Jeffrey Lindenblatt's Paper Trends: The Three Hundred for 1979 -- The Rankings

This year newspapers.com lost ten papers that I had been tracking  – some might have gone out of business, others merged, yet others were alive and well but unavailable to the website at this time. Here are the papers that were counted last year but are lost for this year’s count:

Courier-Gazette (McKinney, TX), Eagle (Bryan, TX), Fort Collins Coloradoan (CO), Globe-Gazette (Mason City, IA), Mercury (Pottstown, PA), Plano Daily Star Courier (TX), Province (Vancouver, Canada), Valley Morning Star (Harlingen, TX), Vancouver Sun (Canada), Vernon Daily Record (TX).

This makes it a little complex to compare our first two years. Let’s take Beetle Bailey for instance. Last year it ran in 169 papers. This year the count was 171, apparently a modest gain of two papers. However, of the ten papers we lost this year, four of them ran Beetle Bailey. So if we were to assume that those papers kept bublishing and stuck with the strip, the actual gain was six. Of course there’s no guarantee they did that.

So what I did was to show for the top thirty features how many spots they lost due to those ten papers being unavailable, shown as a separate figure. That way you can take it into account with the net gain/loss figure.

Here’s an example of how to do so:

Born Loser shows a net loss of three papers this year. You can see also that it lost five papers through their loss from the statistics. Therefore the real gain/loss figure is actually somewhere between a net gain of two (if none of those papers had actually cancelled it or gone out of business) and a loss of three (if ALL of those papers really did go out of business or cancelled the strip).

Title	Rank	Rank Change from Previous Year	Spots Lost Due to 10 Missing Papers	Net Gain/Loss from Last Year	Total Number of Papers
Peanuts	1	Same	-5	2	191
Blondie	1	Plus 1	-4	4	191
Beetle Bailey	3	Same	-4	6	171
Doonesbury	4	Plus 1	-2	8	97
Andy Capp	5	Minus 1	-2	2	95
Frank and Ernest	6	Plus 1	-4	7	89
B.C.	7	Plus 1	-3	6	88
Dennis the Menace	7	Plus 4	-1	9	88
Wizard of Id	7	Plus 1	-2	5	88
Hagar the Horrible	10	Plus 4	-2	12	86
Born Loser	11	Minus 5	-5	-3	82
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith	12	Minus 1	-3	1	79
Mary Worth	13	Minus 1	0	0	78
Hi and Lois	14	Minus 1	-4	0	75
Family Circus	15	Plus 2	-2	8	69
Nancy	16	Minus 1	-2	-4	66
Berry's World	17	Plus 4	-3	3	60
Alley Oop	18	Minus 2	-4	-2	57
Archie	18	Plus 2	-1	-3	57
Rex Morgan	18	Same	-2	-3	57
Bugs Bunny	21	Plus 1	-2	-2	55
Amazing Spiderman	22	Plus 5	-2	6	54
Dick Tracy	22	Plus 1	-1	0	54
Steve Canyon	22	Minus 4	-2	-6	54
Eek and Meek	25	Plus 3	-3	3	49
Priscilla's Pop	26	Minus 3	-3	-4	48
Shoe	26	Plus 1	-2	3	48
Short Ribs	28	Minus 5	-4	-4	47
Winnie the Pooh	29	Rookie			46
Tiger	30	Plus 1	-1	2	45
Winthrop	30	Minus 7	-4	-6	45

 Here are the rest of the rankings. If you want detailed statistics, including which newspapers ran ech strip, email Allan (strippersguide@gmail.com) and he'll send you a PDF of the long version of the list.

Title	Total Number of Papers
Marmaduke	44
Buz Sawyer	42
Funky Winkerbean, Gasoline Alley	40
Tank McNamara	39
Captain Easy, Our Boarding House, Tumbleweeds	38
Judge Parker	37
Heathcliff, They’ll Do It Every Time	36
Funny Business, Herman, World’s Greatest  Superheroes	34
Redeye	30
Apartment 3-G, Dunagin’s People	29
Side Glances, Steve Roper and Mike Nomad	26
Donald Duck	25
Grin and Bear It, Mark Trail, Small Society	24
Broom-Hilda, Crock, Heart of Juliet Jones, Phantom, Ziggy	23
Cathy	22
Miss Peach	21
Kerry Drake, Hazel	20
Better Half	18
Graffiti, Incredible Hulk, Lockhorns, Momma, Ryatts	17
Jackson Twins, Scoops, Zoonies	16
Agatha Crumm, Rip Kirby	15
Garfield, Laff-A-Day, Mr. Tweedy, Sam and Silo	14
Charmers, Flintstones, Fred Basset, Henry, Love Is	13
Conan the Barbarian, Ripley’s Believe It or Not	12
Brenda Starr, Dondi, Ferd’nand, Inside Woody Allan, Joe Palooka, Mutt and Jeff, Winnie Winkle	11
Asterix & Obelix, Encyclopedia Brown, Gil Thorp, The Girls, Moose Miller, Nubbin, Rick O’ Shay	10
Animal Crackers, Ben Wicks, Motley’s Crew, Sporting Life, Star Hawks	9
Catfish, Ponytail	8
A Little Leary, Dr. Smock, Eb and Flo, Gordo, Little Orphan Annie, Mickey Mouse, Moon Mullins, Quincy, There Oughta Be A Law, Wee Pals, Wright Angles	7
According to Guinness, Little Woman, Lolly, Maestro & Amalita, Smith Family, Trudy	6
Amy, Boomer, Bringing Up Father, Captain’s Gig, Dr. Kildare, Flash Gordon, Gumdrops, Mr. Abernathy, Off the Record, Pavlov, Rivets, Scamp, Trim’s Arena, Tucker, Woody’s World	5
Belvedere, Boner’s Ark, Captain & Mandy, Emmy Lou, Flop Family, Frontiers of Science, Health Capsules, Johnny Wonder, Modesty Blaise, On Stage, Rooftop O’Toole, Stanley	4
Alex in Wonderland, Big George, Billy Bob, Brother Juniper, Carmichael, Casey, Circus of P.T. Bimbo, Don Q, Dropouts, Good News Bad News, Guindon, Kelly, Men and Women, Outcasts, Pixies, Simpkins, Spare Time Spanish, This Funny World	3
Basil, Citizen Smith, Clyde & Homer/Homer's Groaners, Freddy, Hap Hazard, Hubert, Kisses, Laugh Time, Luther, Mandrake the Magician, Norbert, Our Fascinating Earth, Queenie, Playing Better Golf with Jack Nicklaus, Sportsman’s Digest, Sports Quiz, Treadwells, Word A Day, Wordplay	2
Another View, As You Were, Benchwarmer’s Sports Trivia, Brick Bradford, Castaways, Ching Chow, Downstown, Elwyn, Fenwick, Figments, F. Stop Fitzgerald, Homemade Brownies, Jeff Hawke, Lansky’s Look, Laughs From Europe, Mark Trail’s Outdoor Tips, Missing Links, Murphy’s Law, Now Society, Pet Set, Popeye, Pot Shots, Quickies, Rocket Shots, Sal A. Mander, Secret Agent Corrigan, Selling Short, Skipping Classes, Smart Chart, Smokey Says, Sorehead, Splitsville, Stan Smith’s Tennis Class, Stoker the Broker, Strictly Business, Strike Three, Tarzan, The Bryds, Today’s World, Toppix, Travels With Farley, You’re Getting Closer	1