to put the business back on the right path.
He said that the greatest success of the company and the magazine was in the 1950s and 1960s, when it was private, and he is thinking about the future of the magazine and its direction. Brigitte Berman, the Oscar-winning documentarian who made “Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel”, says that it is more of Hefner than sex, and that he has been a campaigner for abortion rights and for freedom from censorship and a protector of the black in the 1950s.
