Just for the record I rescued the rest of the Duluth article from Google's cache. Not only is the price out of line, but King seems irrationally arrogant, screwing long time customers while giving new ones a break (I've moved out of several perfectly good apartments decades ago for exactly the same reason). King appears to me to be undergoing a slow, long term decay, while other syndicates like Pearls' U/Uclick offer generally more contemporary features and probably have a better handle on doing business in the 21st century.
As for me, I can't imagine taking an electronic device to read on the crapper...
.....It may sound like I’m penny-pinching, but automatic, recurring charges add up; think of your cable bill. Yearly, the Sunday “Blondie” alone comes out to $3,224.52, which could easily be allocated to other needs for the paper. (New digital emergency radio frequencies require us to buy a new police scanner that goes for $500.)
The bigger issue, though, is the explanation for why we’re paying so much, which I asked of the company’s salesman on his last visit here.
His answer? The DNT is a “legacy” subscriber, going back years (“Blondie” first appeared in the Duluth Herald and Sunday News Tribune in May 1937), and therefore subject to yearly price increases. In essence, our benefit for being a longtime customer is we get to pay more.
I suggested that maybe we should cancel it and start again, but he warned me I didn’t want to do that — and launched into the story of how the News Tribune once canceled “Beetle Bailey” and the Budgeteer picked it up and made hay out of it.
I don’t know if he heard me say that’s unlikely these days because the DNT and Budge are now the same company. Regardless, if he didn’t want to talk about it then, he certainly hasn’t made much of an effort since. For at least a year I have called and e-mailed him repeatedly with no call back. So has my assistant. Zip. No response to our director of finance, either.
Someone at the syndicate finally did acknowledge our flat-out notice to cancel, so that’s what will happen, effective this Wednesday. In its place will be “Pearls Before Swine,” a more contemporary, offbeat strip. (The first “Pearls Before Swine” Sunday strip will run Feb. 17.) It’s nothing like “Blondie,” but the syndicate that handles it is nothing like Blondie’s, either. To start with, they called us back. And they offered a very reasonable price, though that isn’t the only consideration. If you like it, tell us. If you don’t, tell us also, and we may consider something else.
Maybe the King Features guy will read this column and call us back to renegotiate. I hope he does. Blondie’s a nice lady, as I said, and doesn’t deserve the gold-digger rap. |
