PAGE 6
A computer club's magazine that outlasted the professionals
Started in December 1981 by the Birmingham User Group as a bi-monthly for Atari owners the national press ignored, PAGE 6 became New Atari User and ran until 1998 — seventeen years, longer than CRASH, ZZAP!64 or Your Sinclair managed.
PAGE 6 began as a computer club’s magazine. Issue 1 is cover-dated December 1981 / January 1982, edited by Les Ellingham, published bi-monthly by B.U.G. — the Birmingham User Group, described in its own editorial as “the largest independent Atari Computer Club” in the country. Six issues cost £3.75; a single copy was 65p.
Its reason for existing is stated plainly on page 4: none of the general UK computing magazines were “of much help” to Atari owners. So the club made its own.
It outlasted almost everything
87 issues are held here, running from December 1981 to July 1998, the later ones under the title New Atari User after a rename around issue 38 in mid-1989.
That is a seventeen-year run, and it is worth setting against the professional titles this Vault spends most of its time on:
| Magazine | Run |
|---|---|
| PAGE 6 / New Atari User | 1981–1998 |
| Computer and Video Games | 1981–2004 |
| CU Amiga | 1983–1998 |
| CRASH | 1984–1992 |
| ZZAP!64 | 1985–1992 |
| Your Sinclair | 1984–1993 |
A magazine run by an enthusiast club from Stafford lasted longer than Newsfield’s entire output, and is the earliest-dated British computer magazine in this library apart from C&VG, which precedes it by one month.
Why that is not a curiosity
The story this Vault usually tells about the British computer press is a professional one: EMAP, Future, Newsfield, Europress, and the commercial logic of launching in October to catch Christmas.
PAGE 6 ran on none of that. It was bi-monthly, sold by subscription from a club, and it began in December. It survived the collapse of the 8-bit market, the arrival and departure of the 16-bit machines, and every publisher in the table above except one.
⚠ Longevity is not circulation, and this entry claims nothing about how many people read it. What the holdings establish is that it kept coming out.
See also
- Atari
- Computer and Video Games — the only British title here that starts earlier
- Magazine distribution — the commercial pattern it ignored