''Fabulous 208'' (retitled ''Fab 208'' from 1969 onwards) was a British
pop music
Pop music is a genre of popular music that originated in its modern form during the mid-1950s in the United States and the United Kingdom.S. Frith, W. Straw, and J. Street, eds, ''iarchive:cambridgecompani00frit, The Cambridge Companion to Pop ...
magazine
A magazine is a periodical literature, periodical publication, print or digital, produced on a regular schedule, that contains any of a variety of subject-oriented textual and visual content (media), content forms. Magazines are generally fin ...
.
History and profile
Published weekly between 1964 and 1980 by
Fleetway
Fleetway Publications was a magazine publishing company based in London.
History
It was founded in 1959 when the Mirror Group acquired the Amalgamated Press, then based at Fleetway House, Farringdon Street, London. It was one of the companies t ...
{{cite news, author=Jon Savage, title=The magazine explosion, url=https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/sep/06/sixties-60s-pop-magazines-beatles, accessdate=19 November 2016, work=The Guardian, date=6 September 2009 (later
IPC Magazines
TI Media Ltd. (formerly International Publishing Company, IPC Magazines Ltd, IPC Media and Time Inc. UK) was a consumer magazine and digital publisher in the United Kingdom, with a portfolio selling over 350 million copies each year. Most of it ...
) and aimed at the teenage market, it ran for almost 900 issues, and oversaw a period of considerable change in popular music consumption, from the early years of
the Beatles
The Beatles were an English Rock music, rock band formed in Liverpool in 1960. The core lineup of the band comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are widely regarded as the Cultural impact of the Beatle ...
' career to the growth of the
music video
A music video is a video that integrates a song or an album with imagery that is produced for promotion (marketing), promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a music marketing device intended to ...
. Many of its contributors began their professional careers with the magazine including photographers David Steen and Robert Whitaker and writers
Quentin Crewe
Quentin Hugh Crewe (14 November 1926 – 14 November 1998) was an English journalist, author, restaurateur and adventurer. He wrote regularly for the ''Evening Standard'', ''Queen'' magazine, the ''Daily Mail'' and ''Sunday Mirror,'' among othe ...
Neil Aspinall
Neil Stanley Aspinall (13 October 1941 24 March 2008) was a British music industry executive. A school friend of Paul McCartney and George Harrison, he went on to head the Beatles' company Apple Corps.
The Beatles employed Aspinall first as ...
and Michael Aldred.
First published as ''Fabulous'' on 18 January 1964, the Beatles appeared on the front cover, espousing the magazine's (then)
unique selling proposition
In marketing, the unique selling proposition (USP), also called the unique selling point or the unique value proposition (UVP) in the business model canvas, is the marketing strategy of informing customers about how one's own brand or product is ...
: full-colour pinups. At the time, ''Fabulouss competition - chiefly ''
New Musical Express
''New Musical Express'' (''NME'') is a British music, film, gaming and culture website, bimonthly magazine, and brand. Founded as a newspaper in 1952, with the publication being referred to as a " rock inkie", the ''NME'' would become a maga ...
'' and ''
Melody Maker
''Melody Maker'' was a British weekly music magazine, one of the world's earliest music weeklies; according to its publisher, IPC Media, the earliest. In January 2001, it was merged into "long-standing rival" (and IPC Media sister publicatio ...
'' - were newsprint publications. As Paul Jobling and David Crowley note, the Beatles went on to appear in every edition of the magazine for the next two years, and several early editions featured no other artists.Jobling, Paul & Crowley, David (1996) ''Graphic Design: Reproduction and Representation Since 1800'',
Manchester University Press
Manchester University Press is the university press of the University of Manchester, England, and a publisher of academic books and journals. Manchester University Press has developed into an international publisher. It maintains its links with t ...
, p.218-9 In June 1966, after a deal with
Radio Luxembourg
Radio Luxembourg was a multilingual commercial broadcaster in Luxembourg. It is known in most non-English languages as RTL (for Radio Television Luxembourg).
The English-language service of Radio Luxembourg began in 1933 as one of the earlies ...
to carry its programme listings and related items, the magazine was retitled ''Fabulous 208'' - 208
metres
The metre (or meter in US spelling; symbol: m) is the base unit of length in the International System of Units (SI). Since 2019, the metre has been defined as the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of of ...
being Radio Luxembourg's broadcast
wavelength
In physics and mathematics, wavelength or spatial period of a wave or periodic function is the distance over which the wave's shape repeats.
In other words, it is the distance between consecutive corresponding points of the same ''phase (waves ...
. At its peak it had a circulation of 250,000, and for the majority of the 1960s had the biggest market share of its type.
An innovation in the magazine's early years was celebrity guest editors, including
Donovan
Donovan Phillips Leitch (born 10 May 1946), known mononymously as Donovan, is a Scottish musician, songwriter and record producer. He emerged from the British folk scene in early 1965 and subsequently scored multiple international hit singles ...
,
Cat Stevens
Yusuf Islam (born Steven Demetre Georgiou; ), commonly known by his stage names Cat Stevens, Yusuf, and Yusuf / Cat Stevens, is a British singer-songwriter and musician. He has sold more than 100 million records and has more than two billion st ...
,
Gerry Marsden
Gerard Marsden MBE (24 September 1942 – 3 January 2021) was an English singer-songwriter, musician and television personality, best known for being leader of the Merseybeat band Gerry and the Pacemakers. He was the younger brother of fellow ...
,
the Kinks
The Kinks were an English rock band formed in London in 1963 by brothers Ray Davies, Ray and Dave Davies, and Pete Quaife. They are regarded as one of the most influential rock bands of the 1960s. The band emerged during the height of British ...
and
Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich
Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich are an English rock band active during the 1960s. Formed in Salisbury in 1964, the band consisted of David Harman (Dave Dee), Trevor Ward-Davies (Dozy), John Dymond (Beaky), Michael Wilson (Mick) and Ian Ame ...
. Although its focus was pop music, ''Fabulous 208'' was the first magazine of its type to cover other pop culture genres: fashion, films and television, and this later extended beyond the media to celebrity footballers such as
George Best
George Best (22 May 1946 – 25 November 2005) was a Northern Irish professional association football, footballer who played as a winger (association football), winger, spending most of his club career at Manchester United F.C., Manchester Un ...
- a trend which was widely emulated in the late 60s and beyond, most notably by the ITV-sponsored ''
Look-In
''Look-in'' was a children's magazine centred on ITV's television programmes in the United Kingdom, and subtitled "The Junior '' TVTimes''". It ran from 9 January 1971 to 12 March 1994.Jackie'' (which itself had launched only weeks after ''Fabulous'') with more fashion features, and models replacing pop stars on the cover in most weeks. By the end of the 1970s it was being outsold by both ''Jackie'' and on the pop front by newly launched titles such as ''
Smash Hits
''Smash Hits'' was a British music magazine aimed at young adults, originally published by EMAP. It ran from 1978 to 2006, and, after initially appearing monthly, was issued fortnightly during most of that time. The name survived as a brand ...
'' (from 1978). After a brief spell as rebranded as ''Fab Hits'' it was published for the last time on 27 September 1980, with the Beatles once again on the front cover.