Commodore Computing International vs ZZAP!64

Some time in April 1986, Anthony Jacobson, the publisher of COMMODORE COMPUTING INTERNATIONAL sat down and wrote a blistering editorial for COMPUTER TRADE WEEKLY which tore into rival Commodore 64 magazine ZZAP!64. The article presumably did what was intended, which was to generate some interest in CCI and provoke a response from ZZAP editor Roger Kean.

The original CTW article is lost to the internet but Roger Kean, who was always up for a scrap, used chunks of it in his own editorial rebuttal for the June 1986 issue of ZZAP. The extracts he uses make Anthony Jacobson's piece sound bilious and florid:

The issue I have to hand of Zzap 64 has 37 pages of reviews and 14 pages of competitions... (not so much yawn as 'yuk')... Magazines of the style of Crash and Zzap have brought the general regard for the home computer to the elevated level of the hula hoop . . .  Comic mags.... Are little more than compendia of infantile level game reviews, frequently ridiculing any other aspects of computing... There is always an audience for simple-minded pap... But such magazines do not live in a vacuum; they harm everybody's interests in anything but the short term... The nasty trivialisation that the Crash-style stable offers, like a fluff covered lollypop, is, I regret to think, no doubt good for the bank balance of it's publishers, but for the UK computer industry it is corrupting and dangerous... Poor Commodore User losing circulation in its gaderine rush to follow Zzap is an example of what can happen to anyone when the rot sets in... A certain kind of magazine should only be handled with rubber gloves and antiseptic fire tongs. No one forces them to publish contagious rubbish but magazines that do so are not simply to be described as boring, but debasing the values of their readership... and polluting the social and commercial environment in which we live and work.

It's not easy for me to be objective. I was a CRASH kid so I tend to side with ZZAP in this battle. Also, I don't care about being objective. CCI was a terrible publication. And yet it ran from 1980 to 1990, a longer period than ZZAP managed. The magazine must have been delivering something its readers wanted, although, to me, it looks like a cynical exercise in spending as little as possible on editorial quality in order to extract maximum revenue. The archive of COMMODORE COMPUTING INTERNATIONAL is not complete which makes it difficult to track the progress of the war. 

The Gathering Storm

ZZAP!64 launched in May 1985 and the same month's CCI also survives so it's possible to compare the two. ZZAP, edited at this point by Chris Anderson, cost 95p and weighed in at 99 editorial (non-advertising) pages out of a total page count of 132. CCI had 84 pages, 51 of them editorial, and cost £1. CCI was edited by Susan Pearce and Anthony Jacobson was the publisher, he gives us the benefit of his thoughts in the opening editorial comment. Ironically, he's writing about games and seems quite in favour of them:

In a recent survey of CCI readership we found that, after programming, the most frequent and time intensive use of the computer was for games. Does that suggest that the extraordinary speed, power and scope of the Commodore computer is being thrown away as just a games machine? No, I think it means that even if 'serious' applications such as database management and word-processing — two other very popular uses — are strong interests that the computer game has also a very wide appeal to a large and varied audience.

A period of escalating tension precedes any war. In this case the first rumblings come in February 1986 after Anthony Jacobson has seen the effect ZZAP is having on his circulation. Games are, suddenly, not such a good thing when he feels the chill of competition:

The faithful CCI reader -and there are many who have been with us since CCI started nearly four years ago as the first real Commodore magazine -will recognise this combination as the unique CCI mix. You see have the strange idea - strange anyway to some magazines - that you should be treated as an intelligent human being who is interested in not just one thing but everything you can do with your computer. We believe that you want more than just kids' stuff, that you want the fun and the power that really understanding the computer can give you.

The same month, ZZAP launched a gossip column called Shadowspiel. CCI staff writer Francis Jago rated an early mention: 

Word reaches the Shadow via the global village, that Commodore Computing International journalist Francis Jago, has a rather unusual mark on his person -a tattoo of Felix the cat tastefully adorns the left hand 'side' of his posterior. In fact Mr Jago recommends such dermatological decoration -'You ought to get it done, it's more trendy than an earring', he endorsed, and added, as he ruefully massaged the aforementioned region, 'but it doesn't half give you gip'. Thankfully, Mr Jago isn't anything like his tattoo—a pain in the — ask anyone who knows him.

A word about gossip columns. A lot of magazines ran them. Two that spring to mind are Gremlin in SINCLAIR USER and Hot Shots in COMMODORE USER. Chris Anderson really liked them. He'd run one called Whispering Horace in PERSONAL COMPUTER GAMES and credited early ZZAP news stories to Edward Banger. Most of these columns were pseudo-anonymous and regular readers tended to know which member of the editorial team was behind them; ZZAP's the Shadow was Gary Liddon and Julian Rignall (probably). The mention of Francis Jago is interesting because his Inside Information column was about to go from being credited to him to being written anonymously under the name Felix. I never much liked gossip columns. Most of the time I thought they were pretty weak and the quality of the column tended to vary with the material the writer had available. At best gossip columns were a way to comment on the comings and goings of the industry and at worst they provided a cowardly way to to settle scores and snipe at people, in a way that made it clear what was being discussed but provided a fig leaf of legal cover. I guess magazines liked them because they were a quick and easy way to fill space and they helped build a sense of community and were a way of engaging with industry insiders. 

A lot of the CCI/ZZAP war takes place in the pages of the Shadow/Felix. I'll gloss over that side because it's drivel, and difficult to judge the tone. Is it good natured matey backslapping? Is it more pointed and nasty bitching? I find it hard to tell. COMMODORE USER, CCI, and ZZAP all used their gossip columns for both at various points. Take the Shadow piece above about Francis Jago. Is it a joke? Is it true? Is it something Jago joked about to Liddon to see if he'd print it? Is it a way of spoiling Jago's forthcoming rebranding as Felix? I don't know. It's when the fight spills out into the more general editorial pages that I think you get a real sense of how the two magazines felt about each other.

Their Finest Hour

ZZAP!64 
July 1986

ZZAP became Britain's best-selling Commodore 64 magazine in May 1986, with an Audit Bureau of Circulations certified sales figure of 40,603. CCI don't reveal their ABC figure. We hit a gap in the CCI archive at this point and the next existing issue is July 1986. The same month that ZZAP took Anthony Jacobson's "fluff covered lollypop" comment and used it to inspire a great piece of Oliver Frey artwork that also ties in cleverly with the release of golf game Leader Board. 

ZZAP! owes a deep debt of gratitude to the publisher of CCI for pointing out to us that there’s more money to be made from talking about lollipops (even fluffy ones) than from boring old computer games.

The July issues of both magazines also contain reports on the 7th Official Commodore Show, which took place in May 1986. Amusingly CCI were on stand 104, Newsfield on 105, and COMMODORE USER were on stand 109. I like to imagine them all staring at each other like cats. More amusingly the show took place over the weekend of 10th May, the June issue of ZZAP (the one with Roger Kean's editorial) had gone on sale on 8th May; and would have been the one Newsfield were selling from their stand. 

Julian Rignall wrote about the show for ZZAP: 

ZZAP! took a stand (under the Newsfield Publications heading) and the crew found themselves just around the corner from Commodore Computing International and across the way from Commodore User! It must have irked the CCI people on their stand because they were running a video advertising current and forthcoming programs, and all we could hear were the words, ‘ZZAP! said this . . . ’ C’est la vie.
...
On Sunday, I spent most of the time at the ZZAP! stand. Whatever the disappointments generally, everybody at the ZZAP! stand, ourselves and the public alike, seemed very happy indeed. Alright, it’s easy to accuse me of being biased, but we did sell an awful lot of our fluff covered lollipops and all the rest of the regalia that transforms an intelligent computer owner into a gibbering idiot at a cost to CCI's circulation rates

ZZAP!64 
July 1986 page 85

Julian Rignall also wrote about chatting to Frances Jago about the Amiga, and ZZAP printed a photo of the "CCI hack journalist," and described him in the caption as "(now ex-CCI) newshound. Could it be true? Not according to the masthead for the July 1986 issue of CCI, where Francis Jago was listed as assistant editor. He was working under Anthony Jacobson who now sat in the twin chairs of editor and publisher; at some point in the missing issues between February and July Susan Pearce was defenestrated.

The bulk of  CCI's guide to the Commodore Show is what looks like a reprint of the official brochure. Under each company's name is their stall number, a brief self written thumbnail description, and their contact details. Newsfield are at the bottom of page 24 and the company has no thumbnail description. It appears to have been deliberately edited out. This manages to be both childish and ineffectual; ZZAP's got 40,000 readers, more people know what Newsfield does on a month-by-month basis than would read it in CCI. It probably made Anthony Jacobson feel better. July 1986 was also the month that Jacobson volleyed back his response to Roger Kean's June editorial. There was no news of a surrender:

A final note. Another Commodore magazine has accused me of launching ‘a blistering attack’ upon them. They've challenged me to make my remarks ‘public’. They claim I won’t because it would be like having, as they put it, ‘a lion by the tail’, also claiming that I have insulted their readers!

I admit did write that some magazines are like ‘a fluff covered lollipop’ and that they should be handled with rubber gloves and fire tongs for fear of contamination . . . I certainly wrote it publically enough in “Computer Trade Weekly” and not in CCl, because I was commenting on a matter concerning the Commodore market which I believe they are damaging.

I stand by every word I said, for I do believe that a magazine that exploits its readers damages everybody. Further, I will say that such magazines are in reality treating their readers with contempt and are a waste of the trees chopped down to make their paper. If they don’t want their magazines accused of being ‘fluff covered lollipops’ in style, perhaps they should study CCI with attention, the kind of respect we have for our readers might rub off on them.

Newsfield also get three mentions in the two page "Felix" section. One which changes the name of ZZAP's Gary Liddon to Gay Liddon and one about love bites on about Julian Rignall's neck. (This is why gossip columns are rubbish). The only story of any interest is about CRASH:

Someone who sounds like a moronic, introverted 13 1/2 year old keeps phoning our office and claiming to work for ‘Crash’ (or could it be ‘Trash’?). Anyway said ‘journalist’ mumbles, believe it or not that CCI is nicking the editorial of said Sinclair rag and hangs up.

Did this actually happen or was Anthony Jacobson just hoping to provoke another response from Newsfield and get more attention in the process? The gaps in the CCI archive make it next to impossible to check to see if the magazine really was plagiarising the editorial of CRASH.

The Grand Alliance

August 1986. ZZAP mentions CCI once. Here it is. 

ZZAP!64
August 1986 page 3

Meanwhile over in the pages of CCI, Anthony Jacobson was still mad, writing in his editorial:

I have to say that the cover of Zzap (now they admit, universally called "The fluff covered lollypop") is their best yet. 

You may not think that's a great recommendation but we're glad they've finally moved away from their "infant school comic" style. We all have to grow up sometime, painful though it may be.

Everyone at CCI likes the cover. Well, we should, shouldn't we? After all, it's a CCI idea they have used. As down there in Ludlow they're so short of ideas, perhaps we could run a CCI competition to help... Maybe they'd like a new name too... Any suggestions? 

Meanwhile, down in the masthead, Francis Jago is suddenly credited as The late Francis Jago. Three more mentions of ZZAP in the Felix column. One is the picture at the top of this page showing Felix chopping up ZZAP (that's the cover of the July 1985 issue by the way). Then there's a story about the authors of the Shadow column being two "gay blades" and a 150 word piece of stair wit from Anthony Jacobson who took two months to notice that Roger Kean wrote the phrase "lion by the tail," when he meant "tiger by the tail." 

September 1986. Number of mentions of CCI in ZZAP, zero. Number of mentions of ZZAP in CCI, two. Mention one comes in another editorial comment from Anthony Jacobson: 

We're happy that the people at ZZAP are suggesting to their readers that they should read CCI, even to learn it by heart! It shows very agreeable humility when one magazine acknowledges the superiority of another.
What worries us is that 'the fluffy lollipop factory', as we hear they now call their magazine, is in such dire straits that it cannot afford to buy a Commodore compatible printer. That's a very sad state of affairs. I think CCI readers might like to help them by sending them any old printers that are lying in the cupboard and if anyone has any old ribbons too, 'the fluffy lollipop might be grateful.
As for new names for ZZAP (I asked for in CCI August) we received many suggestions but as CCI is a magazine that is read by all ages and sexes, we don't feel it would be proper to print them. Thanks for your efforts anyway.

Anthony Jacobson is amused, not angry. His emotional state definitely can't be represented like this

COMMODORE COMPUTING INTERNATIONAL
September 1986 page 30

There's another cartoon on the Felix page. Observe how a different pen and handwriting has written "ZURRPS LUDLOW & CO" on the cartoon, as if CCI didn't expect their readers to understand a reference to the thing they've been blethering on about for three months.

This issue also sees the beginning of a run of Felix stories about Thalamus, the Newsfield owned software company. CCI keep calling the company Thanatos. This could be a joke name, except the magazine also keeps mentioning that Thanatos is Greek for death, as if it's patting itself on the back for being so jolly clever. I suspect someone misheard the name Thalamus over the phone.

October 1986. Number of mentions of CCI in ZZAP, one. A reader's letter. 

ZZAP!64
October 1986 page 8

Let's hope Anthony Jacobson doesn't read it. The last time ZZAP wrote something about CCI he sulked for three months and then closed his detective agency. ZZAP gets one mention in the Felix column. A bizarre piece about the 1983 film Demons of Ludlow. It's funny because ZZAP is produced in Ludlow? Still the article does its job, which is to fill 200 words of space. There are also two mentions of Thalamus. One about Gary Liddon again. He has found Mr Right (Andrew Wright, of Thalamus you see) with whom he is 'intimately' (their quote marks) associated. There's another repeat of the Thalamus/Thanatos mix up in a piece which includes this bizarre line:

Larry, reeking of Chanel No 99, whispered that he was boosting Sanxions - a game that has been condemned by Mrs Thatcher and President Reagan as obscene, nonproductive and likely to put all the Whites in South Africa out of a job (sob!).

Two pages later is a straight preview of Sanxion. It's so out of kilter with the rest of the tone of CCI's coverage of Newsfield/ZZAP/Thalamus that I can't work out how it got there. I could believe it was editorial paid for by Thalamus.

The Hinge of Fate

Number of mentions of CCI in ZZAP, zero. Number of mentions of ZZAP/Thalamus in CCI, just one in a Felix report on the PCW show:

I have to offer apologies to everyone. CCI committed the heinous sin of putting a tacky game on one of the sexy new 64s on our stand at PCW. It must have been frightfully boring as one little kid actually fell asleep over it and had to be carried away snoring by his fat dat. What was the game that got the St Felix of Boredom Prize? I wouldn't dream of telling you it was Thanatos's Sanxion. And by the way, just to confuse matters we hear that there is now to be a game called Thanatos. Bore them all to death is what I say.

Closing the Ring

CCI never reviewed Sanxion. It's possible this was a deliberate snub but CCI regularly failed to review games released by companies it didn't hate. This is their January 1987 chart for C64 games, assuming T.B.A stands for To Be Advised then CCI has failed to review six games listed in their own Top 10.

COMMODORE COMPUTING INTERNATIONAL
January 1987 page 155

The January 1987 Felix column contains a considerably more unpleasant article. For context, we have to jump over to the ZZAP Christmas Special where a reader sends in a clipping from short-lived weekly magazine BANG, which covered games, music, films, and television.

ZZAP!64
Christmas Special 1986 page 12

BANG, issue 5 page 4, carried a story about piracy which mentioned ZZAP's Julian Rignall: 

Another firm understandably incensed by games appearing before release is Activision. The principle charge concerns Hacker II and was made against Julian Rignall of Newsfield (publishers of Crash, Zzap and Amtix). This was backed up by another software house which also named Rignall. Newsfield's publishing executive Graeme Kidd side-stepped the specific allegation. He claims that if Rignall's name has appeared on pirated copies then this was not his doing. 

Letter editor Lloyd Mangram replied:

Shortly after the story in question appeared in BANG, one of the allegations made against Julian collapsed totally. Further more the Hacker II investigation conducted by Activision has now been concluded and Julian cleared of any involvement.

The writer of the Felix column worked this rumour into the following story. Good luck wading through the verbiage:

Skol and Crossbones

A certain software house has told us that it will never trust any magazine in the universe again (what, not excepting CCI? I cant believe it! Ed). Piracy is the charge! It seems that two of their pre-production version games were confided to a certain Commodore Mag and lo, wonders will never cease, sheer coincidence of course! Who me, Me Lud I was home in bed with me mum and dad! The games appeared all over the place like an epidemic of measles, even being sold in a street market! Now, low though our opinion may be of certain abusive, fluff covered lollipopped, bore you out of your mind, so called Commodore mags, even CCI would not have credited that level of dastardly behaviour to any of them! Yet we are assured that it is, cross my heart with silver, true! A certain gentleman (?) whose initials are not a million miles from those of Tiny Julie Rosen is no doubt totally mistakenly, absolutely unjustly accused of this heinous act. Piracy!

Did I mention I think gossip columns are rubbish? The BANG piece was carefully written to make it clear what the accusation was, who was named, and the response of his employer. The CCI piece is written in a tee-hee nudge-nudge style which smudges the details enough that it's not legally actionable but still makes the details clear to the regular reader who can break the code; that Julian Rignall of ZZAP has been accused of piracy of pre-production copies of games, and it's absolutely true. It's yellow journalism.

Triumph and Tragedy

The last significant dispatch from the frontlines came in June 1987 when Andrew Wright and Gary Liddon left Thalamus:

Thalamus was originally called Thanatos but they found out through these humble columns that it meant 'Death Wish' and they realised they already had enough of that. The software company has clearly been a raving success — the other founding boss, one Gary Pencil, has also departed and the whole mega-operation is now taking shelter somewhat sheepishly in the offices of Incentive Software. The name Thalamus, as I'm sure you all realised, referred to the Greek tragedy (or was it comedy?) play acted by idiotic workmen in Shakespeare's "Mid Summernight's Dream'. His Excellency Andy Pandy is not telling how close a similarity his recent Thalamusian experience bore to that part of Shakespeare's play, or whether his employers were a tragedy or a comedy — at least not to anybody who will listen

The spat between CCI and ZZAP wasn't the first time a couple of magazines had squared off against each other. What made it remarkable was the duration, on CCI's side at least because ZZAP clearly didn't really care. Did either magazine gain or lose anything from the war of words? Not really. CCI carried on until April 1990, ZZAP lasted until 1992. 

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