TV Guide
25 March 1989. Murdoch Magazines, London. 40p; 60pp. Ed: Ian Birch
Jason Donovan cover – fronting a feature and a competition to win a part in Australian soap Neighbours. The title was given a £5m advertising budget and the target circulation was set at 350,000-400,000 copies. A 48-page sample title was stitched into the March 18 issue of News of the World's Sunday magazine to promote the launch.

Rupert Murdoch's interest in the sector was based on a move in the US and the fact that the UK duopoly for TV listings held by Radio Times and TV Times was to be broken up.

In 1988, News International had bought Triangle Publications, which owned TV Guide, the market leader in the US selling 17m copies a week (it was founded in 1952). The company decided to bring the concept to the UK, with managing director Liz Rees-Jones announcing in January 1989 that it intended to launch a title to take advantage of the breaking up of the listings monopoly. This was triggered by a European Commission ruling. Several other publishers, including Emap, were also planning launches - in fact 'a flood' of launches was expected in the sector.

Media Week (6 January 1989) reported: 'The Commission's ruling relates to a complaint by Irish publishers Magill, which had tried to publish a weekly TV guide in competition with TV Times and Radio Times - which circulate widely in the Republic. The Commission has ruled that TV and Radio Times' tight rein on schedule information was contrary to Article 86 of the EC Treaty. This ruling will now have to be considered by the UK Government, which is bound by the Treaty.'

However, when TV Guide launched it could only carry details of cable and satellite listings - the terrestrial pages were merely summaries of the week's 'essential viewing'. Murdoch had to wait for legislation to break the monopoly held by Radio Times and TV Times. In December, Murdoch raised the guaranteed circulation of TV Guide by 30,000 to 150,000 copies a week. It was selling 190,335 copies a week at the time. However, in the same month, the company signalled a U-turn by deciding to turn the title into a subscriptions-based monthly for satellite TV alone in March 1990 when the duopoly on terrestrial TV listings lifted. A tough economic climate, Rupert Murdoch's debts and the £50,000 charge by Independent Television Publications for its listings put paid to the ambitious plans.

In fact, recession set in, interest rates rose and the debt from the US Triangle deal nearly sank Murdoch. He sold off most of his magazine assets in the US and the UK.

See TV Choice  

The Software Show
Spring 1989. BBC/Redwood Publishing, London. Free supplement with Acorn User. 52pp. Group ed: Tony Quinn; ed: Geoff Bains.
Carol Vorderman was on the front cover of this magazine produced to support BBC TV's Software Show, which she presented. Several pages were the result of DTP packages used on the show, from Apple Macintosh, Amstrad PCW and Atari ST.
BBC Magazines profile
Redwood Publishing profile

Raw (Rock Action Worldwide)
31 August-13 September 1988. Fortnightly. Rogue Magazines, 3a Kendall Place, London W1. £1. Stapled. 60pp.
Ed: Malcolm Dome; Managing ed: Dante Bonutto; Art: Mike Simister
The first issue of this heavy metal title came with a free Ozzy Osbourne flexi disc in clear plastic mounted on the front cover. Features covered AC/DC, Metallica and a report on the Donington 88 festival. The centre spreads was a poster of Deep Purple's Ian Gillan promoting the magazine's 'best of' poll.

The associate publisher was former pop star Jonathan King, shown dressed in a schoolboy costume playing a guitar. In 2001, King was jailed for four indecent assaults and two serious sexual offences on boys aged 14 and 15. He served half of the seven-year term.

In April 1989, Emap bought the title, which claimed a circulation of up to 35,000. Sales rumbled along at 25,00-30,000 but the title always trailed behind Emap's weekly Kerrang (which it had bought when United Consumer Magazines was closed by the Express newspapers group in 1991). In 1995, Emap took Raw off the shelves for several weeks and relaunched it in October with a sample issue free with monthly Select. The aim was to base the title on pictures and news to complement Emap's Select an additional, more frequent, read. However, it closed within five months.
Teen magazines

Excel
April 1988. White Line Publishing. Ed: Rod Fountain
Main coverline "How to spot a bullshitter" led to its advertising being banned on the London Tube and the editorial mix under was seen as too yuppy; it soon folded (although the title would be used again more than once in the next decade)
Men's magazines history
Men's magazines A to Z 

Bella
October 5, 1987. H. Bauer. 29p;52pp.
Ed: Dennis Neeld 
Bella was Bauer's British version of US title Woman's World. LHS Brompton ran a mail drop promotion wherby 2 million copies were put through doors, mainly in London. It was estimated that three weeks after the launch, Bauer was printing 1.2m copies and selling about 680,000 of them.

The launches of titles by both Gruner and Jahr (Prima and Best) and Bauer were marked by the strategy of establishing copy sales before advertising. This was a well established method in Germany, but new to the UK. G&J was willing in to spend up to £10m on Prima before getting any return. Prima was launched with only 12 pages of advertising out of a total of 140 pages, but had 204 pages by autumn 1987, almost half of which were advertising.

TV Choice
November 1982. 25p
TV programme guide launched by Mr Michael Storey with an initial print run of 100,000. The publishers had to give temporary High Court undertakings that the magazine would not contain material copied without authority from BBC or ITV schedules. However, TV Choice was forced to suspend publication in January 1983 after both ITV Publications and BBC Publications alleged that the magazine had breached their copyright.

Time Out still pressed ahead with a campaign to publish listings in the face of legal action from the BBC and ITV.

A title with the same name was launched in Bauer in 1999.
IPC profile

Executive
May 1982. Fragilion, London; 85p; 100 pp. Ed: Brian Keogh.
"For the man of today." Playboy-style magazine 
Men's magazines history
Men's magazines A to Z

Sky
April 1982. News International and Hachette. 65p; 86pp (numbered). Ed: Ian Birch. Design Consultant: Malcolm Garrett
Nick Kamen and Charlotte Lewis cover
special page formats
Men's magazines history
 

Interiors
November1981. Pharos Publications, Chelsea, London. £1.50; 208 pp. Editor-in-chief: Min Hogg;
Publisher: Kevin Kelly
Kevin Kelly set up Interiors and by 1983 it was half owned by Condé Nast and had changed its name to World of Interiors. In April that year, the magazine ran TV advertising, with spots on Channel Four alongside repeats of Brideshead Revisited. The magazine had increased its circulation from 40,500 to 43,436 with 5,000 more copies going to the US.

In 1984, World of Interiors was voted consumer magazine of the year and Min Hogg editor of the year. Wendy Harrop, art director, was runner-up in the design section. In December, Harrop was appointed editor and creative director.

In 1985, Kelly persuaded Condé Nast and the Financial Times to join with him in launching Business magazine. In 1988, Kelly sold his interest (20%) in the two titles to Condé Nast. This was because of his success in bringing US title W to the UK as a fortnightly. It was selling 40,000 copies under editor Jane Procter within 18 months of its launch (Queensgate Publications).

Hogg stepped down from World of Interiors in 2001, to be replaced by her deputy Rupert Thomas. By then it was selling 65,000 copies a month.

City Limits
October 9-15 1981. London Voice Ltd, 313 Upper Street, Islington, London N1. Distributed by New Statesman. 40p. 92pp. Ed: John Fordham
City Limits was launched by many of the former staff of Time Out (referred to, in an Private-Eyeish way as Another London Magazine) who had left during a protracted dispute after owner Tony Elliot ended the system of equal pay for all staff. The launch issue's editorial states: 'Six months, innumerable dismissals, several writs, threats, recriminations, sit-ins, lock-outs and undignified rumbles later, we have brought you City Limits - a paper that we think you'll agree was worth the fight.'

Cartoonist Steve Bell's Maggie's Farm switched from Time Out with the first outing in City Limits portraying Norman Tebbit ripping off an interviewer's head on Maggie's order 'Get him Psycho!'

Art director Carol Warren used design consultant David King to establish an immediately recognisable cover style on a low budget. Don McCullin interviewed King for Eye and described his work so: 'His graphic style – an easily recognisable mix of explosive sans serif typography, solid planes of vivid colour and emphatic rules – reworked for the New Left in Britain the graphic language of the Russian Constructivists.' Jeremy Leslie's book Issues: New Magazine Design features a spread of City Limits covers. King has a unique collection of Soviet imagery.

City Limits folded in the early 1990s.
Time Out profile
Exhibition including City Limits and Time Out covers