dagblog - Comments for "Mad Magazine Is Over"

It was suspected that David

PeraclesPlease — Sat, 06 Jul 2019 08:02:51 +0000

It was suspected that David Letterman was actually Alfred E. Neumann barely disguised, but since even Letterman's retired, we're all getting old...
Remember "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad World"?

After this, Marvel announced

Orion — Sat, 06 Jul 2019 02:26:31 +0000

In reply to Aww, sad.

After this, Marvel announced it is bringing back Crazy, a Mad style magazine they did back in the 1970s. Marvel is subsidiary of Disney and is likely insulated from a lot of the stuff discussed above.

Yeah, I find these articles

PeraclesPlease — Fri, 05 Jul 2019 21:04:08 +0000

In reply to In my reading it seems as

Yeah, I find these articles about how vinyl is staging a comeback or people are buying dumb phones again, but the total revenue in comparison is a pittance.

In my reading it seems as

ocean-kat — Fri, 05 Jul 2019 20:48:18 +0000

In reply to No, no, you are right. People

In my reading it seems as though there was a large decline in reading with the advent of TV but it stabilized and there even seems to be an increase in reading over the last couple of decades. Podcasts are proliferating in numbers but in terms of ad dollars it's a small sliver of the market.

Ad revenues for podcasts overall are set to double by 2020” with predications that ad spending “will go up from an estimated $314 million in 2017 to $659 million in 2020.

That may seem to be large but in the face of the billions in digital ad dollars it's a pittance.

Google represents 33 percent of the world’s $223.7 billion in digital ad revenue this year.

Facebook is a distant second at $36 billion this year, or nearly $40 billion less than Google.

Excellent point well-made. I

artappraiser — Fri, 05 Jul 2019 18:50:10 +0000

In reply to Aww, sad.

Excellent point, well made Michael. I actually thought Mad Magazine was over long time ago, there were several big auctions like this one 1992, somehow I wrongly presumed from that it was shutting down back then. It's 2019! Bart is actually the new old timey character like Alfred E. Neuman once was, where most adults get the message of what type of attitude he represents, takes his place. Bart is 30 years old now! He was followed by others like the South Park kids and Beavis and Butthead. Alfred is actually ancient history, like his physical twin Howdy Doody, will really die with the older boomers.

Aww, sad.

Michael Maiello — Fri, 05 Jul 2019 15:07:00 +0000

In reply to Mad Magazine Is Over

Aww, sad. Now where will I get my snappy comebacks to stupid questions?

No, no, you are right. People

Orion — Fri, 05 Jul 2019 09:19:06 +0000

In reply to You're looking at a failing

No, no, you are right. People are still reading. Berkeleyside seems to be one of the huge providers of news in the Bay Area. Yet, the model seems to not make money, despite still being something people digest regularly. It's a really odd problem - and your explanation that Facebook and Google are eating up ad revenue has a lot to do with it.

It's possible that podcasts are proliferating because it's a format that somehow works outside of the monopoly you just pointed out?

If tech companies really are deplatforming people on questionable basis, demonetizing publishing by usurping its profits, employing people "precariously" through various apps, then Elizabeth Warren's proposal of breaking them up is a very good idea.

Also, the rise of Brexit and nationalism worldwide, in tandem with a totalitarian tech industry, should make people question what the fall of the Soviet Union was really caused by. Transnationalism might not be something humans are quite prepared for and private industry is fully prepared to create its own form of totalitarianism. People who said "absolute power corrupts absolutely" in the 1990s weren't just deflecting from communism's failures.

You're looking at a failing

ocean-kat — Fri, 05 Jul 2019 00:55:33 +0000

In reply to Mad Magazine Is Over

You're looking at a failing economic model and concluding it's failing because people are reading significantly less. The reality is more people are reading now than ever.

A study out today from the Pew Research Center offers some vindication for the younger set. Millennials are reading more books than the over-30 crowd, Pew found in a survey of more than 6,000 Americans.

People are reading on their smartphones, and they are reading a lot. A new Pew study finds high levels of engagement among readers of longer news articles—those that run at least 1,000 words long, by Pew’s definition.

The problem is that Google and Facebook are getting the vast majority of digital ad revenue just for pointing people to content and the content producers are finding it hard to get paid for their work. There has been some pushback and people are beginning to realize they have to help the content producers find a new economic model. New York Times subscription growth soars tenfold, adding 132,000, after Trump’s win and other news publications have added subscribers. Despite this the problem is a long way from being solved.