MAD “Death-Watch”…by-the-numbers and by-the-rumors
It’s no secret that MAD Magazine has been in trouble for awhile. Of course, magazines in general have been hemorrhaging readers big-time over the past few decades, but MAD is near the head (“foot?”) of that pack, losing over 90% of its paid circulation since the high of 2.1 million for the year 1974. During the past decade, they seemed to have settled into a stable (if dismal) range of 200,000 plus-or-minus 10,000…that is, until this past year. They’ve just published their latest annual Statement of Circulation (MAD#497, p. 6): the average per-issue Total Paid Circulation is way down to 170,000…with the “issue closest to filing date” coming in even worse at 167,000!
Yikes: that’s a 15% drop in just one year…with an additional 2% drop for the final month, just as a little extra “kick in the balls!”
(I knew this past year would probably be awful for MAD when, around last Christmas-time, they were calling up freelancers all over the country – including me, before I became The Felonious MAD-Blogger to them — and asking us to “check” to see if the magazine was getting onto our local newsstands. Not a good sign.)
Now for the rumor I’ve heard from half a dozen separate sources this year: MAD #500 will be the last one ever; 3 more issues and they’re calling it quits, at a nice, round number. I point out again that this is only RUMOR, nothing definitive, nothing from anyone actually in the position to “pull the plug.” But, still… (And all of the times I heard this rumor were before these latest worsening circulation numbers came out…and also before the financial-sector crisis that lead to the current general economic meltdown.)
Up Next: Some interesting things this graph says about “What the hell happened to MAD?”