65,000 print subscribers (on par with the Boston Globe!) and 300% revenue growth last year suggests they're doing okay.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91502944/the-onion-most-innovati...

▲

busterarm 4 hours ago | parent [-]

When I worked at an ISP we had a lot of landline phone customers too and I'm sure they will continue to for a long time.

At least as long as their current customers keep breathing.

You can run a business off inertia/nostalgia for quite a long time.

People are confused about what I said. Success and Relevance are not the same thing. National Lampoon still has a business too, but I doubt that any of you have seen a new movie of theirs since Van Wilder/Repli-Kate came out in 2002.

A million dollars a year for a domain name is quite a lot. And I know what was paid for the sales of some big (in the keyword marketing/leadgen space) domain names...Sale, not lease.

▲

floren 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> You can run a business off inertia/nostalgia for quite a long time.

They only reintroduced print editions in 2024 after an 11 year break. Those 65,000 print subscribers are all people who decided they wanted to start paying money for The Onion in the last 2 years.

▲

dougb5 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If "people are confused" I think it's because you are rejecting empirical evidence that The Onion is relevant without offering any counter-evidence of your own. Is it possible it's just no longer relevant to you personally? (I myself am a proud print subscriber...)

	▲	busterarm 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Yeah some people do like feet.

▲

mattkrause 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Inertia doesn't really seem like it would lead to 300% YoY growth...

OTOH, National Lampoon hasn't put out a magazine since 1998 or a film since 2015 (and that was a retrospective on the magazine).

I guess I'd agree that, in absolute terms, The Onion might be less of a cultural force than it was in 2005 (say), but part of that has to be that culture is a lot more long-tailed: music, movies, and TV aren't dominated by a handful of works either.

▲

shagie 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The context for those print subscribers is that this isn't a "had the subscription since the 2010s" They discontinued their print edition in 2013.

Those 65,000 subscriptions are all people who subscribed since 2024 when it was relaunched.

It may be nostalgia, but it is not people who forgot that they had a subscription. It's people who signed up to pay money in the last two years.

▲

evan_ 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> People are confused about what I said.

Because you're saying very confusing things. What does National Lampoon have to do with anything?