Tis the season!

King Features Syndicate President T.R. “Rocky” Shepard, said, “for almost 100 years, King Features Syndicate has assisted newspapers in attracting new readers and incremental ad revenue by providing appealing, premium content. As our newspaper partners face new challenges in the ever-changing media landscape, we are continually looking to develop innovative ways to help them reach their business goals - which still remain the same as ever: attracting new readers and driving ad sales.”

Currently there are three newspapers using Comics Kingdom: The Albany Times Union (which was one of the beta testing newspapers), The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and The Oklahoman/ NewsOK.

According to King Features and The Times Union General Manager, Comics Kingdom almost doubled the traffic to the comic section and increased the average amount of time spent on the site - a key metric to increasing advertising revenue. King maintains that the beta test with the Times Union resulted in an 86 percent increase in ad inventory.

King Features launches has shortly released this new product on the heels of United Media’s launch of their new comics.com redesign - which moved away from a subscription model and greatly opened up their comics archives for free.

No reason is offered for the abrupt change, but they are offering an email address for readers to sign up for updates regarding their comics and also another email address for readers to send comments regarding the change.

Fort Wayne, Indiana’s Journal Gazette will add “The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee” and “Bound and Gagged” to their daily comics pages.

When asked why CNS was sold, Copley Press Executive Vice President Harold W. Fuson replied: “We made a decision a few years ago to focus on our flagship — The San Diego Union-Tribune. Copley News Service played a much different role in our company when we had a group of newspapers spread across several states.”

The troubled economy was also a factor — albeit a lesser one, said Fuson. “In an economy like this, you have to be more careful about how you use your resources,” he told E&P. “You have to focus even more sharply on your core business.”

Creators President Richard S. Newcombe said, “Copley sells to many smaller newspapers. That would open new markets for us.”

“Comics Kingdom™ marries premium content, unique interface design and revenue-generating tools that allow online publishers to respond to the business requirements demanded today,” said Marc Osofsky, vice president of marketing at Optaros, the technology company that built the service for King Features. “Furthermore, it shifts the power to consumers, allowing them to drive the comic content that rises to the top. This type of Web 2.0 functionality satisfies the comic appetite of online users, driving repeated interactions on a daily basis.”

An example of the app can be found at The Albany Times Union web site.

Fleen: Premise: A common impression of newspaper comics is that they’re a passive sort of medium; a few people (mostly older readers) seem to passionately care about a couple (mostly decades-old) strips, and furiously vote for them every time there’s a reader’s poll of what to keep and what to ditch. Most people read what happens to be on the page, unless it’s truly awful. Somewhere between the national headlines and the idiot daughter of Dear Abby are the comics and you just kinda read them.

Webcomics, on the other hand, require you to actively go to a site to read, so presumably the readers aren’t reading a strip just because it’s there. Do you think those impressions are true? And if so, which audience do you want in the long term?

Kellett: By their very nature, webcomics have a “selective” audience - in the sense that that audience has selected your comic as being worthy of the effort to seek out every day. It is a noticeably different dynamic than the casual newspaper reader, who follows Beetle Bailey because the Features Editor of their paper thinks they should.

But now, look at how that relates to making a living. If a webcomic can reliably monetize 5-10% of it’s audience, a newspaper comic can probably only monetize 1-5%. Where the big difference comes in is scale, I think. Most mid-level comic strips probably still outstrip P-A in daily readership, I would hazard to guess. But guess who’s making a better living off their work?

So, I’ve tried to thread the needle between the two: use the syndicate to find a broader audience, then capitalize on my web presence in a way Ziggy can’t. As I’m increasingly finding, though, it’s probably a failed strategy. If you’re only going to appear on the web, it’s probably better to run your own show.

UPDATE: As readers have pointed out, this interview is two years old. Not sure why it came up in my google alerts as something recent, but it did. My apologies to all.

Thanks Scott for sharing!