Tuesday, January 02, 2024
Jeffrey Lindenblatt's Paper Trends: The 300 for 1998 -- Biggest Winners and Losers
For the third year in a row Dilbert is the biggest gainer with an increase of 28 papers. Dilbert in these past three years has gained a whopping 129 papers. Other big gainers this year include both Baby Blues and Jump Start which each added 9 papers. Baby Blues has been going up since its debut, but might have gotten a bigger push this year because of writer Jerry Scott’s new juggernaut strip Zits (see yesterday’s post).
In the case of Jump Start it seems that newspaper editors have made this this their first choice for an African American strip -- which unfortunately is how for many the calculation works -- it is the rare paper that offers multiple strips featuring minorities. There were three daily African American strips available in general syndication in 1998: Jump Start, Herb & Jamaal and Curtis. 64 of our papers ran at least one of them, but only nine ran two, and one ran all three -- that was the Detroit Free Press.
Here are the rest of the big gainers for this year:
Dilbert – 28
Baby Blues – 9
Jump Start – 9
Mutts - 6
Hi and Lois – 5
Marmaduke – 5
Crabby Road - 5
The biggest losers were a mix of new and old strips again. The biggest loser with 14 papers is the panel strip Beattle Blvd. New strips Tommy and Over the Hedge both lost six papers and Andy Capp continued its downfall with 5 more papers dropping the strip. Here is the list of strips that had 5 or more lost papers this past year.
Beattle Blvd - 14
Rubes – 6
Over The Hedge – 6
Tommy - 6
Wizard of Id – 5
Andy Capp – 5
Berry’s World – 5
This year adventure strips lost 9 spots with almost half of them due to the cancellation of the second version of Terry and The Pirates. Soaps stayed even, as Mary Worth picked up a couple of clients while others lost a few.
Adventure (-9)
Alley Oop – 30 (0)
Phantom – 13 (+1)
Mark Trail – 12 (0)
Amazing Spider-Man – 11 (-1)
Ghost Story Club – 10 (-1)
Dick Tracy – 8 (-1)
Brenda Starr – 7 (0)
Steve Roper and Mike Nomad – 3 (-1)
Mickey Mouse – 2 (0)
Rip Kirby – 2 (0)
Little Orphan Annie – 1 (-1)
Modesty Blaise – 1 (0)
Tarzan – 1 (0)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – 0 (-1)
Terry and The Pirates (ended) – 0 (-4)
Soap (0)
Mary Worth – 44 (+2)
Rex Morgan – 37 (0)
Judge Parker – 18 (-1)
Apartment 3-G – 9 (-1)
Gil Thorp – 8 (0)
Labels: Paper Trends
