Playboy, one of the world’s most recognisable magazines, has announced it will be shutting down the US periodical, with the Spring issue – which arrives on news stands this week – its last for 2020.

In an announcement made via an open letter on Medium, the CEO of Playboy Enterprises, Ben Kohn, said the decision to stop printing the magazine – which has been a quarterly since 2019 – had been discussed internally for some time, but was expedited by the coronavirus crisis.

“As the disruption of the coronavirus pandemic to content production and the supply chain became clearer and clearer, we were forced to accelerate a conversation we’ve been having internally: the question of how to transform our US print product to better suit what consumers want today … [and] engage in a cultural conversation each and every day, rather than just every three months,” he said.

“We will move to a digital-first publishing schedule for all of our content including the Playboy Interview, 20Q, the Playboy Advisor and of course our Playmate pictorials,” he continued.

“It’s no surprise that media consumption habits have been changing for some time … [and] our content in its printed form reaches the hands of only a fraction of our fans,” he acknowledged. Moving forward from 2021, there will still be print offerings “in a variety of new forms”, such as “special editions, partnerships with the most provocative creators, timely collections and much more.

“Print is how we began and print will always be a part of who we are.”

Playboy magazine was founded by Hugh Hefner in 1953, and has since become a global brand, encompassing TV shows, merchandise, resorts, clubs, a record label and events. It has published work from many acclaimed writers, including Joyce Carol Oates, James Baldwin, Margaret Atwood and Saul Bellow, but made headlines early on for its nude centrefolds and taboo-shifting role in the sexual revolution (although its claims to sexual empowerment didn’t always sit comfortably).

In 2016, the magazine experimented with no longer publishing full frontal nude pictures of women; internet pornography had made them “passe”, and a PG-13 magazine would be easier to sell to advertisers and display on news stands. But by February 2017, Playboy had reversed the decision. Hugh Hefner died in September that year.