Florida Times-Union to drop 8 comics
Skip to commentsThe Florida Times-Union has announced that it will be cutting eight comics from their line up to save money. To accomplish the cutting, they’re opening up a poll asking for reader input to judge from a pool of 15 which one’s should go. The comics in the poll include: Andy Capp, Beetle Bailey, Brevity, Cathy, Dennis the Menace, Family Circus, For Better or For Worse, Hagar the Horrible, Hi and Lois, The Lockhorns, Luann, Marmaduke, Marvin, The Middletons, Barney Google and Snuffy Smith and Watch Your Head.
In answering a pre-conceived question about how the comics were selected to be on the list, Lifestyle editor Jeff Reece writes,
All of the strips have fans. If we drop even one, we will hear from the folks who really loved that particular strip. So there is no way we will be able to make everyone happy.
We wanted to make the list large enough to give readers some choice but keep it to a manageable size. There were a number of reasons why these strips were picked for the list. Thirteen of them finished in the bottom half of an online poll we conducted in 2005. One other, For Better or For Worse, is essentially in reruns. The other two, which were added in recent years, have received an unusual amount of criticism from readers since they were introduced.
As of this writing, the poll did not appear to be working. Several of the paper’s readers left comments to the announcement complaining that the link to the poll responded back “You have already submitted this form.”
Larry Levine
Jimmy Delach
Monty Rohde
Jimmy Delach
Monty Rohde
Margaret Shulock
Sharon Kern
MARY SMITH