Funny Pages

The New York Times, which as ME points out does not have a comics page, ran this article detailing the trend in newspapers to downsize the funny pages. Downsizing basically takes two forms, sometimes at the same time: shrink the size of the strips down and/or reduce the number of strips run. Every time the editors cut a strip, the devoted readers of that strip come out in force to try to save it.

Editors tend to view the comics page as a big money-sucking hole, and they're not entirely wrong. The newspapers have to pay for each strip they run, up to hundreds of dollars a week depending on the strip. Funny pages don't have ads, which is where much of a paper's revenue comes from. And not only do they have to pay for all of the content without offsetting it with ad revenue, they have to spend the money in ink and newsprint to have the pages printed. The only redeeming feature, from a business perspective, is that people buy the papers to get their funnies.

Not so anymore. I keep up-to-date on all of my favorite funnies and have spent a total of $1 on newspapers in the past year. I have my favorite comics delivered to me by email through www.comics.com and www.ucomics.com. I can get the ones I like without having to wade through the ones I don't find funny. I'm not squinting to read the shrunken print, nor do I risk having one of them cut. The irony is that the reason comics syndicates offer these free services is that newspapers still pay to run the strips in print.