EMAP | Code Like It's 198x

For a British games player in the 1980s and early 1990s, a surprising number of the magazines on the newsagent’s shelf came from one company, and it was not a computer company at all. EMAP, short for East Midland Allied Press, was a newspaper group from Peterborough and the market towns around it. It published Computer and Video Games from 1981, bought Sinclair User and Commodore User in 1984, took over ACE in 1989, and launched The One, Mean Machines and Nintendo Magazine System. For most of that time they were all made in the same building, Priory Court in Farringdon Lane, London.

From local newspapers

According to later secondary accounts, the company grew out of the Winfrey family’s local papers, among them the Spalding Guardian, the Lynn News and the Peterborough Advertiser. In 1947 they were merged to form East Midland Allied Press. Its first magazines came about because its printing presses stood idle between editions of the local papers: Angling Times started in 1953, and in 1956 EMAP bought Motor Cycle News.

The Peterborough roots showed in the small print of its computer magazines. Readers of Computer and Video Games’ first issue, in November 1981, sent their subscriptions to Bretton Court in Peterborough, and back issues of The One came from EMAP Frontline in the same city.

Computer and Video Games

C&VG was launched in November 1981. Its first issue barred “EMAP employees and their relatives” from its competitions and gave EMAP’s office at Durrant House, 8 Herbal Hill, London EC1R, as its address. From the second issue the colophon was explicit: “Published and distributed by EMAP National Publications Ltd”, with the copyright held by Computer & Video Games Limited.

Another company also claimed a share in it. ECC Publications, which launched Sinclair User in April 1982, advertised itself as “the pioneers of Practical Computing, WHICH COMPUTER?, and Computer & Video Games”, and ran that advertisement in C&VG’s own pages. The public sources do not explain how the two companies divided the work.

Buying the rivals

In September 1984 Sinclair User told its readers, under the headline “Same paper, new owners”, that ECC’s Sinclair titles, Sinclair User and Sinclair Programs, had been “acquired by East Midland Allied Press, the publisher of Computer and Video Games”. The new address was EMAP Business and Computer Publications, 67 Clerkenwell Road.

Commodore User changed hands the same year. Its first owner was the Paradox Group, in Enfield Road, London N1, whose name was still in the June 1984 issue. By October 1984 the small print read: “Commodore User is published twelve times a year by EMAP Business and Computer Publications Ltd”, at Priory Court, 30-32 Farringdon Lane. So EMAP now published the main magazines for both of the rival home computers, and C&VG, which reviewed games for both.

The next purchase was ACE, which Future Publishing had launched in Bath in October 1987. Future’s name was still in the June 1989 issue; by September the magazine was “© EMAP B&CP 1989” and edited at Priory Court.

Protecting its titles

EMAP was prepared to go to court over its magazines. In the summer of 1985 Newsfield’s CRASH gave four pages of its August issue to a lampoon of Sinclair User. When Sinclair User’s editor saw an advance copy, EMAP sought an injunction. It won, and CRASH had to recall the issue, cut out the four pages and redistribute it with a sticker explaining why they were missing. CRASH retold the story two years later, noting that its own circulation then climbed “from around 50,000 copies a month to over 100,000”.

The two magazines ended up under one roof. After Newsfield collapsed, Europress passed CRASH to EMAP in March 1992, and Sinclair User announced in May that it had “incorporated Crash”.

New magazines for new machines

EMAP launched The One in October 1988 for the new 16-bit computers, the Atari ST and Amiga. In 1989 Commodore User became CU Amiga.

Consoles came next. In July 1990 C&VG’s editor Julian Rignall, the artist Gary Harrod and EMAP’s publisher Graham Taylor met at a café in Farringdon to plan a console magazine. Mean Machines went on sale in October 1990, and by the first half of 1991 it had audited sales of 50,098 a month. In October 1992 EMAP split it into Mean Machines Sega and Nintendo Magazine System, which carried Nintendo’s characters under licence to “EMAP Images Limited”. Sinclair User reported a “real fight” at “EMAP Towers” over which of the two would be better.

The end of the computer titles

As the home computer market shrank, the computer magazines went. CU Amiga’s October 1998 issue announced that it was “the last ever issue”, closed by EMAP because of falling sales. By then the games titles came from EMAP Images and then EMAP Active, which was still publishing C&VG in November 1999. By October 2001 C&VG was published by Dennis Publishing. Later secondary accounts date that sale to 2001 and say Future bought the title from Dennis in 2004.

EMAP itself was broken up in 2008. It sold its consumer magazines, radio and television businesses to the German publisher Bauer, and the rest of the business was bought by Apax and the Guardian Media Group; it was renamed Top Right Group in 2012 and Ascential in 2015.

Sources

Computer & Video Games issue 1, November 1981: competition rules (“EMAP employees and their relatives”), the Durrant House address, and the subscription address at Bretton Court, Peterborough. Issue 2, December 1981, and issue 3, January 1982: “Published and distributed by EMAP National Publications Ltd.” Issue 6, April 1982: ECC Publications’ Sinclair User advertisement.
Sinclair User issue 1, April 1982: ECC Publications’ advertisement (“the pioneers of Practical Computing, WHICH COMPUTER?, and Computer & Video Games”). Issue 30, September 1984, p. 7: “Same paper, new owners”. Issue 123, May 1992: incorporating CRASH. Issue 129, November 1992: the “real fight” at “EMAP Towers”.
Commodore User, December 1983 and June 1984: published by the Paradox Group. October 1984: published by EMAP Business and Computer Publications, Priory Court.
Sinclair User issue 40, July 1985, and Computer & Video Games issue 50, December 1985, issue 79, May 1988, and issue 108, November 1990: Priory Court addresses.
ACE issue 1, October 1987, and issue 21, June 1989: Future Publishing, Bath. Issue 24, September 1989: “© EMAP B&CP 1989”, Priory Court.
The One issue 1, October 1988: Priory Court; back issues from EMAP Frontline, Peterborough.
CRASH issue 46, November 1987: the story of the August 1985 lampoon, EMAP’s injunction and the recall.
Mean Machines issue 1, October 1990; issue 12, September 1991 (the ABC figure for January to June 1991); issue 15, December 1991, p. 84 (the meeting that planned the magazine); issue 24, September 1992 (the split).
CU Amiga, October 1998: “CU Amiga Closes”.
Computer and Video Games, issues 206 to 216, January to November 1999: EMAP Active. Issue 239, October 2001: Dennis Publishing.
Wikipedia, “Ascential” (web, secondary): the Winfrey newspapers, the 1947 merger, Angling Times and Motor Cycle News, the 2008 sale to Bauer and the Apax and Guardian Media Group takeover, and the later names. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ascential
Wikipedia, “Computer and Video Games” (web, secondary): EMAP to Dennis Publishing in 2001, Future in 2004. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_and_Video_Games