Countdown (Polystyle Publications) - Publishing History

Publishing History

Countdown was launched on 20 February 1971 amid a blend of great opportunities and wholesale jitters. On the beneficial side, the magazine had a very small in-house staff of just four and had easy access to a wealth of ready-made artwork created by the best continuity strip artists of the day – artwork that had been used just the once and was now filed away in dark dry vaults beneath the bustling traffic of Farringdon Road, London.

Why re-use old artwork? One needs to understand that although the stories had already been seen in print, this had been four or five years earlier and that those readers who had avidly perused TV21 had now grown up into young adulthood and were likely to be far more interested in reading material of a more adult nature.

Another beneficial aspect had been that both editor Dennis Hooper and art editor Roger Perry had for several years had a close professional association with Gerry and his wife Sylvia Anderson and therefore had intimate knowledge of their "Supermarionation" TV series. At the onset of TV21 magazine, Hooper had been art editor of the various journals including Lady Penelope and Candy, and Perry had been art editor overseeing the books and Christmas annuals side of Century 21 Publishing. Having been employed by Century 21 Publishing between 1964 and 1968, it had been natural for them to have made regular visits to the parent company – Century 21 Productions – whose film studios had been to the west side of Greater London, near Windsor. With the idea of launching Countdown, it had been a simple matter to get Anderson's blessing and secure the appropriate franchising licenses.

The third beneficial break to land on Polystyle’s lap had been due to another company’s misfortune, that of Sun Printers (Watford) being unable to find enough work to keep their own photogravure presses running. Before Eric Bemrose (Liverpool) had eventually taken over the job, in the twelve weeks it took the Bemrose to design and build the new ten-unit rotogravure machine, Sun Printers (Watford) had temporarily handled the job. In April 1950, the boys’ comic Eagle first saw light of day on Sun Printer’s machines at Watford. With them already familiar with this type of work, a deal had been struck between Sun Printers (Watford) and Polystyle Publications whereby they would print Countdown for one calendar year (52 issues) for the cost of supplying the materials only – all machine-time was totally FOC (free of charge).

But to fully understand the problems Countdown faced, it requires a greater understanding of not only what happened to TV21 (plus its sister magazines) but also the reasons behind why their demise had had such an adverse effect on the wholesale trade at large, who in essence can make or break a perfectly good magazine.

During the 1960s, not only had there been huge advances in electronic technology – for TV was slowly metamorphosing from the post-war images comprised of 405-lines in black and white to that of 625 and in full colour. With this technological advancement, so too were boys and girls – once having been content with the stringed-puppet series Supercar (1960), Fireball XL5 (1962) and Stingray (1964) now they wanted something a good deal better to fire up their furtive imaginations. With the advent of Thunderbirds (1965) coming onto their screens and then, two years later Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (1967), this was surely a whole new ball game and had fitted the bill nicely. Maybe the draw had been due to the advancement of electronics, for with continual miniaturisation, the smaller lip-sync mechanism allowed the puppets to be built closer to normal human proportions. But when the more "kid-friendly" Joe 90 (1968) arrived, the magic had gone and it failed to satisfy. With viewing numbers dropping wildly, Joe 90 was to be the last in a long line of classic Anderson marionette series.

What children wanted now were live-action series – the likes of Doctor Who – these had very suddenly were all the rage. With that in mind, in 1968, Century 21 Productions began to venture into the world of live-action – first with Doppelganger, followed by UFO and then with Space: 1999, this last project turning into what became the most expensive TV series ever to be made at that time.

Century 21 Productions became financially over-stretched and within a few short months, they had disbanded their three ware-house-sized studios on the Slough Trading Estate, and in June of 1969 the entire staff of Century 21 Publishing woke up one morning to discover that they had been given one month to clear out their desks and seek alternative employment. Although the entire staff of Century 21 Publishing had found themselves redundant, not all was entirely lost as TV21, Lady Penelope and Candy magazines struggled on for a few more months. They – together with a small nucleus of staff from the disbanded Century 21 Publishing company – were taken on board by Leonard Matthews (ex-managing editor of Fleetway Juvenile Comics) and Alfred Wallace (ex-managing editor of Eagle magazine), who were now operating an independent studio off Fleet Street under the name of Martspress.

With the non-appearance of Supermarionation programmes on TV, plus the sudden demise of Century 21 Publishing, this effectively triggered truly negative vibes within the comic magazine industry generally. In a nutshell, the wholesalers had had their fingers burnt by having large stocks of merchandise – not just the weekly comics but through APF (Anderson Provis Films) – another of Gerry Anderson's innovative ventures – they found themselves with huge stocks of toys, books, games and other related merchandised items that could no longer be moved off their shelves. Understandably, when Countdown appeared, it was regarded as such a close relation to the TV21 disaster that it became common knowledge that wholesalers were very cagey about placing large orders.

The second negative aspect had been that within one week of the first issue of Countdown being placed onto the news stands, TV Times had also launched their own "in-house" publication for juveniles, Tivvy – admittedly not exactly the same type of product, but TV Times (who had a print run of several million) had had the advantage (and the clout) to do plenty of string-pulling resulting in lots of free air-time for advertising their new product together with the fact that it was also being looked upon as TV Times' own "club magazine for children". Given the choice by a parent on whether to buy Countdown (which was relatively unheard of) or Tivvy (that they knew all about from the plugs having been made ad infinitum on children's TV), it is understandable as to which magazine the child would choose.

Apart from Hooper and Perry, the other two staff members employed to work solely on Countdown were Peter Levy (assistant editor) and 54-year-old Bill Kidd (assistant art editor), who in the late summer of 1972 died of stomach cancer. He was replaced by a young balloon-lettering artist who had been working on Countdown's sister magazine TV Comic – 19-year-old Danny Fox.

Countdown was unique in so far that much of its content had changed from one week to the next almost bringing about a surprise as to what was actually in there. But this was not done by any pre-determined design but purely from the sake of necessity. Perry had two problems to solve – the first was that Hooper had locked himself away in his office virtually 24/7 writing many of the scripts ... and for that, there had been no criticism. But the problem Perry had was that he was not being given these scripts early enough for the artists to create and deliver their completed work in time ... after all, one cannot just close a magazine down for a week or two thus allowing everyone to catch up!

In a perfect life, there was a five-week "lead" between "press day" (this being the date upon which all text matter and artwork was handed over to the printer) and the cover date (the day upon which the magazine was sold to the public at large). This five-week period allowed enough time for the typesetters to set text copy and for the planners to produce a visual "dummy" (an exact-size page-for-page mock up of what the magazine will look like having followed the designer's layouts). This "dummy" is put together from cut-and-pasted pieces of paper that showed all the pictures scaled to their correct sizes (using what used to be called "photo-stats") and with the text and headings in their correct positions. The "dummy" is sent to the publisher for the editing staff to re-read the copy, to make sure that there are no mistakes, and to make any changes that may be necessary. With no computers (as such) in those days, it was part of a designer's job to make sure that the text fitted into the space allotted for it. Invariably it was either just too long or just too short to fit snugly so extra writing or the cutting of some text had to be done. When the "dummy" went back to the printer, no more changes could be made.

Two weeks after returning the dummy to the printer (still several days before copies went on sale, thus allowing time for distribution of copies throughout the country), "advanced copies" were made available to the staff. Although there was a small amount of leeway and that if the printer had been pre-warned, some artwork could be up to a week or ten days late, but Perry very often did not have receipt of Hooper's script until press day itself ... and it still had to be illustrated by the artist and balloon-lettered before sending it off to the printer.

A secondary problem was that the artists being employed to create the continuity strips did not solely work on Countdown but often took on other work to fill their week's workload. One such (unnamed) artist used to deliver his work on a Monday ... but then the following week the work would come in on the Tuesday; the next week Wednesday and so on. The simple answer was to let the story run its course of four, five or six weeks ... then drop in something else for a couple of weeks, thus giving him the chance to "catch up". Leaving Hooper to carry on writing his scripts, this decision had been made by Perry and it was being said (as first uttered by Dennis Bosdet, a representative from Linden Artists) that Countdown was no longer being edited by Hooper but by Perry.

These alternative "filler pages" came in the shape of a competition (giving away items such as Airfix construction kits) or something pretty quick and easy such as a hastily-written "profile" from the pen of Peter Levy. Perry was often present at recordings of Doctor Who and finding a suitable picture to go with it from the files was pretty easy ... this having been a preferable option to that of tearing out one's hair and biting one's nails to the quick ... and it also gave the magazine a feel of greater flexibility. One of these "last-minute filler pages" had come about after Perry needed to attend a funeral in Stuttgart.

Several months earlier on a particularly blustery day in late March 1972, Perry had driven down to Pegwell Bay in East Kent taking with him science writer Dan Lloyd, who from 1959 through to 1968 had been Eagle magazine's chief sub-editor. It had been Lloyd's plan to create an in-depth feature on hovercraft but at Pegwell Bay, gale-force winds had prevented the hovercraft from flying. "Hoverlloyd" had been very cautious as earlier that same month – on 4 March 1972 – an SR.N6 travelling from Ryde, Isle of Wight to Portsmouth had overturned in strong gale-force winds on the Solent killing five of the 27 passengers on board. The freak accident had happened just 400 yards off Southsea beach where the craft was about to land. To compensate for their disappointment, Lloyd's press officer suggested that when they next be in the vicinity, Lloyd and Perry would be most welcome to be given a free ride over to France.

After the literally flying trip over to south-west Germany and back, by way of courtesy, Perry telephoned Lloyd's press officer and was immediately invited to the launching of the company's third SR.N4 craft ... so far unnamed but the carrot was that the launching would be blessed by the hovercraft's inventor – Sir Christopher Cockerell, CBE. Taking assistant art editor Bill Kidd along as staff photographer with him, Perry found that he had enough material to create the first in a long line of "The Man From Countdown" features. These articles preceded the series that John Noakes (and his dog "Shep") had made for BBC children's TV by about four years. Go With Noakes started on 28 March 1976.

But this was not the first time that Perry had been involved in this type of informative journalism. In 1961, while employed as a designer on Eagle, Perry's image had been used in a weekly continuity strip called "The Roving Reporter". Although Perry never actually left the confines of his office, the illustrations created by (amongst others) Countdown artist John M. Burns and Eric Kincaid (better known for his "Toad of Toad Hall" and "Riverbank Tales") gave the impression that Perry (a.k.a. Larry Line) was always out and about somewhere in this ever-expanding world.