Film, TV and radio magazines

20/20 [closed]

ABC Film Review [closed]

Joan Collins covers

The Box [closed]

Haymarket profile

Bruce Willis [closed]

Cinema Today [closed]

Coronation Street [closed]

The official magazine of Granada TV's long-running soap Coronation Street was launched as the series celebrated 33 years of broadcasting. Introduction by Carolyn Reynolds, executive producer. One of the editors, Daran Little, went on to become a writer on Coronation Street (2000-06). The main feature is about the wedding of ‘Reg’ and ‘Maureen’ (Ken Morley and Sherrie Hewson), which Reynolds says was watched by 22m people (more than a third of the population of the UK). Another article gave a history of the corner shop and the people who ran it

Cult Times [closed]

Sci-fi listings for the month ahead. Adverts for back copies of Star Trek poster magazine and TV Zone. This issue carried double-page posters for X-Files actor Fox Mulder DPS poster and The Prisoner

Cult TV [closed]

October. Future; £2.75; 84 pages. Editor: Karen Levell
With TV test cards to cut out and B5 posters of the X-Files and Emma Peel from the Avengers. 'For a cooler kind of couch potato'
Future profile

Doctor Who Weekly

Empire

Emap / Bauer, London. Jun/Jul 1989-
In June 2005, Empire ran a special cover; when the cover was opened, a card emitted the sound of Star Wars villain Darth Vader breathing (£3.90; 196pp. Ed (acting): Will Lawrence; art editor: Ian Stevens). The card was in subscribers' copies and those sold with a special sticker at large retail chains. The release of Revenge of the Sith was expected to spark the magazine's biggest sale of the year. The cover was embossed and with a subscription drive based around the film.
Empire website
Emap profile

FAB [closed]

On of several Gerry Anderson fanzines based around series such as Thunderbirds, Supercar, Stingray, Fireball XL5, UFO, Space 1999, Terrahawks and Space Precinct

Fan Fare [closed]

Fan Fare Shirley Temple Dimples

Fans' Star Library [closed]

AP. 18 August 1958-?. First issue: 10d

Liverpool-born singer Frankie Vaughan was the subject of the first Fans' Star Library. Later issues covered stars such as Brigitte Bardot, giving their lifee story with glamour photos

Film and TV Parade [closed]

Film and TV Parade called itself 'Britain's leading glamour fortnightly' and followed in the tradition of magazines using pin-ups from the stage and theatre that went back to the start of the 20th century when printing technology made it economic to publish photographs

Film Fiction [closed]

Odhams Press, monthly, August 1921 (only one issue)
Film Fiction carried stories based on contemporary films, illustrated with stills from the film. The cover featured Marion Davies, who was the star of Buried Treasure, a Hollywood film, in 1921. The Bear Alley blog has a profile of the editor, Russell Mallinson

Film Fun [closed]

Comic with front cover strip based around actor Terry Thomas

Film Fun [closed]

Despite its title, Film Fun had little to do with films. It was a US pin-up magazine that was also printed in the UK.

Film Illustrated Monthly [closed]

Film Pictorial [closed]

Film Weekly [closed]

Films and Filming [closed]

Films Illustrated [closed]

1971-1982. Monthly

'The magazine that loves movies'

Flix [closed]

Flix Marilyn Monroe cover

GMTV [closed]

GMTV magazine for the morning television programme

Hot Dog [closed]

July 2000. IFG (I Feel Good) / Highbury / SMD. Launch: £1.50 starter price. 

Hot Dog was the first launch for IFG, a company founded by Loaded launch editor James Brown. The first cover used spot varnish.

Hot Dog aimed to be an irreverent riposte to mass-market film magazines such as Empire and Total Film. Its first ABC sales figure was 39,254, but this halved within a year and by the end of 2005 Hot Dog was selling just 13,659 copies a month.

When IFG foundered, the title was bought by Highbury, which sold it on to SMD, a start-up offshoot of adult magazine publisher Remnant Media.

IFG profile

Inside Soap [closed]

Ikon [closed]

European Consumer Pubs, London. Monthly. September 1995-?

Chris Roberts was editor of this title, which covered music, film and sport (99p; 132 pp). The first issue carried a plastic 'privilege card' on the cover for discounts on events and products. The main cover line was: 'I'm not homosexual and I'm not heterosexual. I'm...sexual' with Paul Morley interviewing the 'wild one' of REM. Other articles covered: Belly; Alan Shearer; Kevin Costner; Martin Amis; Blur's football focus; Eddie Irvine; Sandra Bullock; Black Grape; Batman; Christina Ricci; and Soul II Soul.

The Listener [closed]

Founded in 1929 and closed in 1991. Weekly review of radio programmes with transcripts of the best broadcasts. The Listener Crossword, first published on 2 April 1930, lives on in The Times, where it has been published every Saturday since no. 3090 on 23 March 1991.

In 1941, Benjamin Britten read an article, ‘George Crabbe: the Poet and the Man’ by E.M. Forster in the May issue of The Listener. This inspired an interest for him in the work of George Crabbe, a fellow East Anglian born in the Suffolk seaside town of Aldeburgh in 1754, and led to the writing of the opera Peter Grimes, which had its first production in June 1945 at London’s Sadler's Wells theatre

BBC Magazines profile

Little White Lies

Little White Lies comes out six times a year and glories in what’s happening in the film world. The Nov/Dec 2009 issue was devoted to Where the Wild Things Are from cult director Spike Jones (Being John Malkovitch). The cover was designed to sit alongside the publisher's sister title Huck, an extreme sports magazine.

'Toby Wing looks for signs of spring' was the caption on this cover of 1935 (Feb 2). Wing was a US B-movie actress

London Life [closed]

In the 1930s, a typical issue of the weekly London Life ran to 28 pages with colour font and back covers and an eight-page centre section of pin-ups printed gravure. It cost 6d. The covers often took black and white publicity stills and either printed them with a second colour to give a 'duotone' effect or coloured parts of the image in to give the impression of a colour image.

As an example, a black and white photo of Marlene Dietrich in the film 'Blonde Venus' was coloured and printed for the cover of the 20 Jan 1934 issue. An image of Anglo-German actress Lilian Harvey was on the back cover; Esther Ralston in 'To the Last Man' was on the the inside front cover; the inside back cover was of two scantily-clad women from the show 'Paris Fantaisie' at the Price of Wales' Theatre. Seven other pages were taken up with pin-ups of movie or theatre actresses, including one of Mae West, who, with her 'saucy invitation' to 'Come up and see me some time' had swept London off its feet.

In the 1937 edition opposite, Martha Bianco has had her hair and lips coloured using the orange/gold spot colour in the London Life masthead. This colour was similar to that used by Picturegoer for its covers. This image is a cut-out, with the dark triangle behind Bianco added for dramatic effect – a common trick for London Life covers.

Another feature of the covers was that every masthead was unique. Today, this would be regarded as breaking a prime rule of branding and recognition but the title was published from 1922 to 1960, a very long run for a British magazine, although issues after the war adopted a pocket format and lacked the ritz of earlier copies.

London Life profile

Look-in [closed]

Movie Classic [closed]

Neon [closed]

Emap, London. January 1997

The first issue, a sample, came boxed with an issue of music monthly Select. As well as the two magazines, the box held:

• Corn Pops;
• 2 Twiglets;
• Jolly Ranchers;
• Riesen choc chews;
• Beautiful South bar mat.

However, Neon was not mentioned on the box!

Number Six [closed]

Observer Film Monthly [closed]

Observer newspaper, London. Free supplement; 68pp.

Photoplay [closed]

Photoplay was a UK version of a US title founded in 1911. It was launched in 1950. The Photoplay cover here from March 1956 showing the model Sabrina is typical of the pin-up strategy of many film magazines in the mid 1950s.

The struggle for the magazine to cope with the changing viewing habits and new entertainment technologies after 1960 is shown in the changing emphasis in the magazine's title:

• In the mid-1960s, Photoplay moved away from a straightforward pin-up poster cover, introducing more cover lines and often several images.
• In 1963, it broadened its coverage to 'films, pop, TV and discs', taking advantage of the move by groups such as The Beatles into film.
• By 1968, it had reversed this strategy, branding itself Photoplay Film Monthly.
• The visual balance between the two parts of the title varied over the next decade.
• In 1977, TV became a bigger element and by 1978 the title had changed to Photoplay Film & TV Scene.
• In 1980, it was back to Photoplay, with contents based on 'movies, TV and video'.
• The TV content was downplayed in 1981 and the title was 'Photoplay Movies & Video: The cinema & home screen monthly'. In this period, the Photoplay was reduced in size with Movies being the main element of the masthead.
• In 1986, it went back to Photoplay, adopting the strapline: 'The magazine that loves movies'
• In 1988, the title was relaunched with content based on 'films, TV and video' and the strapline: 'Britain's best known screen monthly'

Photoplay appears to have closed that year.

Cover checklist for US Photoplay

Photoplay Film Monthly

Picture Show [closed]

'Now, these tired publications [Answers, Tit-Bits and Pearson's Weekly] were being pressed by a new breed of specialist weekly. Amalgamated Press's own Picture Show, with its mindless puffs of long forgotten nonentities of the silent screen, was selling 442,819 a week during 1920 ... The cover of Picture Show always featured the head or head and shoulders of a current player of the silver screen. But, for every Mary Pickford, Owen Moore, Mary Miles Minter or Chaplin, there were dozens of people who have left no noticeable cinematic record outside these pages and those of similar publications. Most of the text seemed to have been produced by the publicity departments of the studios, although fictional serials were also used. In fact, the whole publication must have been very cheap to produce, for the profusely used illustrations would also have been free publicity material. Occasionally, the readers were given a little extra when a four-page gravure scetion was inserted into the centre of an edition that featured more portraits and publicity stills.'

Picturegoer

Picturegoer developed from being a catalogue of films showing in cinemas before the Great War to a pin-up weekly in the 1950s, when it styled itself as ‘The national film weekly’. February 1958 saw it take over Disc Parade, as young people – the main cinema goers – paid more attention to pop and rock music. In April 1960, however, Picturegoer was was 'transformed' by Odhams into Date, 'The great new colour weekly for smart young women!' This ran film and disc reviews alongside short stories and fashion.

Picturegoer archive website

Pictures

Odhams Press, Long Acre, WC2. 64pp. 1s

Pictures – 'the screen magazine' was a monthly based around retelling the plots of films and the stories behind their making. It was copiously illustrated with stills from the films, always in the form of cut-outs. For example, the July 1922 carried:

• Douglas Fairbanks with Marguerite Delamotte tied in a chair in The Nut on the cover. Inside was a 4-page article on the making of the film
• A page 6 frontispiece of three bathing beauties.
• Harry Myers as Robinson Crusoe.
• The Girl From Outside.
• The Off-Shore Pirate.
• A centre spread pin-up poster of Gareth Hughes, a Welsh Hollywood star.
• Conrad Nagel.

The issue also carried adverts for other Odhams titles, including Pan, London Mail, The 20 Story Magazine, Everywoman’s Weekly and Picturegoer, 'the picture theatre newspaper'. Also, the magazine sold film postcards and promoted Odhams Fourpenny popular novels. It was distributed in the British colonies and the US and sold in WH Smith bookshops in Brussels, Ostend and Paris

Pictures and Picturegoer

Pictures and Picturegoer, 'the picture theatre newspaper'

Premiere [closed]

Radio Times

Launched in September 1923. In 1955, Radio Times claimed 'the largest sale of any weekly magazine in the world' with 8,832,579 copies a week, making it the biggest-selling UK magazine until overtaken by Reader's Digest in 1993. In 1960, it was selling about 7m copies compared with almost 4m copies for TV Times. Sales have fallen steadily since, particularly after the two rivals lost their listings monopoly in the late 1980s and several competing titles were launched and many weeklies began to carry TV listings pages. However, Radio Times still claims to be the UK's most profitable magazine.

The ABC sales figure for Radio Times in Jan-Jul 2009 was 966,098 copies a week, compared with 1,335,894 for Bauer's TV Choice and 1,272,586 for IPC's What's on TV.
The figures for the first half of 2017 were:

• Radio Times, 622,773;
• TV Choice, was still top dog at 1,200,487;
• What's on TV, 885,595.

Reality TV Now[closed]

Screen News [closed]

Screen Pictorial [closed]

Showtime

Sight and Sound [closed]

May 1991-. British Film Institute. Launch issue: £2; 76 pages. Editor: Philip Dodd
Has all reviews, synopses and credits and features published since 1999 in online archive

The Sketch

Sky Mag

Stay Tuned to The Avengers [closed]

Television Weekly

Total Film

Future profile

Total TV Guide

Total TV Guidedevotes 10 pages to each day's listings. This detail 'enhances the TV viewing experience for its readers and it guides the consumer to the best programmes out of a minefield of thousands of programmes'

TV Choice (1982-83)

November 1982 – January 1983. 25p
TV programme guide launched by 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.

TV Choice

Launch at cheap end of the market (40p in 2003-04). Expanded listings market to become third-biggest seller. Bauer also publishes Total TV Guide and TV Quick.

Its ABC sales figure for Jan -Jul 2009 was 1,335,894 copies a week, making it the top-selling TV listings guide. It held on to most of these sales, registering 1,200,487 in the middle of 2017

TV Easy

Launch of A5-sized listings weekly after a sampling exercise brought the total to 8 titles in a sector selling about 5 million copies a week. This magazine is pared down to the listings with no added features. IPC aimed to segment the sector further:

• TV Times (80p) and TV & Satellite Week (90p) IPC's premium titles up against the BBC's Radio Times at 93p – one of the most profitable titles – and Bauer's Total TV Guide (85p);
• What's On TV, the best-selling magazine in the UK, with an ABC of 1.6m, at 40p, up against Bauer's TV Quick at 65p;
• Bargain basement TV Easy at 35p and Bauer's TV Choice (30p).

Its ABC sales figure for Jan-Jul 2009 was 201,728 copies a week. When it closed, some features were taken on by What’s On TV, Time Inc's biggest TV title in the UK.

TV First!

With the Sunday People newspaper selling two million copies each Sunday, TV First! could immediately claim to be 'Britain's largest circulation TV listings magazine'.

As well as Minder, TV hits at the time included Michael Gambon as Maigret, Harry Enfield, the return of (non-smoking) Irish comedian Dave Allen, A Touch of Frost and The Krypton Factor.

The editor, of supplement and paper, was Bridget Rowe. Her introduction to the magazine stated: '... the programmes in your People TV guide are for the week starting NEXT Saturday to the following Friday – just like tomorrow's Radio Times (price 60p) or TV Times (55p), TVQuick (43p) or What's On TV (33p)'.

TV First was printed by Hunterprint and BPCC and ran to 52 pages. The IFC advert was for a 25th anniversary model of Star Trek's Enterprise, the back was a 'Hush-a-Bye' painted plate by the Italian MaGo and the IBC more china in the form of a replica teapot collection.

UK newspapers

TV Guide [closed]

25 March – December 1989. Murdoch Magazines, London. 40p; 60pp. Ed: Ian Birch

A Jason Donovan cover – fronting a feature and a competition to win a part in Australian soap Neighbours – led the first issue. 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

TV Life [closed]

March 1974-Jul/Aug 1975?. Independent Television Publications, London. 20p; 88pp

TV Life was an attempt by Independent Television Publications, a jointly owned subsidiary of the ITV companies, to build on the success of their monopoly commercial TV listing magazine, TV Times. It was a women's lifestyle magazine with the selling line, 'The way to live in this television age'. It was monthly for the first year, but the Jul/Aug 1975 issue is the latest I have identified

The second issue shown here leads on Omar Sharif in The Tamarind Seed. Other features includes an 'at home' profile of Dr Who actor Jon Pertwee, who was then appearing in the sci-fi series with Elizabeth Sladen. Hannah Gordon was the subject of a palm-reading piece and there were interviews with Gerald Harper as Hadleigh and Wendy Craig. There was also fiction based on a series called Zodiac.

ITP also tried to launch a women's weekly, Chat, in 1985. In June 2016, the Daily Star Sunday newspaper renamed its TV listings supplement from TV Extra to TV Life. There is also a Japanese magazine with the same title.

TV Mirror [closed]

Amalgamated Press, Fleetway House, Farringdon St, London EC4. Printed by Sun Printers, London and Watford. 4d. 28pp. Published every Wednesday.

TV Mirror launched in late 1951 and took over Disc News in 1957. TV Mirror itself was taken over by Picture Show in 1959. Magazine format 12.5in by 10in (31cm x 25cm).

TV Quick

TV Quick tried to be a women's magazine, celebrity TV magazine and a listings magazine combined. Launched March 1991 (65p in 2003-04).

Its ABC sales figure for Jan-Jul 2009 was 144,270 copies a week. Sales dropped to 113,936 in the first half of 2010

Bauer also publishes Total TV Guide and TV Choice, the sector best-seller

Bauer profile

TV & Satellite Week

IPC Media

TV & Satellite Week has a focus on terrestrial, satellite, cable and Freeview. Its ABC sales figure for Jan -Jul 2009 was 183,929 copies a week.

TV Times

The first issue of TV Times put Patricia Dainton in the mid-morning serial 'Sixpenny Corner' and Lucille Ball in 'I Love Lucy' on the cover. Note cut-out shaped like a TV screen. The cover was in black and white with spot red.

For several years TV Times followed the prodeuction values of Radio Times and was printed letterpress on callendered newsprint and looked 'cheap and nasty'. However, by 1960 it was selling almost 4m copies a week so switched to gravure at Sun Printing in Watford. Radio Times was selling about 7m at the time. From this time, however, the circulation of both titles declined steadily.

By 1966, the covers were in colour.

At the start of 2010, the sales of TV Times were 311,307 a week.

Uncut

June. IPC; £1.50 (special); 164 pages. Editor: Allan Jones
Music and movie magazine. House ads for Loaded spin-off Eat Soup and Mountain Bike Rider

Uncut DVD

IPC Ignite launched a quarterly spin-off from Uncut, its film and music title, to cover films on DVD. The first issue features Clint Eastwood and has a history of The Sweeney.

IPC profile

Video World

Reviews of videos, VCRs and camcorders and pin-up style covers were the staple fare for Penthouse publisher Northern & Shell's Video World

Videos of '86

Special issue of Video World for the Christmas market by Penthouse publisher Northern and Shell. As well as reviews – of videos, VCRs and camcorders – this special issue featured an interview with the creator of Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and Terrahawks, Gerry Anderson.

What's on TV

Time Inc UK profile

Whatsontv.co.uk website later became https://www.whattowatch.com