from www.thedeal.com – Playboy Enterprises Inc. is on the auction block, and reports suggest peer Maxim magazine may join it following Cerberus Capital Management LLC’s takeover of parent Alpha Media Group Inc. from Quadrangle Group. The deal led paidContent’s Rafat Ali [pictured] to float the idea of merging the two.

Ali’s rationale for such a deal is as follows: “Both are strong brands internationally, and both have done various line extensions with varying degrees of success. Dressing them up together might help make a better case for a buyer, especially an international one (a Russian billionaire, perhaps?).”

Although Cerberus is a distressed investor, Ali doesn’t believe it is interested in holding on to Maxim, and therefore not up to the task of attempting to merge the two troubled men’s magazines.

Meanwhile, The Deal Pipeline lists two likely private equity bidders for Playboy: Providence Equity Partners Inc. and Apollo Management LP. Providence, with its media focus, might have the wherewithal to take on Ali’s challenge of merging the two.

Another PE buyer with the chops to take on such a task is Great Hill Partners LLC, which restructured video game site IGN.com into a Maxim-like property before selling it to News Corp. (NASDAQ:NWSA) in 2005. But the Boston-based firm may not have the firepower to purchase both given Playboy’s rumored price tag of $300 million.

Although finding a buyer may be the hard part, the rationale for Ali’s suggestion certainly makes sense. The two outlets could share a stable of writers for both print and online, and Playboy’s print stories could be leveraged on a Maxim Web site that is office friendly for lunchtime reading.

Whoever purchases the properties, however, would need to revamp the pair’s Internet properties. The two offer an opportunity to create a prime-time and after-dark schism where Maxim houses the less racy fair and Playboy houses the centerfolds of the proverbial girl next door that would not pass muster in most offices.

Additionally, the two brands could naturally be used as aggregators pointing readers to related content — think of The Huffington Post model, which offers some original content and a lot of related links elsewhere. In the case of Maxim, there are any number of guy-related blogs to aggregate about cars, sports, movies, video games and technology. Equally, there is even more racy fair on the Internet for Playboy to aggregate.

But what’s the odds it will happen? Ali concludes: “My own sense is that nothing will come of it, but there’s enough potential there that some people have been thinking along these lines.” – Matthew Wurtzel