Jeffrey Lindenblatt's Paper Trends: The 300 for 1995 -- Winners and Losers

With the end of the popular Far Side on January 1, 1995. the flood gates open for panel features to fill  the missing spot. The big winners were Close To Home with 30 papers coming on, and in second with 23 papers was Rubes. Dilbert was the biggest daily strip gainer with 20 papers. Fox Trot continues its growth with 17 papers. With the end of Winthrop in 1994,  some NEA clients opted to swap in Big Nate, but it  only gained 13 papers even though Winthrop had 33 papers in the last survey. The other 20 was taken up by other strips but most likely since NEA is owned by United Features at this time many picked up Dilbert. Here is the breakdown of the big gainers and how many papers each gained.

Close To Home – 30
Rubes - 23
Dilbert - 20
Fox Trot – 17
Big Nate - 13
Crankshaft - 9
For Better or For Worse – 9
Non Sequitur – 9
Quigmans – 9
Ballard Street - 7
Luann - 6
Baby Blues - 5
Family Circus – 5
Real Life Adventures – 5

The losers for 1994 were all strips that have been in the newspapers for over 15 years. With the influx of new strips, editors seemed open to experimentation. The biggest loser was Shoe with 13 papers. Coming in second with a 9 paper loss was Wizard of Id and in third continuing its downfall with 7 papers was Andy Capp. With so many panel holes to fill from Far Side, it’s really kind of amazing that there are panel features on this list at all, but somehow Marmaduke and Heathcliff managed to make the worst of a big opportunity. Here are the strips that lost 5 or more papers this year.

Shoe - 13
Wizard of Id – 9
Andy Capp – 7
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith - 6
Beetle Bailey – 6
Hagar The Horrible – 6
Marmaduke – 6
Tank McNamara – 6
Born Loser – 5
Farcus- 5
Heathcliff - 5
Hi & Lois – 5
Mary Worth – 5
Word For Word – 5

Both adventure and soap strips went down, with not a single gainer in the bunch. Adventure strips went down 10 percent and soaps went down 9 percent. Mary Worth and Rex Morgan, the top two soap strips, had the biggest losses in their category; that could be the same pattern that we see happening to long running strips in general this year. Here are the breakdowns:

Adventure
Alley Oop – 31 (-1)
Amazing Spider-Man – 15 (-3)
Mark Trail – 12 (0)
Phantom – 12 (-1)
Dick Tracy – 10 (-1)
Brenda Starr – 8 (-1)
Steve Roper and Mike Nomad – 6 (1)
Mickey Mouse – 5 (0)
Little Orphan Annie – 3 (0)
Rip Kirby – 2 (-2)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – 2 (-4)
Modesty Blaise – 1 (0)

Soap
Mary Worth – 47 (-5)
Rex Morgan – 38 (-3)
Judge Parker – 22 (0)
Apartment 3-G – 14 (-1)
Gil Thorp – 8 (-1)
Winnie Winkle – 2 (-1)
Heart of Juliet Jones – 1 (-1)