A reporter who called asked me, "If you had to summarize in one sentence why MAD is going all-reprint, what would it be?" I said, "It's been losing money lately and the folks in charge of it didn't have a good idea how to stop that." That's kind of why most things in business end.
But of course, MAD is not going to disappear. It's too valuable a name to allow to disappear. It's a corporate asset. In a world where "branding" matters like just about nothing else, it's a brand that's very well-known and which has mostly-positive feelings surrounding it. If tomorrow, you and I were starting a new humor magazine, we'd kill to have a name for it with the notoriety and good reputation that MAD still has.
The problem is that the Powers That Are don't know how to get people who love MAD to actually purchase MAD. That's a very different problem from if you, let's say, were saddled with a failing business that nobody ever liked and would never miss. There's very little point in trying to save that business.
I'm going to guess that whoever made the decision about MAD didn't anticipate how big a news story it would be…and that a decision that to them was "Let's slash the budget for a while until we figure out what to do with it" has been viewed as "Let's kill a beloved national institution forever." That only serves to devalue that precious brand name. As I said in this piece, "It ain't good for them to tell the world that the name of MAD is of such low value that it can't even sell MAD."
I will further guess that within the vast Time-Warner empire, there are people at this very minute trying to formulate a plan whereby they can be the hero that rescues that beloved national (and merchandisable) institution.
And I'll bet there's some outside company — probably many outside companies — inquiring as to whether Time-Warner would sell or license MAD and Alfred to an outside publisher. The corporation probably won't make any such deal but in the past, outside interest has often caused someone to say to someone else, "Hey, if they think they can make money off this, we should be able to figure out a way to make money off this."
I'm not saying they'll find it and I'm certainly not saying I know what it is. I'm certainly-certainly not saying it — whatever "it" turns out to be — won't be worse for the collective experience known as MAD. It may slip into the hands of someone who doesn't "get" what was magic about MAD for 67 years and, in search of a similar business model where there isn't one, will say, "Gee, Game of Thrones is real successful now. Is there a way to make MAD more like Game of Thrones?"
But they're already talking about an annual issue of new material — a plan unmentioned in the letter they sent out last week to longtime contributors telling them the mag was going all-reprint. That's a start and I don't think we've seen the finish. Far from it.