Replacement comics "starter kits"

Factual Questions
1

I’m looking for a factual answer but if this should go in CS because it is comic strip related, then by all means…

Here’s the deal. With Foxtrot going from daily to weekly at the beginning of the year, the area papers needed to find another daily strip to fill the space. One local paper replaced Foxtrot with Pearls Before Swine. Another area paper already had Pearls in their line-up, and I’ve noticed that the paper that just started running Pearls is not running the same strips that the other paper is running. For instance, in the first week of January the plot for Pearls dealt with the guard duck and his non-anthropomorphic duck girlfriend. The paper that just started running Pearls ran a bunch of other strips that gave me the feel that they were trying to get new readers acquainted with the various Pearls characters, rather than just dropping them in to a running plot-line. And even though the non-anthropomorphic girl duck flew away at the end of last week, the two papers are still running different strips this week.

So my question is, is this the newspaper’s decision to run the alternate strips, or does the strip’s syndicate have a one or two week “starter kit” that they supply to the paper that allows new readers to get acclimated more easily to the new strip?

2

Why don’t you just write the newspaper and ask them?

3

Gee, I don’t know… because it’s a huge hassle to write to a newspaper and they probably won’t respond anyway, and someone here may already know and be able to answer pretty quickly? Isn’t that what this board is for?

4

I work at a newspaper, and I’ve never heard of a “starter kit.” I remember hearing that when FoxTrot was done, the syndicate would offer a different comic in its place, but I don’t remember which one. I know we’re running “Lio” now.

5

Here’s an article about what comics newspapers chose to replace FoxTrot.