I honestly do you think the decision was financial wise, it seems like the Muppet mindset had drop in popularity in recent years
(Preface: I don't know any real details regarding the merger despite being a part of TP). They use WordPress with no custom domain name, so I don't think money is/was the issue.
I think the problem (not for us, but for the owners) of the Mindset was the commitment to having something published every single day, in response to the fact that MC pretty much never published anything beyond the occasional review. I would suspect Ryan initially thought he would only have to do a couple of things each week and the rest will be supplemented by a small team of regulars and various reader contributions. When the latter well starts to dry up, that means the owner has to pick up the slack and that takes a toll.
When Jarrod took over and they made the jump to a new layout, they could post whatever-whenever, but it seemed like it was still mostly one person doing all the work and yeah, that gets tiring after awhile especially when bigger, more important life-things get in the way.