Media pundits have expressed a lot of interest in Playboy these days because of the, ahem, business side. The future of the softcore empire is anyone's guess these days as its flagship magazine struggles like every other dead-tree publication.

LA Weekly recently profiled Hugh Hefner, the bunny house's 84-year-old founder and majority owner, about his plans to keep the brand alive in the internet age. Hef wants to take the company private, in part to avoid a takeover by Penthouse, a long-time rival infamous for its edgier take on naked women.

Recently media columnist Howard Kurtz interviewed Hef on CNN about whether Playboy can compete with free porn on the web. Here is a key excerpt, transcription courtesy of TheWrap:

Kurtz: We are now awash in sex. I don't have to tell you. You know, hardcore porn on the Internet, celebrities making sex tapes every other week. I've lost track of who the latest one is. Has all of that combined in a way to make Playboy a little passé?

Hefner: Of course. I think that the revolution we started obviously caught up to us and went on from there with some excesses that not all of which I approve. But that's the way of things. I don't think you can ever go back to those very early years where Playboy played such a part in changing everything. But the bigger problem that I think Playboy faces, quite frankly, is a problem that print faces, that magazines in general face, and that newspapers face, et cetera. We're dealing with that in a unique way because the magazine initially carried the brand.