user: Porn mag comes around: People like masturbating at computers more
Penthouse thought it would never happen to them, to paraphrase a line from its famous letters column.

But its parent company said it will cease its print edition and go all-digital, becoming the latest adult magazine to sound a retreat.

Media Ink sources, however, say there may still be a last-minute buyout offer headed up by Penthouse President Kelly Holland, which could save the print edition.

She is said to be scrambling to put together the funding.

Meanwhile, the CFO of parent company FriendFinder, Ezra Shashoua, said 20 people were laid off in the New York City office last week, but there were no layoffs among the remaining staff in Los Angeles, where Holland is based. He declined to comment on any potential sale to insiders.

Sources say it was shopped unsuccessfully by FriendFinder over the past year.

“This will be a new way for its readers to experience the world’s best adult magazine,” the company said in a statement announcing its retreat from print.

“Reimagined for the preferred consumption of content today by consumers, the digital version of Penthouse Magazine will combine and convert everything readers know and love about the print magazine experience to the power of a digital experience.”

While Shashoua did not comment on any sale, he did concede that there is no final print issue planned yet.

“As we convert to digital, the magazine will still be published,” he said. The final issue date “has not been determined,” he said.

And one industry insider said the reason for the vagueness is that Holland is still trying to find a way to buy it from Friendfinder.

Holland is one of the few women involved in the upper echelon of porn. She has remained active in the adult film business even while running General Media Publishing, the FriendFinder subsidiary that publishes Penthouse.

Holland, since 2005, has been “CEO of Chick Media, a broad base multimedia corporation with a mission statement to provide high quality, sex positive, erotic programming for women.

“For over 10 years Kelly Holland has written, produced and directed erotica.

“First, under an exclusive contract with Vivid Video, then Wicked, Adam & Eve and Playgirl TV,” according to her LinkedIn profile.

Penthouse was founded in London by Bob Guccione in 1965 and landed in the United States in 1969 with a wilder take on sex pictorials than its better-selling archrival, Playboy.

Guccione borrowed frantically to keep his empire — which at one time included Spin, Omni, Longevity and auto enthusiast books — afloat, but eventually lost control and was forced out.

The company filed for bankruptcy in 2004. Guccione died of throat cancer in 2010.

Marc Bell Capital, a private equity firm, bought it out of bankruptcy in 2004, then acquired the dating website FriendFinder Network in 2007 and used the acquired firm as the new parent company name.

At one point in 2010, FriendFinder made a $250 million offer to Hugh Hefner to buy Playboy, a deal that Hefner rejected.

FriendFinder went public in May 2011, but its stock began a rapid descent and was delisted by Nasdaq.

It went private in December 2013.
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assistant: Penthouse thought it would never happen to them, to paraphrase a line from its famous letters column. But its parent company said it will cease its print edition and go all-digital, becoming the la…