How Magazines Died

A gloomy title but bear with me. This started out as a paragraph about AMIGA POWER in the Power Computing article but the paragraph got longer and longer, until I thought it justified snipping it out and making it an article in its own right. WARNING - I have never worked on a magazine. I know nothing about the process of making them. This hasn't stopped me speculating like mad below. People with actual editorial experience will probably find what follows naïve, at best. Read on at your peril.

"Hatch, match and dispatch" was how publishing giant IPC referred to its 1970s policy of creating new comics with the deliberate goal of building an audience which could be transferred by merger to a more established but struggling title ("Great News Inside For All Readers!"). The magic number was 250,000. if the weekly circulation [1]  dropped below that number then the future was in the balance. The computer magazine publishers of the 1980s could only dream of those sorts of sales figures, and had a slightly less cynical attitude to the readers who brought those magazines [2] and the titles themselves. They may have been slightly less cynical but they were no less pragmatic. When a beloved magazine became uneconomic it was time to give it the Old Yeller treatment, the only question was how? Broadly speaking, there were four ways a publisher could kill off a magazine; sudden and unexpected, sudden but expected, slow and unexpected, and slow but expected. 

Sudden And Unexpected

When Future Publishing ceased publication of AMSTRAD ACTION it was sudden and unexpected. Issue 117 was on sale from Thursday 25 May 1995 and included, as usual, a note at the bottom of the contents page telling readers to look out for issue 118 from Thursday 22 June 1995. Then, at some point between May and June, AMSTRAD ACTION was killed off. It was business as usual for readers and the production team, right up to the point where it wasn't. 

Future Publishing's treatment of AMSTRAD ACTION was the exception among their 8-bit magazines. YOUR SINCLAIR and COMMODORE FORMAT had both been given proper farewell issues. The readers of AMSTRAD ACTION might have expected the same treatment when the time finally came to wave goodbye but apparently Future Publish had no sentimentality for the passing of the magazine that, ten years earlier, had launched the company. Steve Carey, who edited AMSTRAD ACTION from August 1988 to November 1989, was a publisher at Future in 1995 and in 2008 AMSTRAD ACTION TRIBUTE magazine questioned him about the lack of a final issue:

Why AA did not receive a farewell issue is a mystery to me, at this distance. I think perhaps it's somehow something to do with AA not just being about games? I can't quite see how this led to it ending with such a coitus interruptus. Perhaps it lacked a Stevie Jarratt or a Matt Sinclair to fight its corner?
Actually, if I'm honest (at a two decade remove) I can't quite recall why it didn't go out with a bang. Even at the time it didn't seem like a bang-type magazine (which I think was very much to its credit).

COMMODORE FORMAT
August 1995

Russty Russ on Bluesky uploaded a picture of the AMSTRAD ACTION obituary from COMMODORE FORMAT issue 59. Now CF is one magazine that's never made it onto the Internet Archive but what I did find is The Commodore Format archive which gives background information about each issue and on the page for issue 59, is this:

CF was now being written and edited by just one man when he wasn’t doing his day job over on ST Format. But why only CF, and not [Amstrad Action]? Online chatter suggests it’s because the next issue of AA was predicted to make a loss, and that is probably what the freelancers of that mag were told at the time. But Simon Forrester remembers differently:
“Well, they asked me to do both and I said no!”, he laughs. “So I just got CF as it was doing better, and that was that for AA.”  Without knowing it, Simon – who’d grown up with a CPC and started his career on Amstrad Action – had driven the final nail into its coffin.

Other examples: CRASH and ZZAP!64 which disappeared when their publisher Newsfield fell into bankruptcy. However, in this case, both magazines had unexpected reincarnations which allowed them to later die a second time in a different way. See also BIG K from IPC. It was hatched in April 1984, then in February 1985 it had TV GAMER matched with it, and the merged title was dispatched without warning after the March 1985 issue. THE ONE, which seemed to be doing fine right up to the point where the July 1995 issue unexpectedly announced it was the last one and all content would henceforth be folded into CU AMIGA. Then there's C&VG, which, given its history, deserved better treatment than a quick shove into the Phantom Zone following the publication of the October 2004 issue.
Also, as I was reminded by bee 'hyphen' moh on Bluesky, there was ARCADE. A magazine I thought was great but had drifted out of buying some time in late 1999. It's final issue in October 1992 included this line at the end of the editorial:

"We're going to be taking a few months off to make Arcade even better than it already is."

Great news for all readers, inside!

Sudden But Expected

YOUR SINCLAIR
August 1993 page 35

YOUR SINCLAIR went in style. Their demise was quick but readers knew it was coming. The axe fell early enough in the production cycle of issue 92 that readers were told issue 93 would be the last. This allowed issue 93 to become a tribute to the nearly 10 year history of the magazine. Even better, an editorial decision to drop the cover tape and raise the price from the usual £2.50 to £2.95 [3] increased the page count from the standard 36 pages to a mighty 68. The last issue was packed. The front cover, and back cover art (which was also used as a double-page poster in the centre spread) was by Paul Kidby [4], most of the people who had worked on the magazine were asked for their memories, and readers even had time to send in letters. My favourite detail, someone has reversed the page numbers so the magazine counts down as you read it. Page one, is the end. It is pretty much the definitive example of how this should be done.

Other examples: None that I'm aware of, I can't think of another magazine that gave its readers a month's notice of their demise.

YOUR SINCLAIR
September 1993 page 1

Slow And Unexpected

It's more difficult to find an example of a slow and unexpected demise because my four categories don't really work. They are after all arbitrary and made up. I mean how can something be both slow and still a surprise when it arrives? Apart from trains (satire). If I'm going to commit to the bit then the best example might be the protracted end of 3DO MAGAZINE.

This was a magazine whose struggles with existence began as far back as issue five. It was a month late, in a bimonthly production cycle, because of problems with a demo disk for the 3DO version of Syndicate. The magazine was supposed to go monthly from issue nine, which readers were told would be on sale date from 29 February 1996. The magazine later said the plans were in place "only for the 29th February production slot to turn out as unavailable." Whatever that means. The publishing cycle properly changed to monthly after issue 10 but in order to remain economic the page count had to be halved from 68 to 36 pages, a reverse YOUR SINCLAIR. Then from issue 12 the magazine was talking about the decline of the 3DO market in the UK and a collapse in advertising. Then from issue 14 the cover disk was dropped. It must have been more of a surprise for readers when the magazine actually appeared in the newsagent. 3DO MAGAZINE did finally stop but did it stop at issue 14 or 15? These days no one is sure. Some websites suggest issue 15 existed  and some don't. The short history of 3DO MAGAZINE was full of moments when the magazine didn't appear on schedule and seemed to have been cancelled but hadn't. So when issue 15 (or 16) didn't appear I suspect the first reaction of readers was to wait. And wait.

Other examples: ZERO. July 1992 saw the InDin Magazine of the Year (1990 and 1991) redesigned to a brief that appears to have been "what if Viz, but more rubbish?" Four low-quality issues followed before it vanished without warning after October 1992. 

Slow But Expected

This is where AMIGA POWER comes in. The magazine outlasted the Amiga as a commercial format by about 18 months. Commodore International went bankrupt in April 1994. The UK arm, Commodore Business Machines (UK) Ltd, kept trading until 1995 when ESCOM brought the rights to everything, including Commodore Business Machines (UK) Ltd. ESCOM then went into liquidation themselves in July 1996. A point at which is must have been clear to AMIGA POWER readers that their magazine was fading fast. Most obviously because AMIGA POWER diligently printed their ABC circulation figures each month. Readers could watch the circulation fall from a high of 60,184 copies (covering the period January to June 1992) to 30,486 (January to June 1995).

It took several months for circulation figures to be collated in those analogue days. The January to June 1995 figures were reported around October 1994 and the figures for July to December 1995 would follow around April 1996. The numbers for the second half of 1995 were bad. A drop of 40% down to 18,704 sales. In the same period, AMIGA FORMAT was reporting a circulation of 60,008. As a general rule of thumb, a circulation smaller than 20,000 put a magazine into the cancellation zone.

AMIGA POWER's future was in the balance from April 1996 and you can see the magazine start to make editorial changes to lessen the cost of making each issue. The May issue would have been in production as the ABC figures arrived, too late to make any substantial changes. June sees a reduction in page count from 68 to 60. There's another drop in July, down to 52 pages and the count holds at this reduced level until September when the axe falls. Any reader who also picked up AMIGA FORMAT at the same time couldn't fail to notice the magazine was considerably chunkier, weighing in at 124 pages. 

Astute readers probably wondered what was up with the falling page count. They also might have wondered about the reduction in the number of cover disks, from two to one. They probably also noticed it was getting increasingly difficult to fill up the remaining pages with content about the Amiga, see for example the June 1996 issue's six page tribute to Michael Caine. It was clear something was wrong for several months. Then the September 1996 issue arrived.

AMIGA POWER
September 1996

Issue 64 offers no obvious indication that anyone on the team knew the axe was swinging down. The axe clearly hit early in the planning stages for the September 1996 issue which allowed enough time to turn it into a YOUR SINCLAIR-esque final issue. AMIGA POWER went out in style with a last issue that killed off the editorial team one-by-one.

Other examples: AMIGA FORMAT. The magazine dipped below the 20,000 circulation mark with the release of the Jan-Jun 1998 ABCs but struggled on into the new millennium. The page count holds steady through 1999  at 100 pages and then, with the reveal that circulation has dipped to 13,264, the final countdown begins. The page count is cut to 92, and then 84. The chopper comes down one issue after the ABC figures showed another drop to 11,146. This allowed for the production of a final tribute issue in May 2000. However, AMIGA FORMAT having lasted into the internet age, a lot of people knew in advance that the magazine was on the way out. This means, in terms of exits, that last issue sits somewhere between the final issues of AMIGA POWER and YOUR SINCLAIR.

Please Like And Subscribe

Over on Bluesky, ChinnyVision raised the subject of magazine subscriptions which was something I'd never considered. He pointed out:

My understanding is that at Future at least, circulation wasn't the be all and end all if a magazine had a large subscription base. Subscriptions were much more profitable. You had postage costs but no distributor cut or newsagent cut. 

AA clung on for so long because it had an extraordinarily high sub base. Whereas YS's sub figures were so low they'd stopped bothering offering them about a year before the mag folded. IIRC a sub was worth twice a newsagent sale to Future

The last time YOUR SINCLAIR ran a subscription offer was in the October 1992 issue, on page 56. However, someone forgot to update the small print on the masthead. This lists the Somerton address and phone number as the place to go for subscriptions until the February 1993 issue. After this, you write to or call Somerton if you want back issues not subscriptions.

It Might As Well Rain Until September 

AMIGA POWER ended with the September 1996 issue. YOUR SINCLAIR ended with the September 1993 issue. ST FORMAT ended with the September 1996 issue. SUPER PLAY ended with the September 1996 issue. COMMODORE FORMAT ended with... okay, that was the October 1995 issue. There's clearly something about September (or September adjacent) that makes it a good month to cancel a magazine; particularly if it was September 1996.

I have a theory. Ex-magazine staff look away now. Cancelling a magazine around September allowed the unspent portion of the budget to be saved. If a magazine budget ran with the financial year from April to March, then September comes at the mid-point. Not spending money already allocated for the last six months of the year might allow a loss-making title to effectively break even or turn a small profit. It's not an ironclad theory, AMIGA FORMAT was dispatched in May 2000 but it's possible its low circulation of 11,146 was losing Future Publishing too much money to make it worth carrying on.

What about the magazines of today? The industry is so different now, I'm not sure there's much that can be learned. Future Publishing prints, I think, seven computer magazines; PC PRO, MAC LIFE, COMPUTER ACTIVE, EDGE, MAC FORMAT, PC GAMER, and RETRO GAMER. That's it. At one point, they probably printed seven magazines just to cover different aspects of home PC use.

The October 2026 issue of PC GAMER prints the ABC circulation figures for January to December 2018; 12,708. Clearly the old rules no longer apply because this issue runs to 132 pages. If this was 1996 I might expect a 36 page pamphlet. The magazine masthead credits the people who work on the UK and US editions of PC GAMER UK so clearly a lot of content is shared between the two. This must help control costs. There are also new income streams which weren't available before the internet age. Digital subscriptions, the website, and whatever licence fee is paid by Pressreader to allow users to read magazines for free [5]. EDGE is the grand old damme of games magazines. It just keeps going and going without ever doing anything as crass as printing circulation figures or having a redesign. It endlessly gazes forwards and can be paired, Janus-like, with RETRO GAMER which looks back on a continually updating past.

It is gauche to speculate about the future of any of these three magazine but I will. EDGE and RETRO GAMER are probably the most safe. They both have solid audiences. They are both, in their own way, heritage publications. If Future Publishing were to get out of the magazine business then I can see someone buying them simply for the prestige of saying "look, we publish EDGE/RETRO GAMER". In the same way publishers recently fought to buy the DAILY TELEGRAPH for the name recognition. PC GAMER on the other hand is a relic of the olden days when every format had several magazines scrapping for readers. It is a survivor that has evolved to fit an environmental niche but how long will that niche remain?

Current or ex magazine staff, please tell me how little I know. Leave a comment or send an email to whereweretheynow@gmail.com . Follow me on Bluesky, why not?

[1] I know. Imagine a time when sales of 250,000 sales a week was considered borderline unacceptable. Truly there were giants on the earth in those days.
[2] Slightly. Newsfield, for example was quite happy to create AMTIX as nothing more than a way to siphon potential readers away from Future Publishing's first magazine AMSTRAD ACTION, as Julian Rignall revealed on Bluesky:
Amtix was thrown together quickly... They cobbled it together fast to screw Amstrad Action, because how dare Chris launch against us, despite him being fucked over and fired by them.
[3] That's an extortionate £7.66 in today's prices. Why that's outrageous. It's daylight robbery. It's... about what magazines cost in the shops in 2026.
[4] He now paints covers for Terry Pratchett books.
[5] Don't forget. You can support your favourite magazine and your local library. Most UK libraries subscribe to a service called PressReader and your library card will give you access to the latest issues and an extensive collection of back issue.