It’s been reported that MAD magazine will drop from a monthly magazine to quarterly after its April edition. According to Newsarama the magazine will expand to 56 pages from 48. This is sad news; Mad has been declining in circulation for years, and struggling (as have so many publications). Once completely advertising-free, to show its integrity and independence from potential advertiser influence, Mad has been running ads for years (sometimes hard to distinguish from the regular content), and trying edgier content to attract younger readers.

I think Mad suffers from the aging-demographic problem faced by, say, radio stations: do you grow older with your original, loyal fan base (with Mad, the Baby Boomers — like myself — who read it as kids in the late 1950s-early 1960s), and later be seen by younger people as something for the “older” crowd? Or keep changing to stay with the original demographic and lose the original fans?

Mad was hit with a double-whammy: the original base felt they “outgrew” Mad and stopped subscribing, but their kids still saw it as their parents’ magazine. Mad has changed its sense of humor to the crasser sensibilities of these times, which put off some of those older readers, but hasn’t sufficiently overcome the old image to attract enough of the younger readers.

And then add in the economic stresses hitting all magazines, and it’s a bleak picture.

I’ve contributed a handful of times to Mad (as an artist and writer), and still read it. I hope the new quarterly version gives it enough of a financial reprieve to keep going a lot longer.

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