Leave it to Larry Flynt to keep the adult industry all abuzz with his company’s recent announcement of a new president to head up his various operations. With the seat cold from three years of not being used, it was certainly a surprise. But the real question is: Who is Michael Klein?

To start, he has 27 years of experience in broadcasting and everything he touches seem to turn into gold. (Read the interview to learn about the various projects he started and turned into a success.) He’s got a sweet situation, with a very cool boss whose office is right next to his. And far from being the pretentious executive, he’s got quite the entrepreneurial spirit (he admires the Google founders), is a devoted father, has a penchant for reality TV shows, and is just an all-around “nice, sweet Jewish boy from New York.” It seems Flynt has pulled a rabbit out of his hat once again.

SexHerald: First of all, congratulations on your recent promotion to president of LFP, Inc.

Michael Klein: Thank you.

SH: You must have been ecstatic when you first got wind of the news. Were you at all surprised that Larry Flynt chose you to run his operation?

Klein: A surprise and it was nice. Fortunately, I’ve been here for three-and-a-half years and I headed up a number of divisions. Prior to this, I was president of the broadcasting, Internet and video groups. So, I did oversee three divisions of the company but it was just a surprise that Larry decided to make someone a president of the company and then he chose me and it certainly is an honor.

SH: Why do you think Flynt chose you?

Klein: I think Larry appreciates the work I’ve done creating the whole Hustler TV from scratch to [being] one of the largest adult networks out there now; the work we’ve done to revamp the whole Internet division; and, he just appreciates what I’ve been doing and the fact that I’ve been here for three-and-a-half years, I know a lot about the culture of the company. My background in the industry is in broadcasting and the Internet, which are obviously two big growing areas in the field, and I have experience in that for over 25 years.

SH: Did it ever cross your mind that the new tasks as president of LFP might be too daunting and so you should turn down the offer?

Klein: No, I think I’m up for the challenge.

SH: And, isn’t it challenging running the day-to-day activities of the company?

Klein: Well, there’s a lot of work involved but we’ve got a lot of top executives in the company already so it makes it a lot easier. It’s not so much of a challenge because we have a lot of good operations between our retail, casino, broadcasting, Internet publications, apparel, the clubs… they’re all doing well. So really the challenge is what new areas to take the business into and ways to grow. The Hustler brand is becoming more and more popular and more and more acceptable, or more into the mainstream vernacular.

SH: What is your average day like from when you first wake up?

Klein: My usual day is: I wake up, I work out, and then I’ve got to get my son off to school. Then it’s tackling different things of the day, working in different areas, talking with the different departments, what business proposals we have in front of us, what ways we can expand. Right now, a lot of it is just evaluating the other areas of the company that I wasn’t involved in before. See if there’s anything that need to be changed, or if everything is running great… every day there’s new things. There are things in the casino that I’m about to get involved in about a decision; there might be new delivery methods of the magazine and I’ll be involved in that decision; if we want to explore expansions on the retail stores—those are some new things. If we want to open up some more clubs, I’ll be involved in that.

SH: Joanna Angel, who had a directing contract with VCA, abruptly left the company earlier this year. Later, she made a statement to AVN that Flynt really prefers the blonde porn-star archetype. Do you think that statement is correct?

Klein: No, that’s not true. Larry appreciates beautiful women no matter what color hair, myself included. It has nothing to do with blonde archetype. We did some stuff with Joanna, we put her in our movies and we just moved on. You merit on how things are performing, and if it’s doing well and you’re making money, continue it. If you’re not happy with the revenue, you discontinue it and just do something else. We’ve had different ladies, different contract stars—some have worked out well for a while, some didn’t. We’ve just found now that as we shoot a movie to find great new talent and if they do really well, just continue to have them for more movies. If it turns out the performances are not well and the DVDs don’t sell, then you look for somebody else.

SH: What did you do before coming onboard Hustler/LFP?

Klein: I worked for Playboy a long time ago; I was one of the first people to help launch the Playboy channel. I was involved with the program for about five years when it first went off the ground. There has been some level of adult connection in most of everything I’ve been involved in, whether it was being with Showtime, which always has some adult type of titles, which you’ll find at Showtime/Cinemax late at night to the hotel markets where I was anchorman to the video spec division, which, obviously, adult programming makes up quite a large revenue for both, to even when I was in InDemand we had an adult channel called Hot Choice and TVN… we had a couple of adult channels.

SH: What were the circumstances that led you to LFP?

Klein: I had a meeting with one of them… I broached them on the fact that the video-on-demand marketplace was just starting to really take off, and the cable field… I was talking to some people at LFP saying, ‘You should really take advantage of it now. Now’s the time to really get in there, get your foothold in it while the market is growing. That way, you’ve got something before it becomes so saturated that you have to fight for space.’ I knew how well the Hustler movies were performing, especially the Barely Legal titles; I knew they were strong performers. So I basically said, ‘You’re selling your movies to all the other adult networks the top-performing titles. You have a great brand; you should just stop selling your titles and go on to Hustler TV.’ I met with Larry and they said, ‘Fine. Do you want to come onboard and head it up?’ I said, ‘Sure.’ We struggled in the first year and it’s been great ever since.

SH: I know Flynt was giving away free subscriptions of Hustler to members of Congress…

Klein: Still does.

SH: Has he received any thank-you letters?

Klein: I don’t know if he’s received any but I don’t think we’ve seen any come back.

SH: Recently, he offered $1 million dollars to anyone who uncovers a sexual scandal in the Senate. Has he given that million away yet?

Klein: It’s been all over the press lately because the information we uncovered about Senator Vitter of Louisiana whose name was in the D.C. madam phonebook. We’ve read a lot of leads in there; we received probably 300-400 different leads. You’ve got to fan ‘em all out and go through and make sure which are accurate because Larry says he’s probably under a more tougher microscope than anybody else. Right now, there’s about 25-30 that look really good but we’ve got to cross all our T’s and dot all our I’s to make sure everything is 100 percent accurate before we say anything.

SH: What is your formal education background?

Klein: I have a Bachelor’s of Science degree in broadcasting and film from Boston University.

SH: Did you get a Master’s or MBA?

Michael Klein: No, I figure my Master’s would be my job experience.

SH: What kind of position did you land right out of college?

Klein: While I was in college, I did some work—I interned at various producing some television shows, and I was a disc jockey in the Boston area for a while. My first job out of college I went to work in the cable field. I was hired to create the on-air look for three new channels that they were launching: one was called Bravo, one was called the Weekend Cinema, which is now American Movie Classics, and the other was called Escapade, which is now the Playboy channel. I got lucky to be part of it right when it was first starting to grow.

SH: Why did you decide to get a degree in broadcasting and film?

Klein: I was just always fascinated by the whole broadcasting field. I figure I was going to be either in front of the cameras or be behind the scenes. I’ve decided to put myself behind the scenes because I didn’t want to be a struggling actor and I figure I go for the money right off the bat.

SH: I bet you’re a big movie buff.

Klein: I am. I’ve always been a big movie buff.

SH: What’s the latest good movie you’ve seen?

Klein: I enjoyed—hysterically—the movie Knocked Up. I thought it was very funny.

SH: What are some classics that you enjoy?

Klein: I love old comedies. One of my favorite movies is Annie Hall. I also like serious dramas, like The Deer Hunter. The Godfather movies are obviously terrific films. My weakness is reality shows. I know it’s a bad thing to admit but I love reality shows. I just get a kick out of some of them.

SH: What is it that you like about them?

Klein: It’s just funny to see people in different situations and just kind of scratch your head and say, ‘Can these people really be real?’

SH: So, what’s it like working for Larry Flynt?

Klein: Working for Larry is terrific. As a boss, he’s great. He’s very smart and he’s also very funny; some people don’t realize he’s got a great sense of humor. He loves talking politics and it’s very interesting to listen to that. Larry and my son get along great. I have a 12-year-old kid and he thinks the world of my son and my son thinks the world of him; they get along terrifically.

SH: Are you currently married?

Klein: I’m divorced.

SH: How long have you been divorced?

Klein: Seven years.

SH: And, how old are you?

Klein: I'm 49.

SH: What are some of your hobbies? What do you like to do in your free time?

Klein: I like to ski; I’m an avid skier. I ride my bicycle; I play tennis. I’m pretty good at tennis, which is pretty much any Jewish boy growing up in New York is what all their mothers want them to do is play tennis because they figure you can’t get hurt that way.

SH: Based on your education, work experience and your responses, it seems like you’re a technologist. What do you think is the next avenue in which adult content, or content in general, can be massively introduced to people?

Klein: There are various avenues. One of the things we’re going to be launching soon is a burn to DVD, so that people can burn their own DVDs at home on their computer.

SH: I believe Vivid already has that function…

Klein: There are forms of it out there right now but it’s not as strong. It still takes 4-5 hours to download and it’s not that attractive to people, so you need a quicker process and we’re working on that. Mobile phones: It’s a delivery platform that’s big in Europe; it really hasn’t caught on here in the U.S., mostly because there’s no age verification in place and that has to be put into place first, but that could be another method. Eventually, what’s going to happen is the Internet and the TV is just going to combine and you’re going to be watching your television and looking at your email in the same unit and that’s basically going to be the method of delivery that’s going to be the most profitable going forward.

All the televisions are going to be set that way. You have TVs coming out in 2008, 2009 that all of them have to have cable card slots, so you don’t even have to have a cable box put on top of your TV. You put a digital card into the slot in your TV and that’s it. You have various different IP TV technologies out there right now; I don’t think any of them has really developed into anything strong but they will be.