The magazine claims to have been the most profitable title on newsstands around the world for 31 years and is currently published in 14 foreign-language editions from Bangkok to Prague.
And despite the boom in online porn businesses, Penthouse.com -- which says it attracts 2.5 million unique visitors a month -- and its phone-sex business are reported to be struggling. "There are sites on the internet much more explicit than anything he can do," says Walker.
But not by much: there is now little Penthouse won't publish in its inexorable drift downwards. In the opinion of the NY Observer, Guccione is on the ropes for a simple reason: in the media's race to the bottom, "his business has become a purveyor of such raw and unappealing trash that nobody wants to have anything to do with it."
Even the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, declined Guccione's offer to publish his revolutionary manifesto: he said he would prefer a more "respectable" publication.
But Penthouse is not alone in struggling for (market) penetration. Playboy, while losing circulation, has remained comparatively buoyant; its net revenues in 2000 fell by 12 percent to US$307.7 million, compared with 1999, and the company posted a net loss of US$47.6 million compared with a US$5.3 million loss in 1999.
Although still promoted by an ageing, Viagra-popping Hugh Hefner and his coterie of identical blondes, Playboy Enterprises recently reversed a decision to get out of the business of airing hard-core porn on cable and formed Spice Platinum, with movies depicting actual penetration rather than just soft scenes.
The move was crucial for the Chicago-based company, which has noticed that hard-core porn can generate strong revenues. Adult pay-per-view movies rocketed to US$465 million last year from US$369 million in 1999, thanks partly to demand for more explicit fare, according to Kagan World Media, a media industry newsletter.
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