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Digital magazines: a history

by Tony Quinn

Showing the way to go (early 1980s)

  • electronic mail;
  • Teletext 'magazines'
  • Prestel-based bulletin boards
  • Micronet

Digital production (late 1980s)

  • magazines use DTP

CD-Rom magazines (mid 1990s)

  • video-based CD-Rom magazines
  • CD-Roms as cover-mounts on mainstream titles

Websites (mid-1990s)

  • Newspapers and magazines launch websites

Online digital magazines (mid-1990s)

  • online PDFs
  • adding interactivity
  • online - a new channel for magazines

Brand extension (early-2000s)

  • mobile phone and TV channels

Online-only digital magazines (mid-2000s)

  • Dennis launches Monkey
  • News-stands on the web for digital magazines
  • Customer publishers adopt digital format

Development of digital media back to top

Date Event Details
1982 Magazines start to use electronic mail and online noticeboards Acorn User (Addison-Wesley) uses Dialcom/Telecom Gold, a subscription-based email system
1982 Cover disc - vinyl Your Computer (December) 33.3 rpm vinyl single holding Sinclair ZX81 games
1982 Publishers start to use computer networks Acorn User and contract publisher Redwood throws out all typewriters and introduces Econet sysyem based on Acorn BBC Micro technology. Copy written on networked BBC terminals, stored on floppy discs or 5MB network hard drive and printed on centralised daisywheel or dot matrix printers to be sent to typesetters. Redwood continued to use the system - which grew to about 80 terminals - before switching to Macintoshes running Quark XPress
1983 Subscription-based online bulletin boards using viewdata systems (broadcast by TV stations or over telephone lines)

Viewdata systems consisting of several hundred 'pages', each of 24 characters by 20 lines of text (1K in size):

  • Ceefax (BBC): data was broadcast inbetween television frames (not interactive) .
  • Prestel (British Telecom): over telephone lines (1200/75 baud).
  • in-house systems for companies, eg travel agents .
  • bulletin boards on home computers used this technology.
  • other systems were Minitel in France and Telidon in Canada.
   

Emap launches Micronet, which reaches 1m subscribers. Magazines and individuals set up their own pages using Prestel

  Thousands of computer users run own boards from home, office or school using BBC Micros, modems and phone lines  


Schools in the Outer Hebrides on the west coast of Scotland had access to a dedicated viewdata system in 1984
1986 BBC attempts to establish a standard for interactive video discs Domesday system with Philips Laservision disc player - using double-sided, 12-inch optical discs - controlled by a BBC Micro
1980s Development of digital technologies for handling typesetting and image manipulation

Apple Macintosh (1984)
Postscript from Adobe Systems (1984)
Apple Laser Writer printer (1985)
Aldus Pagemaker (1985)
ISO defines SGML (1986)
Adobe Illustrator (1987)
Quark Xpress (1987)
Adobe PhotoShop (1989)

1992   Adobe Acrobat PDFs
1994 Newspapers move to the web Daily Telegraph claims to be the first national newspaper on the web
The Unzip CD-Rom from IPC was based on content from titles such as New Musical Express and New Scientist in 1995
1995 CD-Rom magazines At least 10 available (Baumann 1995). Blender (Dennis); Unzip, 'the UK's first fully interactive magazine on CD-Rom' (IPC)
  CD-Rom cover mounts on non-computer magazines
August issue of men's monthly Maxim (Dennis Publishing)
  Websites for mainstream magazines Uploaded.com (Loaded, IPC); nme.com (New Musical Express, IPC)
1996 Electronic auditing ABC Electronic established to provide independent certification for data related to electronic media
X-Net was bi-monthly, which came with a CD-Rom and a cover price of £7.95 for 100 pages. It featured popular pin-up Jo Guest and carried hundreds of addresses for pornographic as well as sport, comedy and car websites. The CD-Rom held more than 300 links to websites and used the sales line: 'Babe Fest! Interview the girls, then watch them strip.' It caused a furore, to which its editor, Dominic Handy, responded in the Guardian: 'We did not go out to publish a porn mag, we wanted to publish Loaded for the internet.'
1997 Digital kiosks BT Touchpoint with NME, Loaded and Marie Claire content
Improving technology meant CD-Rom titles could market themselves based on their video content. Among the publishers to exploit this development were those behind top-shelf titles such as Enter
1999 BRAD (Nov) directory lists 668 entries under 'new media'  
2000 CD-Rom magazines based on video content Enter monthly from Pure Communications
2001 Digital facsimile editions of newspapers start to appear 'Flat PDFs' with no interactivity
2003 SMS text messaging Loaded (IPC)
  Online media have become mainstream: BRAD (Jun) no longer lists websites separately  
2005 Financial Times launches digital facsimile edition Includes How to Spend It
  Digital paper announced  
2006 Switch in teenage spending to online and mobile-phone-based media blamed for teen magazine closures Emap closes Smash Hits. The name lives on as a digital music TV channel and radio station, online and as a mobile phone service
  Digital (facsimile) magazines Exact Editions launches first titles (Feb). Quickly expanded to include Dazed & Confused
  Downloadable magazines for phones Time Out, OK!, Glamour, GQ on Mobizine platform (Feb)
  Magazines launch on YouTube Condé Nast puts Glamour, GQ and Vogue on YouTube
  YouTube seen as affecting (men's) magazines ‘Unloaded, and now the party is over,’ (Brown, 2006)
  Magazines use YouTube for marketing Nuts men's weekly (IPC) celebrates sales results with a raunchy ad on YouTube
  Temporary video websites exploiting social networking Zootube.co.uk for Emap's Zoo men's weekly
  TV magazines cover online films and podcasts Radio Times covers YouTube, iFilm and Google Video on radiotimes.com and in magazine
Interactive digital-only magazines launched Monkey from Dennis. 'The world’s first weekly digital men’s magazine' (Nov)
  Media organisations launch special editions in Second Life online world US technology title Wired (October); German tabloid Bild (December); Sky News (May 2007); CNET, Reuters, BBC Radio 1 and Channel 4 Radio (Green 2007)
2007 TV guide revamps website to help find shows on the web for downloading Radio Times
  First ABCe figures for digital -only and print magazines Monkey releases ABCe of 209,612 copies a week
Jelly fish digital magazine start page
  Digital-only magazine for teenagers National Magazines launches Jellyfish as a trial using Ceros technology. The magazine's motto was 'if it moves, click.' However, problems with the emailed files being blocked because of poor mailing lists led to the experiment failing and it was closed within 6 months.
  Contract publishers seek ABCe audits for digital titles River Publishing registers Healthy for Men with ABCe (May)
  Advertising revenue rising but 'no one has got the business model for online cracked yet,' Stevie Spring (chief executive, Future Publishing)  
  '[Newspapers] have yet to find sound monetisation models' (Richard Stephenson, chairman of Yudu Media, quoted by Kirby 2007)  
  Magazines move into digital TV Nuts TV channel based on the weekly IPC men's magazine (September)
  Free weekly men's magazine launched with website ShortList gives away 500,000 copies. 'Our site is completely central to everything we're planning' Mike Soutar, quoted in Dorrell, 2007
  Online digital facsimile newsagents launched MyMag Online in Ireland
  DVD magazine announced 'The world's first' magazine on DVD from Expansive Media (for November launch)
  Publishers working with digital paper E-Ink working with Time magazine (Moses)
2008 Digital magazines becoming an established medium Exact Editions has about 70 titles; Ceros 200. In February 2008, Zinio launches Global Newsstand to make 850 titles available to buy and read online
  Brand expansion for Monkey Dennis Publishing and mobile media company Player X launch Monkey as a free mobile TV channel (March)
  Dennis builds on Monkey business model Dennis launches fortnightly iMotor and Gizmo
  Monthly car launch Motor Play launches as a free digital car monthly ‘with over 200 pages of beautifully produced articles on cars’
  Social applications and widgets for Stuff website Umee develops utilities such as Twitter, Facebook and Clearspring widgets for Haymarket's Stuff.tv
  Wallpaper widget News feed and a photo of the day from monthly design title
2009

iPhone app from NME

NME logo

IPC's music weekly sells 59p app to access band photographs using Umee technology. Rebrands itelf as: online, magazine, TV, radio, mobile (note the order)
     

Bibliography

  • ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulations), www.abc.org.uk
  • Anon (2007) 'Getting the measure of the online audience,' Media Week, 14 August, p23
  • Baumann, H. (1995) 'The Digital Future of Consumer Magazines,' BSc dissertation, West Herts College, Watford, April
  • BRAD (monthly guide to advertising data), www.brad.co.uk
  • Brown, J. (2006) ‘Unloaded, and now the party is over,’ The Independent, 18 August, p12
  • Dorrell, E. (2007) 'Lads' mags resign to following audience online,' New Media Age, 6 September, p12
  • Duffy, D. (2007) email from managing director to Tony Quinn, Cerosmedia.com, 30 August
  • Fitzsimmons, C. (2007) ‘Jellyfish closure is another blow for teen sector,’ Guardian, 14 August, http://media.guardian.co.uk/presspublishing/story/0,,2148566,00.html
  • Green, C. (2007) 'Virtual visions,' Independent, 27 August, pp8-9
  • Hodgkin, A. (2007) email from Exact Editions, 28 August
  • Kirby, A. (2007) 'Digital editions', In Circulation, September/October, pp 42-44, www.incirculation.co.uk
  • Moses, L. (2007) 'Time Inc. Eyes New Ad Apps,', Media Week (US), 8 October http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/search/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003654557
  • NRS (National Readership Survey), www.nrs.co.uk
  • Quinn, A., Duggan, F. and Vernau, J. (1997) CD-Rom for Publishers, Pira International, Leatherhead
  • Quinn, A. (2007) ‘ UK national newspapers,’ Magforum.com www.magforum.com/papers/nationals.htm
  • WARC (World Advertising Research Center) www.warc.com
 
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