National Lampoon Woes Won't Hurt Harvard Mag

Although The National Lampoon humor magazine is axing 150,000 subscriptions in a desperate attempt to bring itself into the black, the move is expected to have little or no effect on the Harvard Lampoon, which it substantially supports.

Long a victim of financial hard times, The National Lampoon decided to cut the subscriptions from discount sources like the Publisher's Clearinghouse, which are less profitable for the magazine. After the cut, paid subscriptions are now down to 300,000, but National Lampoon editor-in-chief Matty Simmons said the magazine hopes to recoup the lost subscriptions through newsstand sales, which generate the highest profit.

Founded in 1970 by graduates of the semi-secret, humor-oriented select social club, the New York-based National Lampoon has a contract to "pay the Harvard Lampoon a royalty for the use of the name 'Lampoon,"' Simmons said. But he refused to disclose the exact amount. Jessica Marshall '86, a Crimson editor who last month was named president of the Lampoon, put it more bluntly: "We just get a hefty check from them every month."

Biting The Hand...

Marshall expressed no concern over the large drop in subscriptions to the National Lampoon. "It's going to have very little effect on us," she said. "We've been making most of our money on their films."

National Lampoon's "Vacation" in 1983 and this year's "European Vacation" were both among the top ten box-office successes of the year, and "Animal House" has been immensely popular since its release in 1978. The royalties from cable TV and videocassette revenues of these films should far outweigh any losses due to subscription cuts, Marshall said.

And Marshall showed no sadness about the National Lampoon's woes, saying, "We would be overjoyed. We're sick of reading that magazine." The connections between the two publications are, she said, "solely monetary. We severed our spiritual connections a long time ago."

Agreed editor Simmons, "Money is our relationship. There is no other relationship."

According to Howard Jurofsky, who works in the National Lampoon business office, the drop in subscriptions does not signal bad times ahead, but will instead lead to an increase in revenues. "We're only dropping cheap subscriptions, Jurofsky says. "We'll get our subscribers back on the newsstands