EMAP: East Midland Allied Press

Priory Court, 30-32 Farringdon Lane, EC1R

EMAP were first. In 1981 they launched COMPUTER & VIDEO GAMES. The first magazine in the world dedicated to computer games. Not one of those qualified firsts, like the first "regularly published" video games magazine in the world or just the first games magazine "published in the UK" or the first "multiformat" video games magazine. The first. Anywhere. Number one. EMAP did it. [I stand. Sing two verses of Rule Britannia and then sit down again and apologise to the cat, who had been sleeping quietly on my lap].

It was a close run thing and occasionally publications which care not a fig for accuracy, like the THE NEW YORK TIMES (this is a joke, please don't sue me. I have few assets) will credit a US magazine called ELECTRONIC GAMES but I'm reasonably sure of my ground and can prove it with facts. Wikipedia gives the publication date of the first issue of ELECTRONIC GAMES as 29th October 1981. The first issue of C&VG has a cover month of November 1981, which means it went on sale in October. But when? Go back to the first issue and look at the text bar at the bottom of the contents page: "Next issue on sale November 18th". That's the third Wednesday of the month. The issue two contents page has the next issue on sale from December 16th; that's also the third Wednesday of the month [1]. Now work backwards. The first issue has to come out on the third Wednesday of October 1981, which was October 21st. Here's the ironic bit. The first issue of ELECTRONIC GAMES was due to be printed on October 15th but got delayed. To our American cousins I can only say, second comes right after first!

C&VG launched with the cover strapline "the first fun computer magazine." It reads as slightly desperate now but if you look at what else was on the shelves the same month you can see their point .

Durrant House, 8 Herbal Hill, London EC1

Editor Terry Pratt remembered the creation of the first issue as part of C&VG's fifth birthday celebrations:

"We materialise in a dingy office, three' floors above a bombsite in London's EC1 and everybody's talking about... Startrek?"

October 2023

That dingy office above a bombsite has gone up in the world. Herbal Hill is clearly much nicer now than in 1981. Having convinced EMAP to start running a games magazine, Terry Pratt then later convinced them to run their own software house. The result was Beyond, and Terry left C&VG for Beyond in spring 1984. Luckily for everyone concerned, Beyond also operated out of the Herbal Hill offices.

September 1983 saw C&VG report on the battle for the title of Computer and Video Games Arcade Games Champion of 1983. The winner, one Julian Rignall who would go on to be part of the editorial team of ZZAP!64 and later editor of C&VG.

67 Clerkenwell Road, London, EC1R

Meanwhile, in April 1982, a company called ECC Publications started a magazine called SINCLAIR USER. The next month they started a second magazine called SINCLAIR PROGRAMS. Nothing much happened for the next two and a bit years. Then the September 1984 issues of both magazines revealed the editorial address had changed. "Same paper, new owners" was the headline on page 7 of SINCLAIR USER:

THE SINCLAIR group of publications, including Sinclair User and Sinclair Programs, has been acquired by East Midland Allied Press, the publisher of Computer and Video Games.

October 2023

EMAP owned, or rented, offices all round Clerkenwell. Farringdon Road and Clerkenwell Road, two busy main roads, quarter the area and number 67 sits just back from the junction slightly down from the entrance to Herbal Hill, on the other side of Clerkenwell Road. Number 67 itself is a dreary fifties or early sixties post-war newbuild. If you look at the aerial photos on historicengland.org.uk you can see the area was badly knocked around during the blitz and the mostly empty site which will become 67 Clerkenwell Road is more or less in the centre of the picture.

Priory Court, 30-32 Farringdon Lane, EC1R

September 1984 was also the same month C&VG moves away from Herbal Hill to the other side of the railway lines and Farringdon Road. The magazine was given enough notice of the move to put a little graphic on the contents page. The following month C&VG were joined at Priory Court by another single format magazine. COMMODORE USER was founded by the Paradox Group who printed the first 12 issues, EMAP began their run from issue 13; or as COMMODORE USER perversely described it, "Volume 2 Issue 1". That's just confusing. COMMODORE USER didnt tell their readers the magazine has moved publishers and changed editorial .

Its fascinating to see a publisher build a portfolio of magazine rather than develop one. It's obviously easier to acquire a magazine with an established readership and less risky than launching a new magazine from scratch. SINCLAIR PROGRAMS was the weakest of the four magazines in the portfolio. The magazine was a compendium of reader's program listings and by 1984 this held considerably less appeal. There was a substantial redesign in December 1984 to make the content more like other magazines. "More reviews more news more fun" boasted the cover. The redesign didn't take and the last issue was printed in September 1985.

SINCLAIR USER and SINCLAIR PROGRAMES joined their fellow EMAP computer magazines at Priory Court from the February 1985 issue. Priory Court was EMAP computer magazines ground zero and, as far as I can tell, all their subsequent magazines gave this as the editorial address. WITH ONE EXCEPTION! Website forgottenworlds.net has done an excellent job of interviewing the EMAP writers and I have no intention of stealing their thunder. However, this blog is nothing if not excited about offices so I will nick a couple of brief quotes:

Steve Merrett (editor of MEAN MACHINES SEGA):

The building was a shambles, but each of the five floors would play host to one or two mags. When I joined, The One and PC Review were on the ground floor, advertising were on the first, CU Amiga and Ace were on the second, marketing and MegaTech on the Third, and Mean Machines and Nintendo up on the fourth.

Richard Leadbetter (staff writer for C&VG and MEAN MACHINES, and editor of SEGA SATURN MAGAZINE):

The working conditions were pretty disgusting, the office was a mess, there was no air conditioning, probably about a quarter of the people smoked in the office — and the games room was stiflingly hot in the summer. I was pretty surprised at how bad it was when I went to interview for the job.

October 2023

Priory Court looks good these day, although the name has changed to Hodgkin-Huxley House. The home of the Physiological Society. It is a tall building which proved devilish tricky to photograph because Farringdon Lane is narrow and you can't get too far back before you bump into the brick wall which is there to stop people falling on the railway tracks. After taking several unsatisfactory pictures I walked round to Farringdon Road on the far side of the railway tracks and tried holding my camera above the wall. This also proved unsatisfactory. Fortunately, gas pipe replacement works were taking place. The bollards used to close off the road looked pretty sturdy, so I hopped on one. Success! I was able to get a decent photo of the building and provide an impromptu cabaret show for the drivers waiting to get through the traffic lights. Thanks, Cadent. Your bollards saved the day.

There's no point in my doing a detailed history of EMAP magazines because other's have already done a better job, as can be seen at forgottenworlds.net. One thing I do want to talk about are the ABC circulation figures which were assessed every six months by the Audit Bureaux of Circulation and were used to calculate advertising rates. Magazines don't have to print them (they're available to ABC subscribers and advertisers on request) but it shows the popularity of a magazine at a glance, and everyone likes to boast occasionally.

What follows then is a brief romp through the EMAP catalogue. 

C&VG

C&VG
August 1989 page 18

EMAP published C&VG from 1981 until 2001 when the magazine was sold on to Dennis Publishing. They ran it until 2004, when it was sold again to Future Publishing. The last issue was printed in October 2004. Eurogramer quotes a C&VG circulation figure of 19,000 for late 2003, which is one of the reasons Future stopped the print version and took the magazine online. Earlier, much earlier, C&VG was much more popular.

C&VG starts running their ABC figures in the April 1986 issue, on the contents page. Annoyingly they are inconsistent in their use but the figures I've been able to find are:

Jul-Dec 1985: 98, 258
Jul-Dec 1986: 106, 571
Jan-Jun 1988: 108,892
Jul-Dec 1988: 102,401

SINCLAIR USER 

As a dedicated CRASH reader, it pains me to admit that SINCLAIR USER won the circulation war. CRASH was handed over to EMAP in April 1992 as Roger Kean explained:

It wasn't even a sale, Europress swapped Crash for a defunct EMAP title they wanted to incorporate into one of their magazines.

From May 1992 CRASH existed only as the CRASH logo floating sadly on the SINCLAIR USER cover, becoming smaller, and smaller, and smaller. It finally vanished in December 1992. SINCLAIR USER didn't last much longer, they printed their last issue in 1993. 

Going, going, going, going, going, going going... gone

SINCLAIR USER/EMAP famously took out an injunction in 1985 to prevent distribution of issue 19 of CRASH, because of these pages. Roger Kean later told outofprintarchive.com

EMAP served us with an injunction to prevent publication, which they won, but only after an estimated 60% of the print run had already sold. The rest had to be withdrawn and the four pages cut out before going back into distribution. EMAP won the injunction, but not on the grounds of defamation, but — to their lawyer's horror — on the grounds of copyright infringement. This gave them a headache to pursue and so it was some eight months later that we came to an out of court settlement which cost Newsfield £60,000

If you want to know more then watch Reheated Pixel's excellent Youtube video Nine ZX Spectrum magazine controversies

SINCLAIR USER started printing their ABC figures much earlier than C&VG. Beginning in October 1984.

Jan-Jun 1984: 96,271

Jul-Dec 1984: 91,901

Jan-Jun 1985: 102, 023

Jul-Dec 1985: 90,215

Jan-Jun 1986: Not printed

Jul-Dec 1986: 84,699
Jul-Dec 1988: 89,555

This is a good example of the way magazines can use ABCs to smudge the truth when the circulation figures turn disappointing. The July to December 1985 figures were first printed in April 1986 (in those analogue days it took longer to collate and circulate information). The January to June 1986 figures were probably available by October 1986 but SINCLAIR USER doesn't print them. Instead the magazine keeps quoting the (presumably higher) 90,215 figure all the way to August 1987. After that, they start printing the 84,699 figure for July to December 1986 and run those until February 1988. Then the ABC figures are quietly dropped. Funnily enough, SINCLAIR USER doesn't print any ABCs during the period from October 1988 to December 1989, when the magazine prints a banner on the cover: "Best Sellin' Spectrum Mag!" 

The July-December 1988 figures come from the C&VG advert mentioned above. That advert states SU's circulation figures show a "15% year on year growth." Depending on how you parse that sentence it suggests the circulation figures dipped to around 78,000 at some point in 1987.

COMMODORE USER

Going in to this article, I didn't expect to end up writing more words on COMMODORE USER than on C&VG or SINCLAIR USER. However, here we are. 

COMMODORE USER was the most successful EMAP title, after C&VG. The magazine called itself COMMODORE USER until issue 65, February 1989, when it rebranded as the more cumbersome CU COMMODORE AMIGA 64; reflecting the increasing popularity of Commodore's new 16-bit machine. After June 1989 the name was streamlined to CU AMIGA 64 and then in February 1990 it rebranded again to CU AMIGA and kept that name until the last issue in October 1998.

The magazine was diligent about printing their ABC figures. I commend the editors who worked on the magazine for the 14 years it was printed by EMAP. At this point I should also thank and commend the good folks at the AMIGA MAGAZINE RACK who hold a comprehensive archive of COMMODORE USER.

Jan-Jun 1985: 47.669
Jul-Dec 1985: 48,565
Jan-Jun 1986: 51,503
Jul-Dec 1986: 60,848
Jan-Jun 1987: 64,606

Jul-Dec 1987: 68, 368

Jan-Jun 1988: 69,004

Jul-Dec 1988: 72,892
Jan-Jun 1989: Not printed

Jul-Dec 1989: 66,211
Jan-Jun 1990: 47,091
Jul-Dec 1990: 50,170
Jan-Jun 1991: 78,266
Jul-Dec 1991: 99,251
Jan-Jun 1992: 101,923
Jul-Dec 1992: 96, 235
Jan-Jun 1993: 111,408
Jul-Dec 1993: 112,780
Jan-Jun 1994: 105,412
Jul-Dec 1994: 61,409
Jan-Jun 1995: 55,789
Jul-Dec 1995: 47,670
Jan-Jun 1996: 36,856
Jul-Dec 1996: 28,161
Jan-Jun 1997: 27,391
Jul-Dec 1997: 24,358
Jan-Jun 1998: 21,599

Jan-June 1989 is the one occasion CU AMIGA don't print their circulation. Again this goes back to my point about how magazines can obscure disappointing figures. The 72,892 figure, for July to December 1988, is quoted on the C&VG advert along with a boast that CU AMIGA is the "Best Selling Commodore magazine... all time record result." CU AMIGA quote a circulation of 72,892 all the way from March 1989 to January 1990; I'd expect them to start printing the January to June 1989 figures around September 1989. 

Considering the previously consistent climb of the circulation figures, the (presumed) fall for the Jan-Jun 1989 period must have been disappointing. Before these figures came in, in an act of hubris, CU AMIGA start running a banner on the cover from May 1989: "No 1 Commodore Magazine!" 

This changes to "THE No 1 AMIGA MAG" in July 1989, which probably represents the increasing popularity of the Amiga over the Commodore 64. It's also a good way weaselling out of accusations of misleading the readers. They're not saying CU AMIGA is the "No 1 Commodore magazine" and potentially by "No 1" they mean "the best" rather than "top selling." Around the same time ZZAP (who are also not printing their ABC figures by this point) start including a banner on their cover boasting "No1 for CBM64!" Which makes me suspect both magazines were indulging in a bit of ABC hair-splitting.

The January 1990 issue of CU AMIGA resumes quoting the current ABC figure. The July to December 1989 figures show a fall to 66,211 copies but this must have been considered good enough because the cover boasts it is now "BRITAIN'S BEST SELLING AMIGA MAGAZINE" 

You can track the history of Commodore sales in the UK by the ABC figures. Increasing through 1985 to 1988 when people brought C64s and Amigas. A slump from 1989 to the beginning of 1990 as C64 sales dipped and the Atari ST became briefly more popular. Then a magnificent rally, off the back David Pleasance's strategy of bundling the Amiga with popular software packs. Most notably the Batman pack, on sale from October 1989 to September 1990 and promoted with television adverts. That run from July 1991 to June 1994 when the magazine is averaging 100,000 copies a month is peak Amiga, helped by the closure of rival magazines. Then in April 1994 Commodore goes bankrupt and CU AMIGA's circulation figures begin to decline. Ironically the January to June 1998 ABCs were ready for printing just in time for the last ever issue.

Past this point, none of the magazines printed their ABC figures.

ACE

A multiformat magazine launched by Future Publishing in October 1987, ACE moved to EMAP from issue 22, July 1989 and ran until issue 52, April 1992. According to outofprintarchive.com EMAP made an "unrefusable offer" for the magazine. The whole sale seems to have taken place at very short notice. The final Future Publishing issue includes a Next Month box listing a selection of articles, none of which feature in the next issue. 

ACE
June 1989 page 13

EMAP's purchase of ACE is odd. They already published two magazines which covered the same ground. C&VG and THE ONE.

THE ONE

16-bit computers were the wave of the future in 1988. The logical thing to do was launch a magazine to grab the new Atari ST, Amiga, and PC owners who were looking for something to read. THE ONE launched in October 1988 with an editorial team of mostly ex-Newsfield staff; editor Gary Penn, Steve Jarratt, Graeme Kidd, Julian Rignall, plus SINCLAIR USER's editor Graham Taylor and "new face" Gary Whitta. THE ONE always gave its editorial address as Priory Court and, as far as I know, never printed its ABCs. The August 1989 C&VG advert boasted that THE ONE was a "Best Selling multi format 16-bit games title," but didn't give any numbers.

A lot of people, myself included, have fond memories of THE ONE. It caught my attention when I'd abandoned Newsfield magazines. I'd moved on from CRASH but their title THE GAMES MACHINE never really worked for me. THE ONE also had a lighter touch compared to ACE, which could be quite pompous (Physician, Heal Thyself). In October 1991 THE ONE printed an article called Software Landmarks of the UK which is a keystone for this blog.

THE ONE chuntered on until 1991 and then EMAP split it in two. From May 1991 readers would be able to choose between THE ONE AMIGA GAMES or THE ONE ST GAMES, PC owning readers were farmed off into a short-lived quarterly title called PC LEISURE which evolved into the monthly PC REVIEW.

THE ONE
April 1991 page 6

THE ONE
May 1992 page 6

It's possible the aim of the split was to recreate a trick Future pulled in 1989 with a title called ST AMIGA FORMAT. After Future sold ACE to EMAP, Future was able to slide the former ACE editorial team over to a new magazine called AMIGA FORMAT while the original ST AMIGA FORMAT team stayed put and worked on a magazine which was now just called ST FORMAT. 

THE ONE ST GAMES was less successful and only lasted for 12 issues, until April 1992, when it was sold on to Europress who merged it with issue 49 of ST ACTION. THE ONE FOR AMIGA games promptly changed its name back to THE ONE, and also merged with the recently closed ACE, and had to print an editorial in the May 1992 to explain to readers what had just happened.

THE ONE had a very good run up to July 1995 when EMAP closed the magazine with enough notice for the staff to put together a proper final issue. 

THE ONE
July 1995 page 12

It must therefore have come as some surprise to everyone when THE ONE was back on newsagents' shelves the following month; having been acquired by Maverick Publishing.

Mean Machines

The problem with me writing this stuff is it's focused through the lens of my nostalgia. What didn't interest me in 1990? Consoles. Fortunately, there are people out there who are very fond of EMAP's wildly successful MEAN MACHINES magazine, and its subsequent spin-offs. They've done a much better job of talking about it than I ever could. If you're looking for a jolt of MEAN MACHINES nostalgia then have a look here and here and here, and indeed here and here and why not here.

And now. It's... the Priory Court exception!

37-39 Millharbour, Isle of Dogs, London, E14

CU AMIGA reports a change of editorial address in April 1997. NINTENDO OFFICIAL MAGAZINE had already moved to the Isle of Dogs and C&VG followed in June 1997. It must have seemed like exile in the pre-Jubilee Line extension days. It's hard not to feel EMAP is winding down its computer magazine division in the face of declining circulation and increasing competition from Future Publishing; their OFFICIAL UK PLAYSTATION MAGAZINE was reporting ABCs of 51,444 for the Jan-June 1996 period, and it would go much, much higher.

June 2024

Whatever Millharbour looked like in 1997, it doesn't look like it now. The site of 37-39 Millharbour is occupied by a high-density luxury building called Ability Place. Construction began in 2006, so whatever was there before predates Streetview. One tiny stretch of 1997 Millharbour was captured on the 2008 Streetview survey. The green building with the odd tower-like stricture at one end, 3 Millharbour, is still there. I get the impression that's what the whole area looked like. This plate shows 33 Millharbour. It's another building in the smoked glass fronted/modernist warehouse style. On the left of the photo you can see a bit of a green-roofed building, a side angle of 3 Millharbour. I think the EMAP building would have been the next one down the street and the chances are it looked pretty much the same.

Also on Streetview. If you visit Farringdon Lane in 2008 you can see the building still with some EMAP branding. That picture was taken in July 2008, six months after EMAP announced it was selling a chunk of its magazines and radio stations to the German publishing group Bauer. Presumably that was around the time that Priory Court passed out of EMAP's estate. The building is shuttered in the 2012 survey and by 2014 has become Hodkin-Huxley House.

[1] In the post-Christmas haze things go a bit haywire. C&VG issue 3 claims the next issue (February 1982) will be on sale 16th January, but that's a Sunday and can't possibly be correct. The next month box in the February issue shows the magazine has switched to

being published on the third Tuesday of each month. Therefore issue 4 has a shelf date of either Tuesday 19th or Wednesday 20th January. QED.

All facts are certified correct. Except for the ones that are wrong. Lawyers acting for the NEW YORK TIMES can leave a comment or send an email to whereweretheynow@gmail.com as can anyone who knows what 37-39 Millharbour looked like before a 22-story building was dropped on it. I'm on Bluesky, shammountebank.bsky.social and Instagram, shammountebank.