Playboy Starts New Era

Playboy entered a new era Thursday with its first issue without fully nude photos.

CNN reports along with nudity, Playboy is also doing away with a pair of long-running features: the cartoon and its monthly list of party jokes. The centerfold will be expanded to feature more than just each month's Playmate. And Playboy will now be printed with a better-quality paper befitting a high-end style magazine.

Other than that, executives insist, it's the same old Playboy.

"There's a lot that we're keeping of the DNA of the magazine, but there's a lot we're evolving, too," the magazine's chief content officer Cory Jones said.

The revamped Playboy is retaining some of the magazine's best-known elements. The monthly feature interview and fiction section, for example, aren't going anywhere.

And there will still be plenty of skin. Jones said that while there will be no more "full frontal nudity," the photos will still be provocative.

"It's going to be sexy, but it's going to be safe for work," he said.

Playboy's March issue, which hit newsstands Thursday, combines some of those familiar components with the magazine's explicit goal to draw a younger audience.