When Printed Porn Is Not Enough

With the birth of the Internet, many doomsday prophets spoke of the demise of the magazine industry. With easily accessible websites, the printed world was supposed to go the way of the dinosaur. Here we are more than 20 years after the first domain name was issued in March of 1985 and the printed world is still very much a thriving entity.

However, not all categories of magazines have stood strong against the technology of the Internet. The sex category has seen a drop in its numbers due to the cheap prices of Internet sex sites and the use of Internet video. As I have said before, it doesn’t matter how much you shake a magazine page, it will never move the same as a person in a video. For that reason, sex magazines such as Hustler, Cheri and others have been forced to reevaluate their marketing strategies on the newsstands.

For the past two years, Hustler has been including adult content DVDs with their newsstand magazines in select markets. With a small increase in cover price, Hustler has been able to give readers content that finally rivals the World Wide Web. The success of Hustler in this endeavor has gotten the attention of other adult titles and now I am seeing more and more magazines mirroring this content shift on the newsstands.

In the Detroit airport on a recent trip home from Europe, I picked up three such titles. High Society, Cheri and Club International are now offering over an hour and a half of adult scenes on included DVDs. The cover prices are between $9.99 and $11.99, slightly higher than the normal prices but not enough to keep buyers from picking up these titles for the increased content.

These magazines are not available in all markets, however. Areas such as the Bible Belt are still dead spots for the adult DVDs on the newsstand. Even with limited market reach, these titles are sure to see a change in their newsstand numbers.

This evolution of the sex category is yet another example of how the magazine industry must remain open and flexible to market changes and shifts in the desires of consumers. We are in a business of selling content and as the desired content changes so must we.