[digg-me]Just Released: As of August 1, 2008, popular men’s entertainment magazine, Maxim will begin a major transitional shift. The unexpected shuffling will disband it’s current managerial staff and go through major content renovations as publisher Alpha Media Group attempts to attract a predominantly female audience to the popular men’s magazine, a goal since their 2007 acquisition from Dennis Publishing.

Banned In Hollywood was lucky enough to sit down with source and editor Christopher Crosby.

When asked about the direction of Maxim, Crosby commented, “We’re doing big things and making ambitious moves in order to tap into a key demo, something we were never able to do under Dennis. You don’t realize how big Dennis is, much much bigger than you’d think. And with Dennis on top, fighting to get out of a stranglehold is an impossibility. And for the longest time we just had to take it.”

Maxim’s new direction is clear, their execution even clearer.

“Perezhilton.com is huge but it’s mostly read by female women. We’re talking $18,000 weekly ad slots. Times ten. That’s a demographic we cannot afford to miss out on. We did some shuffeling and hired Blake Lively and Leighton Meester from the CW’s hit show Gossip Girls to report on celebrity gossip, which should attract female readers in flocks. Who better to report on celebrity gossip than celebrities that play gossip girls on a hit telivision show called Gossip Girls that airs on a network that targets gossiping girls? [chuckles] Perfect right? It’s a movie waiting to happen.”

He continued…

“We’re taking a unique angle that will separate Maxim Magazine from blogs like perezhilton.com and celebslam.com in that we’ll compile the month’s gossip to remind people what happened in June, in July. People won’t mind waiting a month to get their news because Maxim is printed on real paper that you can hold, and no one’s ever done that before.”

As far as content is concerned, Maxim locked down several key objects for upcoming shoots, debuting their new look with Sex and the City’s own, Sarah Jessica Parker – making sure not to be too revealing.

Crosby comments, “She’s perfect for the direction we’re moving in. Women love her. They think she’s gorgeous, which is difficult for men to understand. See, women can’t comprehend how photoshop works. They also don’t seem to realize that in order for a man to be attracted to a woman sexually, sexual attraction is key. Sarah jessica Parker has none and doesn’t realize it, which is why we chose her to debut in our campaign to engage female readers.”

We got a sneak peek at a tentative page of Maxim, August 2008.

Just as Crosby projected, zero sexual attraction.

“We chose the background to reflect the average woman’s self esteem, blue suggesting a deep deep sadness. We actually had to lighten it a few shades in order to please our dwindling male readers, the dark background spotlighted the thing we we’re taking the picture of too much, and we wanted Sarah to blend into the plain blue background. Give it a few months and our backgrounds will be completely black.”

If everything goes as smoothly as Crosby makes it sound, post-op Maxim will be out from under the knife by the year’s end.